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The Concept of Representation in Contemporary Democratic Theory

December 2008
Annual Review of Political Science 11(1)

DOI:10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.053006.190533

Authors:

Nadia Urbinati

Columbia University

Mark E. Warren

University of British Columbia

Democratic theorists have paid increasing attention to problems of political representation over the past two decades. Interest is driven by (a) a political landscape within which electoral representation now competes with new and informal kinds of representation; (b) interest in the fairness of electoral representation, particularly for minorities and women; (c) a renewed focus on political judgment within democratic theory; and (d) a new appreciation that participation and representation are complementary forms of citizenship. We review recent innovations within democratic theory, focusing especially on problems of fairness, constituency definition, deliberative political judgment, and new, nonelectoral forms of representation.

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ANRV344-PL11-17 ARI 17 April 2008 13:12

The Concept

of Representation

in Contemporary

Democratic Theory

Nadia Urbinati1and Mark E. Warren2

1Department of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027;

email: nu15@columbia.edu

2Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver,

British Columbia V6N 2H7, Canada; email: warren@politics.ubc.ca

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2008.11:387–412

The Annual Review of Political Science is online at

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Key Words

democracy, representative democracy, constituency, elections,

accountability, deliberation

Abstract

Democratic theorists have paid increasing attention to problems

of political representation over the past two decades. Interest is

driven by (a) a political landscape within which electoral representa-

tion now competes with new and informal kinds of representation;

(b) interest in the fairness of electoral representation, particularly

for minorities and women; (c) a renewed focus on political judgment

within democratic theory; and (d) a new appreciation that participa-

tion and representation are complementary forms of citizenship. We

review recent innovations within democratic theory, focusing espe-

cially on problems of fairness, constituency deﬁnition, deliberative

political judgment, and new, nonelectoral forms of representation.

387

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INTRODUCTION

The topic of political representation has

become increasingly visible and important

within contemporary democratic theory for

two reasons. The ﬁrst is a disjunction between

the standard accounts of democratic repre-

sentation, focused primarily on territorially

based electoral representation, and an increas-

ingly complex political terrain, which is less

conﬁned within state territoriality, more plu-

ralized, and increasingly dependent on infor-

mal negotiation and deliberation to generate

political legitimacy. These developments are

driving renewed interest in the impact of elec-

toral representation on broad patterns of in-

clusion and exclusion (Lijphart 1999; Powell

2000, 2004), as well as in the new forms of rep-

resentation that are rapidly evolving in non-

electoral domains such as administrative pol-

icy development (Stephan 2004, Brown 2006,

Fung 2006a), civil society advocacy (Alcoff

1991, Warren 2001, Strolovitch 2006), and

global civil society (Keck & Sikkink 1998,

Anheier et al. 2004, Grant & Keohane 2005,

Held & Koenig-Archibugi 2005). Here we

limit our attention to recent developments in

democratic theory, which has been as much

affected by these developments as other areas

of political science.

The second reason is indigenous to demo-

cratic theory, which has tended to follow Jean-

Jacques Rousseau in assuming that represen-

tative democracy is, at best, an instrumental

substitute for stronger forms of democracy

(Pateman 1976, Barber 1984). Until recently,

participatory and deliberative democrats paid

little attention to political representation,

leaving the topic to neo-Schumpeterian

theorists who viewed democracy as primarily

about the selection and organization of

political elites (Sartori 1987, Manin 1997; cf.

Kateb 1992). This consensus division of labor

began to unravel about 15 years ago at the

hands of those interested in broad patterns

of inclusions and exclusions in political

representation, particularly of minorities and

women (Phillips 1995, 1998; Williams 1998;

Mansbridge 1999; Young 2000; Dovi 2002).

The turning point was clearly identiﬁed by

David Plotke, who wrote in 1997 that “the

opposite of representation is not partici-

pation. The opposite of representation is

exclusion. And the opposite of participation

is abstention. ... Representation is not an

unfortunate compromise between an ideal of

direct democracy and messy modern realities.

Representation is crucial in constituting

democratic practices” (Plotke 1997, p. 19;

see also Urbinati 2000). In addition, demo-

cratic theorists are increasingly appreciating

the contributions of representation to the

formation of public opinion and judgment,

as well at its role in constituting multiple

pathways of social inﬂuence within and often

against the state. (Habermas 1989 [1962],

1996; Ankersmit 2002; Urbinati 2005, 2006).

