Authorisation and authenticity: Representation and the unelected

Journal of Political Philosophy

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 1-22

  Saward, Michael ^a  

^a Open University

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 58749110702     PISSN: 09638016     EISSN: 14679760     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00309.x     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Brendan O'Neill, 'What do pop stars know about the world?', BBC News Magazine, June 28, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4629851.stm (accessed 31 August 2007).
2. Civil servants, including members of non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) and ambassadorial and consular staff are, of course, generally unelected and yet have public responsibility and influence. Their more-or-less direct lines of accountability to elected officials means they are excluded from my discussion. This is not to say that these bodies and roles do not raise important issues of accountability, nor that the criteria of acceptability I discuss below may not apply.
3. The reasons for this renewed attention are varied, and arguable. The widespread though selective acceptance of the analysis of Pitkin for more than 30 years after the publication of her book The Concept of Representation is a key reason behind the lack of critical attention prior to the late 1990s in Anglo-American political theory at least. See Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Concerns with the marginalisation of certain groups from representative structures; widespread disaffection with representative politics; and the development of supranational political entities lacking standard modes of accountability and representation are other factors. The dominant deliberative thread in democratic theory in recent years has also prompted concern with who gets to deliberate, where and how, thus renewing interest in representation.
4. Jane Mansbridge Rethinking representation American Political Science Review, 97 (2003 515 28
5. Andrew Rehfeld Towards a general theory of political representation Journal of Politics, 68 (2006 1 21.
6. Jane Mansbridge Should blacks represent blacks and women represent women? A contingent "yes" Journal of Politics, 61 (1999 628 57
7. In part, this means effecting a greater distinction between 'representative government' and 'political representation' than is evident in the current literature.
8. Michael Saward The representative claim Contemporary Political Theory, 5 (2006 297 318.
9. Jacques Derrida Sending: on representation Social Research, 49 (1982 301 26
10. Rehfeld deploys the notion of an audience as 'the relevant group of people who must recognize a claimant as a representative, and the relevance of the group will always depend on the particular Function of a case of representation'. See Rehfeld, 'Towards a general theory of political representation', p. 5. For example, if the function of Libya's UN Ambassador is to represent Libya at the UN, the UN assembly is the relevant audience. My conception of the audience is similar, but not identical. In that conception, the audience for a given claim is that group which receives (listens to, sees, or is aware of) the claim. The audience for a given representative claim might, in principle, be coterminous with, overlap with, or even be wholly different from (including larger or smaller than) the would-be constituency. In other words, objects are offered, as interpretations of would-be constituencies (referents), to audiences whose members may or may not be part of the referent. However, in many cases audience and constituency will overlap considerably. Further, there often will be multiple and contested functions of representation. Function is not so much 'read off' a given case, but rather 'read in' by participants and observers. This conception of audience reflects the fact that my priority is to develop a theory that maximises empirical accuracy and interpretive purchase; both, in my view, require the more fluid and constitutive sense of audience.
11. Note Manin's argument that election can be a mechanism for perpetuating distinction as well as enacting political equality. See Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
12. This is the case despite the mutual engagement between elector and candidate or representative implied by relational approaches to representation such as this one. A process of to and fro between the two will always leave them 'out of synch' in some respect, and to some extent.
13. See Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) for an extended discussion of territorial constituencies and democratic alternatives.
14. Mansbridge, 'Rethinking representation'.
15. John Uhr The rhetoric of representation: Menzies' reshaping of parliament Legislative Studies, 9 (1995 92 102
16. In Burke's words: 'Virtual representation is that in which there is a communion of interests and a sympathy in feelings and desires between those who act in the name of any description of people and the people in whose name they act, though the trustees are not actually chosen by them. Such a representation I think to be in many cases even better than the actual. It possesses most of its advantages, and is free from many of its inconveniences; it corrects the irregularities in the literal representation, when the shifting current of human affairs or the acting of public interests in different ways carry it obliquely from its first line of direction. The people may err in their choice; but common interest and common sentiment are rarely mistaken'. See Edmund Burke, 'A Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe', 1792; available at http://www.ourcivilisation.com/ smartboard/shop/burkee/extracts/chap18.htm (accessed 4 September 2007).
17. It could be argued that the present cult of celebrity, for example, provides a potent 'symbolic architecture' for unelected would-be representatives. Such things might provide some claimants with access to potential audiences. But it does not provide any close equivalent to the formal constitutional status of being elected to a legislative seat.
