Representation

Monica Brito Vieira, David Runciman

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745641607, 9780745641591
• eBook ISBN: 9780745658292
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What is representation? What does it mean when a politician represents citizens in government? How can citizens be represented beyond the boundaries of the nation-state?

These are just some of the questions which will be answered by David Runciman and Mónica Brito Vieira as they explain why representation should be understood as one of the key concepts in modern politics. The first part of the book examines the historical roots of the concept of representation, from its origins in ancient Rome through to its role in the revolutionary politics of the modern world. The second looks at different varieties of representation – in law as well as politics. The final part asks how the concept of representation can help us think creatively about current and future challenges facing the world.

Representation is too often treated as a secondary or qualifying idea – as in the phrase 'representative democracy'. This book argues that we have this the wrong way round. Representation is the foundational idea in almost all areas of our political life. Making sense of representation in its own terms is crucial for seeing why democracy functions the way it does, and for exploring how it might function differently.

Part I: The History of Representation

1

The Roots of Political Representation

The idea of representation is modern; it comes to us from feudal government, that iniquitous and absurd form of government in which the human species is degraded, and the name of man dishonoured. In ancient republics and even in monarchies, the people never had representatives; the very word was unknown.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Representation is everywhere in the state of society. Before the representative system there was nothing but usurpation, superstition and folly.

Abbé Sieyès

Sieyès was right: representation is everywhere in modern societies. It permeates our everyday lives to such an extent that we hardly notice it. Our innermost thoughts are made up of representations of the external world; the language we use consists of words that serve to represent those thoughts; works of art and other images are able to represent all the things that human beings are capable of imagining, including ideas that we cannot put into words. Representation also functions on a more practical level: actors represent characters on the stage, lawyers represent their clients in court, agents represent their employers in business transactions. Yet none of these forms of representation is distinctively modern; they have all played a part in social existence from ancient times onwards, even if the word ‘representation’ has not always been used to describe what is going on. What is distinctive about the modern world is the role that representation has played in shaping its politics. All modern states are representative states, in that they are all founded on the ability of their governments to speak and act in the name of the people. There were earlier intimations of this way of thinking in the politics of the ancient and medieval worlds. But it is only in the modern era that it has become unavoidable as a way of doing politics. It is impossible to conceive of political institutions on the scale and of the power of modern states without making use of the idea of representation.

Yet because representation is so ubiquitous as a concept, functioning in so many different settings, it is sometimes tempting to doubt its continued political significance. Many contemporary political theorists have come to suspect that representation is something of a distraction when thinking about politics. Because it is an idea drawn from outside politics – its origins lie in the worlds of art, law and religion – it is easy to believe that all it can do is open up political theory to the potential dangers and distractions of foreign disciplines. It appears to threaten to turn political thought into literary or aesthetic theory, or alternatively to swamp political ideas in the murky waters of metaphysics and epistemology. As a result, contemporary political theorists prefer to concentrate on the problems of democracy and in most cases have given the concept of representation a wide berth. Some of those who do address representation explicitly have come to the conclusion that it is too vague an idea to make sense of democratic politics (Przeworski 1999, Shapiro 2003). Democracy has the advantage that it is at its origin a purely political idea and, though it may be hard to know how democracy can work in practice, it is not hard to know what the word itself means: it means rule by the people. Representation, even considered purely as a word, seems inherently ambiguous. It implies, simultaneously, a presence and an absence: the presence that comes from being re-presented, and the absence that comes from needing to be re-presented. Given this indeterminacy and apparent inconsistency, there is a strong attraction in reducing the concept of representation to a purely instrumental role and allowing it to be subsumed into the more tractable concerns of electoral politics and democratic accountability. That, for the most part, is where it exists in academic writing about politics today.

This book challenges this pervading tendency. Its central tenet is that representation cannot be dismissed as an analytical category, precisely because modern politics, including modern democratic politics, would not be possible without it. Indeed, however troubling the idea of representation might be for the clear-cut mind of the analytical political theorist, the truth is that it is its inherently ambiguous character that gives representation the kind of flexibility required to negotiate those areas of modern political life (and they are many) in which two, apparently contradictory, answers are needed to one and the same question. Above all, it was only when the people could be conceived as being represented by their governments that it became possible to say that, where the government rules, it is the people who also rule. This is the central insight of modern politics and almost everything else follows from it. It is part of our purpose here to give this insight its proper place at the heart of the story of modern politics and to explore what does in fact follow from it. To do so, it is necessary to examine where the idea of representation came from and how it found its way into politics in the first place.