Importantly, these reassessments are leading

an increasing number of democratic theorists

both to reengage problems of electoral design

(Beitz 1989, James 2004, Thompson 2004,

Rehfeld 2005) and to think about democratic

representation beyond the ballot (Saward

2006a,b; Warren 2008).

We review the concept of representation

from the perspective of recent democratic the-

ory. In the ﬁrst section, we list the political and

social reasons for rethinking democratic rep-

resentation. In the second section, we review

the background in democratic theory. In the

third section, we comment on the develop-

ments that are sending democratic theorists

back to “ﬁrst things”—the nature of political

representation itself. Next, we argue that con-

stituency deﬁnition, long ignored in theories

of representation, is among the most funda-

mental of ﬁrst things because it establishes

the frame—the inclusions and exclusions—

within which issues are decided. From this

perspective, we can appreciate the renewed

interest in representative institutions within

democratic theory, discussed in the ﬁfth sec-

tion. Last, we consider emerging nonelectoral

forms of representation: new citizen forums

and decision-making bodies, representative

claims by civil society and advocacy groups,

388 Urbinati ·Warren

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ANRV344-PL11-17 ARI 17 April 2008 13:12

and other “voice entrepreneurs,” for example.

Nonelectoral forms of representation, we be-

lieve, are increasingly important to expand-

ing and deepening democracy. But these de-

velopments challenge the existing conceptual

and normative resources of democratic the-

ory.Democratic theorists need to develop new

tools and critical analyses that are sensitive to

these new forms of political inﬂuence and in-

direct forms of power.

THE CHANGING POLITICAL

LANDSCAPE OF DEMOCRATIC

REPRESENTATION

Representative democracy as we know it today

evolved from two key sources. First, during

the twentieth century, the expansion of the

franchise transformed liberal, constitutional

regimes into mass democracies. Second, when

structured through constitutionalism, elec-

toral representation enabled a dynamic, if of-

ten fractious, balance between the rule of

elites and the social and political democra-

tization of society, with political parties dis-

placing parliaments as the primary loci of

representation. Until relatively recently, these

two sources molded what we call, following

D. Castiglione & M.E. Warren (unpublished

manuscript), the “standard account” of repre-

sentative democracy.

The standard account has four main fea-

tures. First, representation is understood as

a principal agent relationship, in which the

principals—constituencies formed on a ter-

ritorial basis—elect agents to stand for and

act on their interests and opinions, thus sep-

arating the sources of legitimate power from

those who exercise that power. Second, elec-

toral representation identiﬁes a space within

which the sovereignty of the people is identi-

ﬁed with state power. Third, electoral mecha-

nisms ensure some measure of responsiveness

to the people by representatives and political

parties who speak and act in their name. Fi-

nally, the universal franchise endows electoral

representation with an important element of

political equality.

The complexities of the principal-agent

relationship at the core of the standard ac-

count are well recognized (Pitkin 1967). The

translation of votes into representation, for

example, is mediated by varying electoral sys-

tems with more or less exclusionary charac-

teristics. Parties, interest groups, and corpo-

ratist organizations set agendas, while public

spheres, civil society advocacy, and the me-

dia form preferences and mold public opinion,

as do debate and leadership within legislative

bodies themselves (Habermas 1989). In addi-

tion, the principal-agent relationship between

voters and representatives is notoriously difﬁ-

cult to maintain, for numerous reasons rang-

ing from information deﬁcits to the corrup-

tion of representative relationships (Bobbio

1987, Gargarella 1998).

These complexities remain, but they have

been overtaken by new realities such that

the very formulation of problems within

the standard account is increasingly inade-

quate. Perhaps the most signiﬁcant of these

developments has been the dislocation, plu-

ralization, and redeﬁnition of constituencies.

The central feature of the standard account

is that constituencies are deﬁned by territory;

individuals are represented insofar as they are

inhabitants of a place (Rehfeld 2005). Begin-

ning with the formation of the modern state,

territorial residence became the fundamental

condition for political representation—a

condition more inclusive than status- and

corporate-based representation. Indeed,

territory has had an important historical

relationship to political equality that carried

over into modern times. In ancient Athens,

Cleisthenes changed the condition for count-

ing as an Athenian citizen from family and

clan identity to demes or village residence

(Hansen 1993). In this way, Cleisthenes

transformed the bare fact of residence into a

sufﬁcient condition for equal power-sharing,

and laid the basis for the modern conception

of constituency.

