This paper questions if the civil society organizations (in portuguese, OSCs) can and do accomplish their role of exercising a representative function in times of crisis of the political parties. In order to do so, it examines recent practices of representation in Brazil and in Argentina, two countries where political parties have gone through acute crises after decades of ambiguous evaluations regarding their partidary systems. In such moments, any substitution of parties for OSCs should be easily identifiable. Initially, the functions and the representative potential of OSCs are examined, using the political party model as reference. Then, it is shown from already published surveys and unpublished field research, in a comparison focused in how well the parties and OSCs have been carrying out their public and organizational functions in Brazil and in Argentina. The conclusion is that OSCs do not substitute parties as mechanisms of representation of citizens' values and interests - and do not even try to do that, except for a brief period, in the peak of the crisis in Argentina. In both countries, however, OSCs improve the quality of the citizens' representation.
representation; civil society; Brazil; Argentina; political parties