Where is the representative turn going?
| Published date | 01 October 2011 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885111417783 |
| Author | Sofia Näsström |
| Date | 01 October 2011 |
| Subject Matter | Review Articles |
Review article
E J P T
European Journal of Political Theory
10(4) 501–510
! The Author(s) 2011
Where is the representative
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turn going?
DOI: 10.1177/1474885111417783
ept.sagepub.com
Sofia Na¨sstro¨m
Uppsala University
Nadia Urbinati Representative Democracy: Principles and Geneaology. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Michael Saward The Representative Claim. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Mo´nica Brito Vieira and David Runciman Representation. London: Polity Press, 2008.
Ian Shapiro, Susan C. Stokes, Elizabeth Jean Wood and Alexander S. Kirshner
(eds) Political Representation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Ask anyone you encounter on the street what democracy means and you are likely to
be told that democracy means free and open elections. Stay a little longer and you
will almost certainly hear a story as to why representative democracy is an elitist
form of government that fails to address the actual concerns of the people. Is there
truth in this claim, or is this claim itself the expression of a democratic society in
which conflict and critique, in Nadia Urbinati’s terms, has become ‘the way for
democracy to constantly recreate itself and improve’?1
What is significant in the four books under consideration is that they seek to
restore the value of representation for democracy. Rather than seeing representative
government as an elitist project opposed to popular rule they take representation to
be essential to the working of democracy. In this respect, they form part of a new
representative turn in democratic theory. Lower voting rates, the decline of party
loyalty, the rise of populism, the appearance of self-appointed representatives and
the increasing role of non-governmental organizations in global politics have altered
the conditions under which representative democracy is supposed to operate. In both
domestic and international politics, the boundaries of democracy are seen as less
distinct than before. It is no longer self-evident who speaks for whom, and by what
authority. Indeed, in the face of transnational problems like the environment the
electoral system is itself perceived as a limitation on democracy insofar as it divides
citizens into preconceived territorial constituencies. The problem, as Michael
Saward puts it, is that while ‘we can choose particular politicians . . . we cannot
Corresponding author:
Sofia Na¨sstro¨m, Uppsala University, Department of Government, Box 514, 751 20, Uppsala, Sweden
Email: sofia.nasstrom@statsvet.uu.se
502
European Journal of Political Theory 10(4)
choose to have politicians who will not participate within the compromises and
constraints of the electoral game’.2
It is against the backdrop of these political changes that one should understand
the renewed interest in the concept of representation. Theorists have long discussed
the role of representation for democracy. Among other things, they have asked what
representatives are supposed to represent (i.e. ideas, identities, interests) and how
they should do so (i.e. delegate, trustee). But while this discussion typically proceeds
on the assumption that there exists a legitimate constitution in the background
which renders stability and direction to the analysis in question, the discussion
today is of a more fundamental kind. If representative democracy is understood
as a constitutional system in which the people expresses its will through general
and free elections the core message of the books under consideration can be
summarized in three theses: that representation is not just a matter of will, but
also a matter of judgment, that it is not just constitutional, but also constitutive,
and that representation for these reasons can be non-electoral as well as electoral.
In undertaking this rereading of the meaning of representation, the authors do not
want to sideline conventional perspectives on representation. What they want is to
open up new ways of thinking about the relationship between representation and
democracy. This is an important task at a time when elected representatives increas-
ingly find themselves having to account for their own accountability. Still, what often
remains undertheorized is the status of this undertaking itself. Reading the various
contributions on judgement and the role of constitutive and non-electoral forms of
representation, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the authors are doing diag-
nostic or normative work. Do they map out the essentials of a new terrain for democ-
racy, or do they seek to shift the normative terrain of democracy itself? In what
follows I shall examine the representative turn with this question in mind, arguing
that insofar as it aspires to take democracy into a new political era it is time to pay less
attention to the meaning of representation and more to that of democracy itself.
Let me begin with the recent emphasis on representation as a matter of judgment.
We do not encounter the world around us empty-handed, but tend to perceive the
world through certain concepts that both enable and limit our field of vision.
Concepts open up a way of seeing on our part, but they also convey expectations
about what is worth seeing or recognizing in the first place. In Pilgrim at Tinker
Creek, the author Annie Dillard describes this work of concepts in an illuminating
way. Spending one year at the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, she ‘went out to see
what she could see’.3 In one passage, she describes the difficulty of spotting a bullfrog
in the woods. Even though a dozen enthusiastic campers pointed it out to her, it took
her three minutes to discern the frog. Looking for a frog, which to her meant some-
thing small and green she failed to notice the large and wet hickory bark coloured
creature right in front of her.4
In a similar spirit, many political theorists today seek to draw attention to the
concepts we use when we, as scholars of politics, go out to study the political world
around us. What they say is that looking upon domestic and international politics
through the traditional concept of representative democracy we are likely to lose
Review article
503
sight of what is going on in politics. We cling to certain expectations and so run the
risk of overlooking what is actually there and in dire need of empirical and theoret-
ical consideration. The recent emphasis on judgement among democratic theorists
can in this way be understood as a way to unlearn. By reorienting the...
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