Creating Political Presence

The New Politics of Democratic Representation

Dario Castiglione, Johannes Pollak, Dario Castiglione, Johannes Pollak

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780226588537, 9780226588360
• eBook ISBN: 9780226588674
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

For at least two centuries, democratic representation has been at the center of debate. Should elected representatives express the views of the majority, or do they have the discretion to interpret their constituents' interests? How can representatives balance the desires of their parties and their electors? What should be done to strengthen the representation of groups that have been excluded from the political system? Representative democracy itself remains frequently contested, regarded as incapable of reflecting the will of the masses, or inadequate for today's global governance. Recently, however, this view of democratic representation has been under attack for its failure to capture the performative and constructive elements of the process of representation, and a new literature more attentive to these aspects of the relationship between representatives and the represented has arisen.

In Creating Political Presence, a diverse and international group of scholars explores the implications of such a turn. Two broad, overlapping perspectives emerge. In the first section, the contributions investigate how political representation relates to empowerment, either facilitating or interfering with the capacity of citizens to develop autonomous judgment in collective decision making. Contributions in the second section look at representation from the perspective of inclusion, focusing on how representative relationships and claims articulate the demands of those who are excluded or have no voice. The final section examines political representation from a more systemic perspective, exploring its broader environmental conditions and the way it acquires democratic legitimacy.
 

CHAPTER ONE

The Logics of Democratic Presence in Representation

Dario Castiglione and Johannes Pollak

If we conceive democracy as some form of citizen self-government—however attenuated and qualified—we inescapably invoke a self in some guise. Hence, citizens’ presence would seem to be congruous with the very idea of democracy. It is partly for this reason that modern representative government has historically been construed (and fought over) as either aristocratic, in that it keeps citizens away from the levers of power, or democratic, in that it provides them the political instruments to deliberate, direct, or check the exercise of power. The idea of political presence is therefore integral to disputes over democratic representation.

As the title of this volume suggests, citizens’ political presence is not something that comes naturally. However it is created—and the contributors to this volume offer different views of the process—such presence needs to be identified, explained, and justified; or simply ruled out as either impossible or unnecessary. If one important element of the crisis afflicting a representative conception of politics in general—and the institutions of representative democracy in particular—is that people feel unrepresented, their interests and aspirations unheard, then an important way out of the impasse is to see how their presence as political agents can be reconstructed in the modern conditions of politics. While other contributions in this volume offer more substantive arguments about a “new politics of democratic representation,” we wish to reflect on what it means to provide democratic presence (i.e., a conceptual and practical space for self-government) within a system of representation. In the past, some of the disputes about presence in representation have been fought over the meaning(s) of representation. We return to these debates, not to offer conceptual clarification but with the intent to show the political purport, or logic, that lies behind conceptual definitions. Our intent is to show that disputes over the meaning(s) of representation do not settle questions of political theory. Overall, they are rhetorical and persuasive means for political arguments; it is on the latter that we should concentrate. If we are right, as we try to argue throughout this chapter, neither a conceptual nor an essentialist solution exists to the problem of how to create democratic presence in political representation, only more or less convincing arguments for how to approach the problem in a coherent and efficacious way.

Presence in Representation?

The idea of presence is central to much theoretical speculation on the meaning of representation in general and of democratic representation in particular. As Mark Warren reminds us in his contribution to this volume, a powerful rendering of the way in which representation works—as the reduction of the costs and difficulties of democratic (direct and autonomous) decision-making in large and complex societies—is through the representatives making present the represented by standing for, speaking for, and acting for them, while, at the same time, the represented remain de facto absent. Authorization and accountability mechanisms operate as effective (or at least formal) means for securing the democratic legitimacy of the representatives’ vicarious performances. In the Anglo-American literature, the most powerful and sophisticated account of this paradoxical rendering of representation as “making present what is absent” is Hanna Pitkin’s The Concept of Representation (1967). Pitkin stresses, in both the book and a subsequent article (1968), that what is absent must be made present “in some sense,” but not “literally,” otherwise “it would simply be ‘present’ rather than ‘represented’” (1968, 41). This account has a natural appeal, capturing in linguistic terms some important tensions in the more substantive meaning of political representation—tensions well illustrated by the historical and constitutional disputes between “free” and “imperative” conceptions of the representative mandate, or by the related arguments over trustee- and delegate-based conceptions of the duties and functions of political representatives, particularly within parliamentary settings. The conceptual paradox highlighted by this assumed linguistic meaning of representation is at the very core of Pitkin’s classic book (as also evinced in Pitkin 1968) and has been taken up by others to illustrate both the relational, reflexive, and contested aspects of political representation (see Castiglione and Warren 2006, among many). More recently, David Runciman (2007) has further elaborated the paradox by suggesting a somewhat more negative, possibly more realistic form of presence of the represented in the political process. Runciman suggests that what he calls the “non-objection criterion” can already be found in Pitkin when she argues that “the substance of the activity of representing seems to consist in promoting the interests of the represented, in a context where the latter is conceived as capable of action and judgement, but in such a way that he does not object to what is done in his name” (Pitkin 1967, 155; Runciman 2007, 95; emphasis added). Runciman also qualifies this criterion through an important categorical distinction in the asymmetrical ways that individuals and corporate groups exercise their power to object—that is, the differences in status that arise between individuals’ and groups’ capacities for “non-objection” when their objections are related to the legitimacy of representation. (We shall return to such a difference in the next section.)