In telling the early history of a concept as varied and as multiply useful as representation, three significant difficulties must be borne in mind. First, the word and the concept have not always coincided: at various points, ideas that we might recognize as belonging to the sphere of representation have been described by the use of different terms altogether. Second, the word itself has always been very hard to pin down, because it is specifically designed to convey a ‘dichotomous meaning’ (Pitkin 1967), even when it is being deployed in a practical setting. Third, throughout its history, the concept of representation has been described in a number of distinct idioms, with different implications for how representation should work in practice (Skinner 2005). The main idioms for thinking about representation are as follows:

• pictorial representation, according to which representatives ought to resemble and stand in the place of the represented;
• theatrical representation, according to which representatives ought to interpret, speak and act for the represented, thereby bringing them to life;
• juridical representation, according to which representatives ought to act for the represented, with their consent and/or in their interests.

Each of these conceptions of representation is distinct; yet throughout the long history of the concept they have come together in a range of different combinations and settings, some of which have proved much more durable than others.

For all these reasons, the early history of the concept of representation is complex, and we can only offer the broad outlines here. Nevertheless, it is in the early history of the concept that almost all the ideas which inform modern varieties of political representation have their roots. The setting of the modern state provides the location for the peculiarly durable and effective form of politics that we call ‘representative democracy’. But the ideas that have been combined to create that form of politics pre-date the modern state entirely.

Representation in the ancient world

Rousseau, as quoted in the epigraph, was essentially correct when he pointed out that the ancient Greek and Roman republics did not talk about ‘representatives’ (Rousseau 1997: 114). It is true that many of the important functions of Athenian democracy were performed by individuals or small groups acting in the name of the Athenian people, having either been elected or selected by lot for that purpose (Hansen 1991). But the language of representation simply did not exist to describe these roles: ancient Greek had no equivalent term. The terminology of representation is of Roman origin. However, the Latin verb repraesentare, from which our modern word derives, did not initially mean ‘to represent’ in anything like the modern sense (i.e., of speaking or acting in another’s name). Rather, the primary senses of the term were (i) paying immediately or in ready money, and (ii) showing or presenting in person, especially when presenting oneself to or before another person. Hence the underlying idea was closer to our current notion of literal ‘presentation’ – of giving something an immediate or initial presence – than of ‘re-presentation’. For example, a general or politician who introduced himself before the waiting crowd in Rome was said in the original Latin to ‘represent’ himself, whereas we would say, in describing exactly the same practice today, that he ‘presents’ himself before his audience.

Nevertheless, the idea of what we would now call representation, meaning a kind of ‘acting for’, was already at work in Rome, despite the non-use for that purpose of the word itself. For instance, in Roman law, someone’s representative in a lawsuit was variously called his actor, cognitor, procurator, tutor or curator, though never his repraesentor. In Roman political thought, the term that came closest to capturing what would later be thought of as a relationship of representation between different agents was drawn not from law but from the world of the theatre, and in particular the practice of mask-wearing. The language employed to describe this practice was that of the persona.

The word persona was originally used for the clay, wooden or bark mask worn by actors on the stage, indicating to the audience the character whose role they were playing. The republican political philosopher Cicero (106–43 BC) extended the meaning of the term to include the different personages, or parts, that any one of us sustains in everyday life. Just as actors changed their masks as they played different roles on the stage, so people performed different roles, with specific duties (officia) attached to them, throughout their lives. At times, this role-playing took on the nature of a private rehearsal for the parts one might have to play on the public stage. Cicero illustrated this in his De Oratore with the example of Antonius, an advocate who prepared himself for an important legal case by acting out the parts of the three persons involved, namely his own, his adversary’s and that of the judge (Cicero 1942). Similarly, magistrates, as players of public roles, were expected to bear the person of the city (gerere personam civitatis) and to behave appropriately, in accordance with the stringent duties that came with the right to speak and act in the city’s name (Cicero 1913).

