Jessy Baillyto éditions du Septentrion, 2024, 396p.

Can representative democracy still be reformed? This is the task set by groups of local activists in France, Spain and Belgium who are trying to monitor the actions of their elected representatives in the context of the public debt crisis in Europe in the early 2010s. This book analyses the conditions that make such activist endeavours possible, the relationship of these citizens to democracy and public power behind their aspiration to monitor political and institutional actors, their practices, as well as their dilemmas and the consequences of their actions.

The aim is to retrace the sinuous itinerary of these citizen-controllers who, in criticising representative democracy, are not calling for its abolition, but for its reconfiguration towards a more interactive and less asymmetrical division of political labour between governors and governed.

Publication date: 31 May 2024