Despite the persuasiveness of the argument that the paradox of re-presentation has important consequences for substantive understandings of what is going on in political representation, such a conception is not without its opponents. One criticism is the well-rehearsed argument that the substance of real, effective political representation is often misconstrued as existing only in the politics of action and ideas. According to the standard view,1 the key test of the presence of the represented in the actions of representatives lies in the way in which the latter promote the former’s interests, as well respond to their judgment. This view assumes, or stipulates, a kind of virtuous and reinforcing circle between the representatives’ judgment and that of the represented. Criticisms of this view emphasize instead that vicarious presence can carry little weight if based only on the force of judgment. The argument developed by Anne Phillips (1995) and other supporters of a more balanced representation of gender, race, and ethnicity in legislative and other political bodies takes aim at one of the central distinctions that Pitkin draws between two forms of substantive representation: one focused on what the representative does (“acts for,” captured by the German vertreten) and the other on what the representative is (“stands for,” captured by the German darstellen) (Pitkin 1967, 59). In her own work, Pitkin accepts that the stands-for group of conceptions complement and enlarge formal understandings of representation primarily based on authorization and accountability. When “stands for” is meant in a more descriptive sense, it points to the importance of likeness and resemblance between the representatives and their constituencies. When it is meant in a more symbolic sense, it emphasizes more imaginative, albeit often irrational, ways in which representatives take on the role of signifiers2 and how this can emotionally affect or persuade constituents (111). But neither of these forms of substantive representation is decisive, for neither captures what Pitkin regards as the fundamental aspect of political representation: action based on judgment, which, particularly in democratic representation, is open to the contestation of the represented (who are themselves seen as “capable of action and judgment” [155]). Supporters of the politics of presence maintain that vicarious action in general is either insufficient in promoting the interests of the represented or structurally unresponsive to their demands, unless it is backed by a more concrete form of representativeness. In any case, a system of representation mainly or exclusively based on “acting for” tends to favor what Bernard Manin calls the more aristocratic “principle of distinction” (1997, 94), whose selection processes may yield representative bodies so different from the constituencies they are meant to represent that the system lacks representativeness or seems unfair, failing the crucial test of democratic inclusion (Phillips 1995, 5). It follows that, instead of being marginal to substantive political representation, descriptive representation can be construed, as indeed it has been, as a way of promoting not just the representativeness of the representatives (who they are) but also their capacity for democratic action (what they do—i.e., the kind of decisions they make). Given that the quality and efficacy of substantive representation is thus predicated on representativeness, it becomes necessary to provide a stronger and more descriptive presence in representation than that offered by vicarious action. In this sense, democratic representation must stand for something closer to depiction, as implied in the German Darstellung.

