Abstract

‘Political communication’ and ‘government responsiveness’ are two concepts that do not always come together in discussions about the quality of democracy, despite the fact that they are two of its most important components. On the contrary, in many cases, the literature tends to separate the two planes of analysis, with studies concerned with the world of political discourse or the consumption of political information by citizens, and others focused on attempting to measure the ability of governments to respond to the demands of the people with instruments that do not always manage to keep pace with the profound changes – technological with sociopolitical repercussions – taking place in western democracies. Through a critical review of the literature, the essay contends that the perspective of political communication can be used to more truly define receptivity, reflecting the dynamic character of the link between the two notions. To do so, the contribution reconstructs the origins of the concept of responsiveness and its relationship with representation, beginning with Pitkin (1967) or Eulau and Karps (1977) and continuing with more recent studies of political communication, from which the concept of rhetorical responsiveness emerges.