Knowledge, Consent and the Critique of Political Representation in Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis
| Author | Cary J. Nederman |
| Published date | 01 March 1991 |
| Date | 01 March 1991 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1991.tb00579.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Pofitical Studies
(1991),
XXXIX,
19-35
Knowledge, Consent and the Critique
Political Representation in Marsiglio
Padua's
Defensor
Pacis
CAW
J.
NEDERMAN*
University
of
Canterbury (New Zealand)
of
of
Marsiglio of Padua's
Defensor Pacis
contains a sustained critique of crucial features of
the theory and practice
of
political representation. Citizens are deemed to be vested
with a basic knowledge of the public interest and are bound, under the terms of their
civic identity, to consent individually to any legislative proposal which the community
seeks
to
impose upon itself. The existence of such a duty to consent reflects for
Marsiglio the way in which political society originally joined together into a corporate
body. He contends that the very nature of representative government, in which
responsibility for consent is conceded to quasi-independent representatives, is
antagonistic to the foundations of a well-ordered political community.
Among contemporary democratic theorists, a debate has emerged regarding the
relationship between the maintenance of democratic institutions and relations, on
the one hand, and the persistence of representative forms of government, on the
other. For some, representation constitutes a serious challenge to the possibility
of
realizing a meaningfully democratic society.' For others, the problems posed
by representative politics, such as its apparent tendency to erode levels
of
political
participation and to undermine the idea of citizenship, can be addressed within a
coherent theory of representation itself.* Beyond its implications for democratic
practice^,^
this debate has also revitalized normative discussion about the nature
and viability
of
political representation as a form of government and a means
for
public decision-making.
Such an evaluative perspective on political representation has until recently
been largely absent from the agenda of political theory. Certainly, the history of
western political thought has witnessed some classic defences of representative
*
Thanks are due to
Dr
Janet Coleman, Professor Jack Hayward and an anonymous reader for
this journal for their helpful suggestions to improve the present work.
'
For
instance, Benjamin Barber,
Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age
(Berkeley, University of California,
1984).
pp.
145-8
and J.
R.
Lucas,
Democracy and Participation
(Harmondsworth, Penguin,
1976).
pp.
175-200.
Nancy L. Schwartz,
The Blue Guitar: Political Representation and Communi?y
(Chicago,
University of Chicago Press,
1989).
'
The need to distinguish between problems stemming generally from representation and those
derived from specifically democratic uses of representative ideas has been stressed by Barry Holden,
The Nature
of
Democracy
(London, Nelson,
1974).
pp.
29-32.
0032-3217/91/01/0019-17/$03.00
0
1991
Political Studies
20
Knowledge, Consent
and
Political Representation
institutions (such as those by Hobbes, the AbbC Sieyes, Burke, and
J.
S.
Mill),”
and occasionally some sustained critiques as well (for instance, that of Rousseau
in
The
Social
C~ntract).~
But in the twentieth century at least, the tendency of
political philosophers has been to concentrate on the
meaning
of political
representation rather than its justification.6 This has produced a variety of efforts
to discern and distinguish the range
of
senses in which the term ‘representation’
may be used, as well as to determine whether there is an ‘essential’
or
‘real’
definition of the word which all
of
its senses share.’ What these discussions have
lacked, however, is an attempt to pose questions about the philosophical
foundations of political representation,
to
defend
or
attack the conceptual
underpinnings of the idea of representative government.
Thus, the renewal of interest in representation, via the problems it raises within
democratic theory, promises to remedy a neglected aspect
of
normative
theoretical inquiry. It may surprise political theorists to discover that the
concerns which have led to the re-evaluation of political representation in the
context of democracy are by no means novel. Rather, the current debate about
representation is being conducted in some
of
the same terms that we find present
already in the era when representative institutions first arose, the Latin Middle
Ages. It is well known that the modern idea of political representation is heavily
indebted to medieval practices.8 Yet it is seldom appreciated that the Middle Ages
also produced a sizeable theoretical literature devoted to issues stemming from
representative government in both Church and temporal polity. It is still more
rarely realized that some contributions
to
this medieval literature were overtly
critical of political representation in as much as they recognized it to be irrecon-
cilable with other, more basic political values such as citizenship and participation.
The political theory of the early fourteenth-century scholastic Marsiglio of
Padua illustrates the latter point. In his
Defensor
Pacis,
Marsiglio directs
our
attention to a fundamental conceptual incompatibility between representation
and the exercise
of
the salient duties arising from citizenship and civic life. At a
time when the rhetoric of citizenship has re-entered the front line of political
debate among both theorists and politicians: there may be some valuable lessons
For a survey of these early defences, see A. H. Birch,
Representation
(London, Macmillan,
1972),
pp.
3&71.
’
A full analysis of Rousseau’s position is provided by Richard Fralin,
Rousseau and
Representation: a Study in the Development
of
his Concept
of
Political Institutions
(New York,
Columbia University Press,
1978).
‘
See
the papers by
A.
Phillips Griffiths and Richard Wollheim on ‘How Can One Person
Represent Another?’ in
Proceedings
of
rhe Arisfotelian Society,
Suppl.
Vol.
34 (1960), 187-224;
Hanna
F.
Pitkin,
The Concepr
of
Represenration
(Berkeley and
Los
Angeles, University of California
Press,
1-12;
the contributions by
J.
Roland Pennock, B.
J.
Diggs, Hanna Pitkin, Julius
Cohenand William Frankena in
J.
R. Pennock and
J.
W.
Chapman (eds),
Representarion
(Nomos
10)
(New York, Atherton Press,
1968);
and Birch,
Representation,
pp.
13-21.
’
See Birch’s argument against Pitkin’s ‘realism’ in
Representation,
pp.
13-14.
*
The nature of this debt is established
by
Gaines Post,
Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public
Law
and the Stare,
120&1322
(Princeton, Princeton University Press,
1964),
especially the first four
chapters.
The
significance
of
the medieval legacy for modern thought
is
evaluated by Pitkin,
The
Concept
of
Representation,
pp.
2414
and Birch,
Represenration,
pp.
22-9.
In the
UK,
both the Charter
88
movement and the draft report
of
the Speaker’s Committee on
Citizenship suggest the extent to which the concept
of
civic identity has re-emerged as an important
part of the popular political vocabulary.
See
Anthony Burnett, ‘Charlie’s Army’,
New Statesman and
Society,
2239 (22
Sept.
1989), 9-1
1.
For
a theoretical defence of an active conception of citizenship,
see
Barber,
Strong Democracy.
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