Extremism in the defense of moderation: A response to my critics

Polity

Volumn 40, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 254-271

  Rehfeld, Andrew ^a  

^a WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Democracy; Electoral constituency; Electoral systems; Federalist 10; James Madison; Majoritarianism; Political representation

Indexed keywords

EID: 41849098523     PISSN: 00323497     EISSN: 17441684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300097     Document Type: Note

References (34)

1. The contributors to this forum are in good company in their skepticism, joining a chorus of people who have been sympathetic to the project before rejecting the proposal in the end chapter as ill advised. See also, Suzanne Dovi, "Book Review of Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency' Perspectives in Politics V (December 2006): 763-64;
2. James Gardner, "Wandering Lonely as a Cloud: National Citizenship and the Case for Non-Territorial Election Districts: Book Review of Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency,' Election Law Journal 5 (2006): 210-22;
3. Ben Saunders, "Book Note on Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency" Political Studies Review 4 (2006): 207;
4. and Mark E. Warren, "Book Review of Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency? Ethics 117 (October 2006): 139-44.
5. Quotations from other Forum contributions are cited by page numbers for this issue of Polity.
6. The distinction is Jeremy Waldron's, although I do not think the firm distinction that he stakes between "theorizing about justice" and "theorizing about politics" is justified. Jeremy Waldron, Law and Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3.
7. As I argue below, a commitment to hand over decisionmaking to majorities is itself dependent upon primary principles of justice-equal respect and autonomy, in particular, along with the fact that these principles are widely endorsed. See an epistemic and pragmatic account of democracy in which democracy is justified for its ability to produce better decisions offered in David Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
8. This is admittedly a contentious issue, although majority-minority districts have certainly not been the panacea many thought they might be. See David Lublin, The Paradox of Representation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997);
9. for a different assessment see David Canon, Race, Redistricting, and Representation: The Unintended Consequences of Black Majority Districts, American Politics and Political Economy Series (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
10. Ian Shapiro, Democratic Justice (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 33.
11. Michael James, Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004).
12. Melissa S. Williams, Voice, Trust, and Memory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Although I deviate from her conclusions, Williams significantly influenced my thinking about constituencies and political representation more generally (Rehfeld: Chapter 2). James's work includes principled arguments about group representation incorporating sophisticated considerations of electoral design.
13. Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy and Institutional Design (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 38-39. All subsequent references to this book appear in parentheses in the text.
14. Madison's Federalist 10 did not become a prominent essay until the twentieth century, when pluralists began historically misreading it for their own purposes (32 and 32 n7). I am more willing to accept what Williams has categorized as a "weak pluralist" reading of Madison (241 n3 above): constrained by being in a chamber with members motivated to seek the common good, representatives may advance the interests of their constituents. I do so based on large diversity of "interests" within any single electoral constituency for the House. Not surprisingly, this view continues to decrease the distance between Madison and Burke, a move I think is long overdue. In any case this is quite different than the standard reading of Madison that Williams presented in her earlier work, Voice, Trust and Memory (39).
15. A cross-text analysis in a different context was also done by Donald Lutz: Popular Consent and Popular Control: Whig Political Theory in the Early State Constitutions (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 120. Lutz offers the pluralist reading of Federalist 10 at 12-13.
16. This was also a central point of Gardner, "Wandering Lonely as a Cloud."
17. 1 do not believe that groups are entities that can possess interests apart from the individuals that make them up. I do not defend that position here or in the book. However, the claims about group interests I make are consistent with either the acceptance or rejection of this view and thus operate no matter what the ontological status of a group turns out to be.
18. I treat these two positions-pluralists and republicans-more extensively in the book (201-06). I aiso treat there the related but subtly different question as to whether the national interest is an objective entity waiting to be discovered (either by aggregation or deliberation) or created (again by aggregation or deliberation).
19. I discuss at 178-79 the case of Mill's argument about double votes as a plausible example of a justificable deviation.
20. Charles Beitz rejects the argument that normative principles can have such decisive implications for democratic institutions, preferring instead complex proceduralism. Charles R. Beitz, Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Although I agree completely with his sensitivity to context, I believe that democratic principles can provide more specification than he allows (177-208).
21. Thomas Christiano, Rule of the Many (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). Michael James, See note 5.
22. James, The Plural Polity;
23. Williams, Voice, Trust and Memory
24. With the expansion of the Internet and the extensive use of Legislative staff members, the need for legislators to themselves have direct hard knowledge of local issues may just be an anachronism.
25. Williams points to the fact that an all white, male legislature will undermine its own legitimacy no matter what the virtues of the underlying constituency are. I agree with her, and 1 should have included that as another reason to think seriously about qualifications for office in conjunction with random constituencies.
26. Lublin, The Paradox of Representation.
27. Canon, Race, Redistricting and Representation. Admittedly, these minorities have to be concentrated in a district at greater than their underlying proportion within the polis, but the point is that defining constituencies by group membership is not obviously a better way to increase deliberative diversity of the right kind.
28. See Gardener, "Wandering Lonely as a Cloud," and Warren, "Book Review;' who also raise these questions.
29. As with my earlier remarks about the relationship between justice and democracy, in this paragraph I am simplifying an extremely complex issue on which many have already written. I believe much of the existing literature does a poor job of differentiating democracy from representation, treating the latter as a subspecies of the former. The "distinctiveness" of representation is nicely summarized in George Kateb, "The Moral Distinctiveness of Representative Democracy;' Ethics 91 (1991): 357-74;
30. and Nadia Urbinati, Representive Democracy: Pinciples and Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
31. See also Andrew Rehfeld, "Towards a General Theory of Political Representation," Journal of Politics 68 (February 2006)
32. and Andrew Rehfeld, A General Theory of Political Representation (Book manuscript, Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri.).
33. For a promising list of smaller institutional changes that would enhance core democratic values, see Adrian Vermeule, Mechanisms of Democracy: Institutional Design Writ Small (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
34. In ways both general and specific, the views expressed here are meant to extend Jeremy Waldron's general claims. Waldron, Law and Disagreement. As indicated above (n. 2) there are important differences that would have to be spelled out including the fact that I do not believe one can coherently prefer a theory of politics over a theory of justice without a principle of justice directing that preference. But I do think that beyond very minimal principles that recommend we turn to democratic institutions, the remainder should be guided by democratic, majoritarian principles.