Only in recent decades have a number of thinkers again begun to question these assumptions, to resurrect those few, faint voices-some socialist, some anarchist, all more or less bizarre and deviant-which continued to challenge the idea of representation itself, to challenge not just its superiority to but even its substitutability for the older ideal of direct, participatory democracy. These thinkers have suggested that participation in public power and responsibility may be intrinsically and not just instrumentally valuable, necessary to the good of life and to the full development of human beings. They have suggested that only a politically involved and active people is free and that representative institutions, initially designed to open the public realm to the previously excluded common people have in fact served to discourage active citizenship.