18. One might protest that a number of these representative claims involve other things - champions, stewards, leaders, advocates, figureheads, or spokespersons - rather than representatives. But each of these roles can readily be assimilated to, or sufficiently strongly equated to, 'representation'.
19. See M. E. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
20. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1972).
21. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell 1974).
22. Alan Hudson NGO's transnational advocacy networks: from "legitimacy" to "political responsibility"? Global Networks, 1 (2001 331 52
23. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Democratic Governance (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 176.
24. Mansbridge (in 'Rethinking representation', p. 8) cites the example of Barney Frank, a gay US congressman who explicitly takes on a task of representing gay and lesbian interests well beyond the territorial boundaries of his own constituency. Sawer cites Australian and British parliamentarians who take it as a core part of their role to be surrogate representatives of, inter alia, young people, gays and lesbians, and minority ethnic communities. She also writes of 'voteless constituencies', such as children, in a similar vein
25. See Marian Sawer, 'Representing trees, acres, voters and non-voters: concepts of parliamentary representation in Australia', Speaking for the People: Representation in Australian Politics, ed. M. Sawer and G. Zappala (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 2001), pp. 36-63.
26. Jennifer Rubinstein Accountability in an unequal world Journal of Politics, 69 (2007 616 32.
27. David Beetham Political participation, mass protest and representative democracy Parliamentary Affairs, 56 (2003 597 613.
28. John Parkinson Hearing voices: negotiating representative claims in public deliberation British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6 (2004 370 88.
29. James S. Fishkin and Robert C. Luskin, 'The quest for deliberative democracy', Democratic Innovation, ed. M. Saward (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 17-28.
30. See Manin, Principles of Representative Government.
31. Simon Tormey Not in my name: Deleuze, Zapatismo and the critique of representation Parliamentary Affairs, 59 (2006 138 54.
32. The foundations of such claims, and innovative institutions through which they might be crystallized, are discussed by: Andrew Dobson, 'Representative democracy and the environment', Democracy and the Environment, ed. W. M. Lafferty and J. Meadowcroft (Cheltenham: Elgar, 1996)
33. Robyn E. Eckersley, 'Deliberative democracy, representation and risk: towards a democracy of the affected', Democratic Innovation, ed. M. Saward (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 117-32.
34. Robert E. Goodin Enfranchising the earth, and its alternatives Political Studies, 44 (1996 835 49.
35. The works of David Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Cambridge: Polity, 1995)
36. John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) offer influential and contrasting approaches to cosmopolitan or transnational democratisation.
37. In some respects officials sanctioned by the UN are 'civil servants', but their operating beyond the mandates of elected national governments makes them examples of potential nonelective claimants.
38. See Michele Micheletti, Political Virtue and Shopping (New York: Palgrave, 2003).
39. I focus on claims within electoral democracies in part because these tend to be the harder cases to evaluate. There is much more scope for actors opposing fundamentally undemocratic governments or political orders to claim democratic legitimacy.
40. Torbjorn Bergman, Wolfgang C. Muller Kaare Strom Parliamentary democracy and the chain of delegation European Journal of Political Research, 37 (2000 255 60
41. Rudy B. Andeweg and Jacques J. Thomassen, 'Between electorate and executive: parliament as a linchpin', paper presented at the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research, Edinburgh, 2003.
42. Harry Eckstein, Pressure Group Politics: The Case of the British Medical Association (London: Allen and Unwin 1960).
43. March and Olsen, Democratic Governance, p. 177.
44. Giandomenico Majone Independence versus accountability? Non-majoritarian institutions and democratic governance in Europe European Yearbook of Comparative Government and Public Administration, Vol. 1 (1994)
45. Aditi Bagchi Political citizenship in Britain and Germany German Politics, 9 (2000 161 80
46. On the idea of provisionality in such contexts, see Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, 'Democratic disagreement', Deliberative Politics, ed. S. Macedo (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 243-279.
47. David Runciman The paradox of political representation Journal of Political Philosophy, 15 (2007 93 114.
48. F. R. Ankersmit, Political Representation (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 98-9.
49. John S. Dryzek, 'Discursive democracy vs. liberal constitutionalism', Democratic Innovation, ed. Saward (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 78-89 at p. 84.
50. John Street Celebrity politicians: popular culture and political representation British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6 (2004 435 452
51. Henrik P. Bang and Torben Bech Dyrberg, 'Governance, self-representation and democratic imagination', Democratic Innovation, ed. Saward (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 146-157.
52. Micheletti, Political Virtue and Shopping.
53. Hans von Rautenfeld Thinking for thousands: Emerson's theory of political representation in the public sphere American Journal of Political Science, 49 (2005 184 97.
54. Iris Marion Young Activist challenges to deliberative democracy Political Theory, 29 (2001 670 90.
55. Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Part One: The Contemporary Debate) (Chatham, N. J.: Chatham House, 1987), pp. 182-5.
56. Jacques Derrida Force of law: the "mystical foundations of authority" trans. Mary Quaintance, Cardozo Law Review, 11 (1990 920 1045.