Meanwhile, in the later Roman period, the vocabulary of representation began to be extended to convey a somewhat different idea, that of giving something an additional or substitute presence by standing in for the thing being represented. In the legal context of the repayment of debts, repraesentare came to mean the making good of a sum of money that had been originally promised but had not been forthcoming; that is, of standing in for the original debt. More significantly, the noun repraesentatio also began to be used to refer to mental images (‘representations’) of the outside world, conveyed to the mind by the senses, or conjured up by the suggestive powers of oratory (Quintilian 2001). This internal picturing had its external counterpart in works of art, or likenesses, through which the outward appearance of a person, or an object, was faithfully reproduced, and thereby re-presented to the observer’s gaze (Pliny 1952). These images too were called repraesentationes. Thus the term came to convey not simply real presence but an artificial presence realistically conveyed by someone or something else.

These different senses of the term ‘representation’ were deployed in a variety of different settings to convey a broadly similar idea of ‘substitution’. But in neither its legal nor its more aesthetic uses was the word connected up with the idea of ‘acting for’ another person, nor with the notion of ‘playing a role’. It was only with the birth of Christianity, and its theological controversies, that the word took on a broader meaning, one that could cover the relationship between entities that did not necessarily resemble each other but were nevertheless capable of taking one another’s part. It was here, in Christian thought, that the language of representation came to overlap with the idea of the persona, paving the way for a novel understanding of the term: a relationship between ‘persons’ able to stand in for one another by dint of the bond between them, rather than simply because of a likeness that they happened to share.

The first recorded instance of the term ‘representation’ being used in this new sense comes from Tertullian (c. AD 155–230), a Roman theologian and early Christian apologist, who, in a discussion of the Trinity, refers to the Son as representative (repraesentor) of the Father. He also resorts to the language of representation to describe the manner in which Jesus, at the Last Supper, represented (repraesentat) his body with the bread (a relation, clearly, that cannot have been founded on mere likeness but on a more complex symbolism). In addition to these theological claims, Tertullian made use of the idea of representation when thinking about the relationship between the church and its members. He uses the verb repraesentare to denote the idea that a single and more significant entity can be taken to stand for the many scattered and less important entities that make it up (Hofmann 1974). Here, representation is founded precisely on a notion of difference, or superior capacity. This was the origin of an idea that was to have profound significance in the medieval period: the principle that the leading members (the valentior pars, or weightier part) were an appropriate body to represent the entire community and could be assumed to stand in for the people as a whole (universitas).

But if Tertullian marks an important shift in the potential political application of the idea of representation, his employment of the term lacks one crucial element that we have subsequently come to associate with it. This is the idea that representatives are able to speak and act for those they represent because they have been specifically authorized to do so. The earliest identification of the concept of representation with the principle of authorization seems to have come from a letter from Pope Gregory the Great (AD 540–640) to a local congregation, in which he reassures them that, through the appointment of a new bishop, ‘our authority will be represented by someone to whom we give instructions when we ourselves are unable to be present’ (Gregory 1899: 1). Here, then, is a use of the term that recognizably foreshadows its later meaning as a form of political delegation: the representative does not simply embody or symbolize another entity, but acts under instruction. On this understanding, power clearly lies with the represented and not the representative, which is the opposite of what happened when the significant persons in a community were said to ‘represent’ the whole. But two things are worth noting about this early link between representation and delegated power. First, it remained a relatively uncommon use of the term, compared with its use to denote likeness or some other symbolic connection. Second, this was still power coming down from above: representation was a way for the pope to communicate with his outlying congregations, not the other way round.

Representing the church and representing the city

By the Middle Ages, three competing conceptions of representation had evolved from the ideas described above: (1) descriptive representation or mimesis (in the sense of similar things standing in for each other); (2) symbolic representation or representation as embodiment (as in the greater embodying the lesser); (3) representation as authorization or delegation (Tierney 1983). All of these ideas had begun to play a significant role in the theological and ecclesiological writings of the period. Of these different conceptions of representation, the third was the one with the most obvious connection to legal and political questions concerning the distribution of power. Yet on its own, it was able to do little work and seemed merely a tool of established authority, particularly within the governance of the church, where the first two conceptions played a much greater role. It was only when the concept of representation was brought together with another legal idea, that of the corporation, that its political potential began to be realized.