Another criticism of the paradox of representation argues that, in the standard theory usually identified with Pitkin, presence is not just thin but unreconstructed. From a more constructivist perspective, such as that proposed by Michael Saward (2006, 2010, 39–43; Disch 2015), the central issue of political representation lies in the process of representation itself, in the how of representation rather than in the what may be present or absent. Saward (2010) suggests that there are several failings in the “presence approach” and that these must be corrected by a radical shift to what he names an “event approach” focused mainly on the “rendering of such a claim of presence” (39). In brief, the main failings of the presence approach identified by Saward consist in it being too centered on linguistic meanings and stipulative definitions; too inclined to slide from these to the simple, uncontested social facticity of fixed roles and institutions; too prone to reductive binary thinking,3 and too conducive to a kind of abstract, unsituated normativism that legislates for the legitimacy of representation rather than interpreting its phenomenology and assessing the democratic force of conviction as seen from the citizens’ standpoint (Saward 2010, chap. 6; see also Disch 2015). Saward does not deny some utility to the presence approach, but he regards it as restrictive, since it takes the presence of the represented and the role of the representatives as being both fixed and given, and reduces them to a few traditional roles (legislators), institutional mechanisms (elections), and places (parliaments). By contrast, in the event approach, discursive processes spread across state and society; representatives’ claims gain a more tentative purchase on the represented, and representatives are capable of invoking, rather than reflecting, the political subjectivity of the people they represent through their own claim-making (43). The event approach is more interested in the performativity of political representation (a point further developed in Saward 2014 and 2017), both as a performance (in the sense of its theatricality) and as a construction of interpretative categories of political action. To put it in a different way, if one considers that representation is one of those verbal nouns that shows process/product ambiguity, referring to both the act and the thing, one may suggest that, whereas the presence approach looks mainly at the product of representation, the event approach emphasizes the process itself. Both can be valid in their own way. In terms of political analysis, however, the constructivist reading of representation, such as that suggested by Saward, makes a considerable change to the way in which we conceptualize modern political representation, highlighting a number of features also embraced by the literature more generally referred to as the “representative turn.”4 We can summarize those features in three broad ways that, if they do not entirely subvert the standard theory, amend it decisively.5 First and as already indicated, the new literature draws particular attention to the processual aspects in representation, hence opening up the institutional black box of political representation and emphasizing its more discursive, interpretative, and conflictual aspects, which are never exhausted by the more formal and institutional acts (or mechanisms) of authorization and accountability. Secondly, by stressing performativity, this literature puts a premium on the creativity inherent in the act of representing, which contributes to the construction of political subjectivity and the self-understanding of the represented. Finally, the literature conceives representation as a relationship that is intrinsically dynamic and recursive6 but that may not be exhausted in the simple dual structure of principal-agent. For insofar as representation is a semiotic act involving production and conferment of meaning, it must engage and maintain an audience’s conviction, which gives the audience itself a third-party analytic role that on many occasions can be empirically separated from both the represented and the representatives.

Where does the constructivist criticism leave the paradox of representation? Saward (2010), for one, does not deny that “representation may well have a core meaning” and that this may consist in the presence/absence paradox (39); but Saward criticizes the stress put on “presence” as the sign of a narrow and mistaken attempt to retrieve some ultimate referent, an operation that in his view inevitably misses the more constitutive, discursive, and dynamic aspects of the practices of representation. Nonetheless, as we shall see in the next section, that very agreement on a core meaning can be challenged. Note that Pitkin’s approach to the concept of representation is far from an attempt to get to an essentialist meaning. Pitkin (1967) suggests that there are different theories (or concepts) of representation and that these offer different pictures of a “rather complicated, convoluted, three-dimensional structure in the middle of a dark enclosure” (10). Each theory gives a snapshot of the structure from a different angle, and Pitkin’s own conceptual exploration aims to contextualize these visions, “making explicit . . . how the word is used,” which, as she adds, “is a vital element in knowing what the thing is” (11; emphasis added). Yet, in a footnote that reads like an afterthought to the whole book, she tries to correct the impression that theories are partial “images” of a more essential concept; she now believes, Pitkin writes, “on the basis of reading Wittgenstein, that the metaphor is in some respects profoundly misleading about concepts and language. But on the concept of representation it happens to work fairly well. Since it is central to the structure of this book I have let it stand” (255n20; emphasis added). As is clearly evidenced by this as well as another footnote (254n14; see also Pitkin [1972]1993, xxi), Pitkin’s conceptual approach was greatly indebted to Austin’s philosophy of ordinary language, but her subsequent reading of Wittgenstein put a different perspective on how she understood conceptual reconstruction and the study of political language and action. She now saw her conceptual exploration of representation not so much as a collection of partial images of a transcendent reality but as a first-order philosophical and political reconstruction of the ways in which people do things with language ([1972] 1993, chap. 2). Although she never rewrote her book from a more Wittgensteinian posit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• chapter 1. The Logics of Democratic Presence in Representation
• part i.  Representation as Democratic Empowerment
• part ii.  Representation as Democratic Inclusion
• part iii.  Changing Contexts
• List of Contributors
• Index