The improper politics of representation

This chapter takes issue with the renewed justification and theorisation of representative democracy associated with the constructivist turn, to reframe debates concerning the relationship between representation, property and civil society. Drawing on a set of older debates about democracy, property and representation the chapter contends that theorists such as Nadia Urbinati and Lisa Disch do not adequately account for existing forms of inequality, structured around property and wealth. The chapter defends a principle of democratic representation as improper in respect of existing orders of property and propriety, as against constructivist accounts that too quickly forget constituted representative interests so as to focus on the coming into being of new claims (e.g. Michael Saward). By contrast to the procedural justification of representative democracy defended most coherently by Urbinati, which seeks to establish a proper form of politics, the chapter argues that democracy is always in excess of particular forms of representation and property.

Don Alejandro’s fantasy: radical democracy and the negative concept of representation

Starting from a short story by Borges, this chapter discusses the role that representation may play in a project of radical democracy, defined as a ‘collective will’ aiming at expanding the democratic horizon of freedom, equality and solidarity, as established in the democratic revolution. It is radical not in the sense of referring, with these terms, to a particular ground or foundation of democracy, but to the ultimate absence of such ground. This implies that we have to see radical democracy as an emancipatory project of expanding the democratic idea of representation – as a relation of mediacy and self-alienation – to more and more social fields. The chapter takes its lead from Claude Lefort, Ernesto Laclau and Frank Ankersmit, to claim that representation should be understood as, precisely, a relation of non-identity between represented and representative, as only then it attests to the ultimately ungroundable nature of the democratic regime. These points are exemplified by analyses of the case of Bosnia, where the democratic, non-identitarian form of representation was replaced by an identitarian one, and that of the anti-representational ideology of the assembly movement of 2011, which fell into the self-delusionary trap of a fantasy of presence and immediacy.

Political representation: the view from France

It is now widely accepted that political representation is not merely a passive, ‘mirroring’ process, but that the process of political representation plays a constitutive role in the construction of citizens’ ideas and preferences. This chapter argues that French political philosophy points to an even more fundamental role for power and representation in the construction (or the ‘constitution’) of society and the self-image of its members. It focuses on a key argument of political theorist, Claude Lefort, who maintained that the specificity of a society is determined by the way power is organized and symbolically represented in that society. On this account, the importance of political representation goes far beyond the formation of opinions and the process of collective decision making. The organization and representation of power is instead seen as a key determinant of society’s self-understanding and of the way citizens within that society understand themselves and their mutual relations.

Two regimes of the symbolic: radical democracy between Romanticism and structuralism

The ‘symbolic’ has found its way into the heart of contemporary radical democratic theory. When one encounters this term in major theorists such as Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek, our first impulse is to trace its genealogy to the offspring of the linguistic turn, structuralism and poststructuralism. This paper seeks to expose the deeper history of the symbolic in the legacy of Romanticism. It argues that crucial to the concept of the symbolic is a polyvalence that was first theorized in German Romanticism. The linguistic turn that so marked the twentieth century tended to suppress this polyvalence, but it has returned as a crucial dimension of contemporary radical political theory and practice. At stake is more than a recovery of historical depth. Through a constructed dialogue between Romanticism and the thought of both Žižek and Laclau, the paper seeks to provide a sharper appreciation of the resources of the concept of the symbolic.

Rethinking democratic representation: eight theoretical issues and a postscript1

This chapter offers here a sketch of eight theoretical issues that are fundamental to rethinking the problems and potentials of political representation under emerging conditions. The issues include: (1) the relational character of representation; (2) the role that trusteeship plays in forms of democratic representation; (3) an assessment of representation in terms of both input and output; (4) representation considered as a political practice; (5) the way in which representation is constituted by and within political processes; (6) the objects of representation: who and what are represented; (7) the question of who is a democratic representative; and (8) the relationship between authorization and accountability in informal representation. In each of these dimensions the theory of representation in democracies needs refurbishing, a task that requires returning to the concept of representation in a more systematic way, also taking on board theoretical intuitions from deliberative, participatory and radical populist conceptions of democracy. The postscript takes stock of some of these developments and suggests that rethinking political representation is part of the pressing task to reconsider democracy in the 21st century.

Introduction: the end of representative politics?

What should political theorists make of M15 and the Occupy movements? Of the rise of alternative parties such as Podemos and Syriza? And support for alternatives to parties such as the Five Star Movement and the Pirate Party movement? These insurgencies are not motivated simply by economic circumstances but are unique for giving voice to a new and distinctively democratic citizen anger directed at the limits of representative politics. Some herald this activity as the “end of representative politics.” We argue that it is a protest against just one version—mandate representation—that is elitist in its conception and practice. Similar to this activism in the street, the “constructivist turn” in political theory also pushes against the limits and rejects the elitism of mandate representation. Its proponents argue that representatives can and should do more than speak for constituencies of voters: they revitalize democracy by sparking new political subjects into action—both within and beyond the confines of parliamentary politics.

Pinning down representation

This chapter critically examines the most sophisticated and systematic version of the constructivist turn in recent scholarly work on political representation: that of Michael Saward and his theory of the representative claim. I argue that the constructivist turn means treating representation as inherently opaque and unstable; representation is an event and, as such, ultimately impossible to pin down. There are three areas where Saward does not take the full constructivist turn. They are, first, the notion of the referent, which is not constituted through the representative claim; second, while Saward argues that the representative claim is an event that cannot be pinned down, it remains transparent and stable in some respects; and, third, the normative aspects of the theory remain within the horizon of a future in which we may one day be able to pin down the meaning of the representative claim. To help make this case and show how Saward’s theory of the representative claim can be radicalised, the chapter enlists his own texts as well as Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive readings of discourses of representation.

Democracy and representation

This chapter presents the first English translation of an essay that was originally presented in 1989 by Claude Lefort at the Colloquium on Latin America, sponsored by the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), organized by Daniel Pécault. In this essay, Lefort affirms his important thesis regarding the disembodiment of power in representative democracy and begins to elaborate institutional conditions for its modern practice. He emphasizes that representation must be supported by independent political organizing by social movements and dissenting groups within institutions such as labor unions, schools, and hospitals. He also emphasizes the importance of participation, understood distinctively neither as voting nor as taking to the streets but as a feature of political judgment that he terms a “capacity to understand the political game,” a feature that he considers to be lacking where there exist great divides between elite political actors as mass publics.

Exploring the Semantics of Constructivist Representation

This chapter draws on Hasso Hoffmann’s analysis of the “semantics” of political representation to compare two alternative interpretations of the constructivist turn, a moderate and a radical interpretation. The moderate interpretation, exemplified by Nadia Urbinati’s theory of democratic representation, describes representation as partly a constitutive process, a form of Darstellung, that presupposes a certain idea of political reality, which comes from a form of Stellvertretung. On the contrary, Frank Ankersmit’s notion of political representation defends a more radical version of constructivist representation which maintains that there is no political reality at all prior to the process of political representation. What are the implications of these two views for democratic representation? The chapter assess how the ‘moderate’ view of constructivist representation enriches the narrative of democratic legitimacy but sounds a note of caution on the implications of the ‘radical’ view of constructivist representation in democratic politics.

Representative constructivism’s conundrum1

Representation is an acknowledgment that the political order is a constructive enterprise. Political representation is made by free citizens who are unified by a representative person or claim around some ideas or goals and in view of competing for the majority and for having representative recognition. Representation is not a prerogative of the majority nor does its function end with the formation of a majority. The question that requires close analysis is whether constructivism is in itself democratic. In the paper I explore this conundrum and show what makes political representation a democratic form of constructivism. .