The legal conception of the corporation provided canon lawyers with a device for thinking about the distribution of power within ecclesiastical bodies and the vexed question of the relationship between their heads and their members (Pennington 2006). For example, when discussing the relationship between a bishop and his chapter, medieval canonists developed the notion of the cathedral chapter as a moral or corporate entity which could be understood as being ‘represented’ by its head, the bishop. But this was still representation in a symbolic sense only: the bishop was considered able to represent the chapter by dint of being the embodiment of its unity, rather than because the members of the diocese had authorized him to act on their behalf (a bishop’s authority, as we have seen, came down from the pope, not up from the local community). A similar argument was deployed to describe the governance of the church as a whole. This too could be imagined as one body, consisting of the entire community of the faithful, of which the pope was the head, and kings, emperors and other rivals for the pope’s power simply members. In these defences of papal supremacy, the role of representation was twofold: to emphasize the capacity of the pope to symbolize the unity of the whole church (representation as embodiment) and to draw attention to echoes of that unity running all the way through the governance of the church down to the local level (representation as mimesis). There was no place here for representation as a limitation upon the exercise of power, certainly not so far as the pope’s own powers were concerned. These came from God, and were effectively unlimited.

But the idea of the corporation also provided ammunition for those theorists who wished to defend other rulers against the threat posed by the papacy, chief amongst whom was the theologian and Aristotelian philosopher Marsilius of Padua (c.1275–c.1343), who linked the theory of the corporation with an alternative conception of representation, to argue that political authority should be founded on popular consent. For Marsilius, all legitimate government rested on the ultimate authority of the people – the whole corporation of free citizens, whom he called the universitas civium (Marsilius 2005). He described the people in their corporate capacity as ‘the human legislator’ and claimed it was the consent of this entity that made laws binding. On the question of how the people were to express their consent, Marsilius returned to the familiar idea that the corporate will of the citizen body could be represented by the will of its wisest and weightiest part, the best of its citizens. Likewise, if this select group disagreed among themselves, Marsilius argued that the representative body could itself be represented by its more numerous and more prudent part. This formulation raises the obvious question of whether prudence can always be expected to be embodied in the views of the majority. But Marsilius circumvented this difficulty by introducing an additional conception of representation, one that went beyond mere embodiment and moved towards an idea of delegation. The elected magistrates of the people, he argues, must act as ‘the representatives of the whole body of the citizens, and of their authority’ (vicem et auctoritatem universitatis civium repraesentantes) (Marsilius 2005: 8). Moreover, their election is premised on their competence and of this the people are the ultimate judge.

On Marsilius’s account, the people could be represented in this way because they were a person in their own right, with a corporate identity of their own. A similar argument was deployed by the Roman lawyer Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1313–57), who claimed that corporate agency within an Italian city republic belonged to the people themselves, which is what gave them the capacity to be represented by magistrates acting in their name (and what gave those magistrates the capacity to defend the people’s political arrangements against anyone who wanted to usurp them). But where did the people’s corporate identity come from? For Marsilius, the answer was a mixture of theology and classical philosophy: the people were a corporate entity because God had ordained it and Aristotle had confirmed it. For Bartolus, there was simply no general answer at all – it was partly a question of size, since not all communities qualified as peoples; some simply weren’t big enough. In definitional terms his argument was somewhat circular: free peoples had a corporate identity because they were big enough to need representatives, and they needed representatives because they were corporate entities.

But during the thirteenth century another way of answering this question had emerged. Pope Innocent IV (1195–1254), who was also one of the leading lawyers of his age, made the case that corporate agents were simply a species of persona ficta – fictitious persons – and that their collective agency did not empower their representatives but was rather empowered by them. In other words, the people were not a collective person in their own right and, just like any other disparate and potentially disputatious group of individuals, needed representatives in order to act; without representatives, they were powerless. This made corporate personality a condition of representation, rather than the other way around. And in answer to the question where did the power to represent the people come from if the people were incapable of bestowing it themselves, the lawyers who followed Innocent were ready with their response: it depended on the gift of the law-giver, which in any given case might mean either the emperor or the pope.

So by the fourteenth century, the idea of representation had become bound...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Part I: The History of Representation
• Part II: The Logic of Representation
• Part III: The Politics of Representation
• Epilogue: Representing the Future?
• References
• Index