The concept of political representation has undergone a major overhaul in contemporary political theory motivated by the empirical observation of the role of civil society as a political representative. The acknowledgment of representation in societal field has imposed new challenges to democratic theory, some of them will be addressed in this paper. First, the article proposes to rethink the concept of political representation, based on two main ideas, namely, the representation is a process and it is a construction. Second, in order to understand the democratizing potentials of these transformations, this paper reinterprets the criteria of legitimacy of representation. It suggests that legitimacy is built during the representation and not only achieved by electoral authorization. This requires neither we abandon the tension between representative and represented, nor we leave the authorization mechanisms and accountability. But to rethink them from a continuous and distinct process among the varied examples of representation of society. Finally, the article argues that the practices of civil society representation in public policies co-management institutions in Brazil bring distinctive contribution to the theory of representation. These institutions put emphasis on the importance of distinguishing between the actors of the State and society from a consideration to the representative activity and authority mobilized, and not primarily from their sphere of action. Different from informal spaces of social influence, the collective actors that participate in these institutions gain a positional authority, when invested with legal power of deliberation and decision by the State. Moreover, the co-management institutions introduces new elements to evaluate the process of authorization, accountability and responsiveness, not thematized in the international literature.
political theory; representation; democracy; legitimacy; co-management institutions