Do Citizens Want to Participate? The Technocratic Challenge

In recent years there has been a steady alienation of citizens from representative institutions, criticizing, among other things, the lack of political competence . From the perspective of the theory of representation (Pitkin, 1967), this is due to a distorted perception of politics by the citizens, what it means and implies the representative relationship (Mansbridge , 2003). Following this argument, some authors claim that people just want replace political representatives by experts (Hibbings and Theiss -Morse, 2002). Other authors explain the criticism of the representative system in terms of political disaffection (Torcal and Montero , 2006): citizens do not question the representative system, but the actors involved in it. Thus, rather than an expert government, citizens would demand more political competence. What is political competence here? We discuss this issue with the results of a research conducted in Italy during the Monti government in 2012.