In his description of the evolution of liberal democracies, Macpherson (1977) emphasized that the design of models of democracy always involves a conception of human nature, expressed on a depiction of real citizens (through the analysis of their historical and current relations) and their potentialities (through changes in social/economical/political relations). In the paper we will analyze critically the way in which the popular dichotomy between representative democracy and participatory democracy is based on different ways of understanding citizen participation, that involves a preference for certain types of citizens.