Yet territoriality, though historically essen-

tial to the evolution of democratic represen-

tation, identiﬁes only one set of ways in which

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ANRV344-PL11-17 ARI 17 April 2008 13:12

individuals are involved in, or affected by, col-

lective structures and decisions. Issues such as

migration, global trade, and environment, for

example, are extraterritorial; they are not con-

tained by any existing territorially organized

polity (Benhabib 2004, Gould 2004, Held

& Koenig-Archibugi 2005, Bohman 2007).

Other issues are nonterritorial, particularly

those involving identity, such as religion,

ethnicity, nationalism, professional identity,

recreation, gender identity, and many social

movements. Such nonterritorial interests are

not new to democratic theorists. The main

object of disagreement in making and inter-

preting the democratic constitution of the

Weimar Republic, for example, was whether

representation should represent individuals or

corporate interests. In modern constitutional

democracies, however, the older corporatist

views of parliaments and representation have

given way to the representation of individ-

uals whose only commonality is residence.

Thus, legislatures attend to nonresidential

constituencies only indirectly—not because

citizens have equal shares of power assigned

by territory, but rather because pressure and

advocacy groups can organize territory-based

votes along nonterritorial lines (Dahl 1956,

1971; cf. Mansbridge 2003). Other venues

have emerged to represent other kinds of con-

stituencies. The world is now populated with a

very large number of transnational, extraterri-

torial, and nonterritorial actors, ranging from

relatively formalized institutions built out

of territorial units (such as the United Na-

tions, the World Bank, the European Union,

and numerous treaty organizations), to a

multitude of nongovernmental organizations,

transnational movements, associations, and

social networks (Anheier et al. 2004, Saward

2006a), each making representative claims and

serving representative functions.

Closely related, the sites of collective de-

cision making are increasingly differentiated.

In the developed democracies, markets and

market-oriented entities are likely to con-

tinue to function as the dynamic sources of

change. Governments are increasingly agile

at channeling market forces and incentives, as

are civil society organizations. In many cases,

these developments dramatically shift the lo-

cus of collective decisions away from state-

centric models of planning—those that can

gather, as it were, sovereignty from the peo-

ple in order to act in their name—and toward

governance models. These issue-based and

policy-driven networks of government actors

and stakeholders are often more effective than

bureaucracies accountable to legislatures, but

they lack formal legitimacy and clear repre-

sentative accountability to those affected by

decisions.

The landscape of democratic representa-

tion is also clouded by the growing complexity

of issues, which increasingly strains the pow-

ers of representative agents, and thus their ca-

pacities to stand for and act on the interests

of those they represent. There is the familiar

technical and scientiﬁc complexity that comes

with the vast amounts of information and high

levels of technology involved in most pub-

lic decisions (Zolo 1992, Brown 2006, Beck

1997), which is often compounded by the

political complexity that comes with multi-

ple and overlapping constituencies (Andeweg

2003).

As a consequence of these developments,

the standard account has been stretched to the

breaking point. Among the most fundamen-

tal of problems, ironically, is the very element

that ushered in democratic representation—

residency-based electoral representation. The

claim of any state to represent its citizens—

its claim to sovereignty on behalf of the

people—is contestable, not because states do

not encompass peoples, but because collective

issues only partially admit of this kind of con-

stituency deﬁnition. Electoral representation

continues to provide an ultimate reference

for state power. But whereas Burke (1968, cf.

Manin 1997) imagined that representatives

could monopolize considered opinion about

public purpose through the use of delibera-

tive judgment, representative assemblies to-

day must reach ever further to gather politi-

cal legitimacy for their decisions. Judging by

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the declining trust in governments generally

and legislative bodies in particular, represen-

tative claims based on territorial constituen-

cies (under the standard model) continue to

weaken (Pharr & Putnam 2000, Dalton 2004).

Electoral representation remains crucial in

constituting the will of the people, but the

claims of elected ofﬁcials to act in the name

of the people are increasingly segmented by

issues and subject to broader contestation

and deliberation by actors and entities that

likewise make representative claims. Politi-

cal judgments that were once linked to state

sovereignty through electoral representation

are now much more widely dispersed, and

the spaces for representative claims and dis-

courses are now relatively wide open (Urbinati

2006). In complex and broadly democratic so-

cieties, representation is a target of competing

claims.

THE NEW CONCEPTUAL

DOMAINS OF DEMOCRATIC

THEORY

Until recently, democratic theorists were not

well positioned to respond to these develop-

ments, having divided their labors between

those who work within the standard account

of representation and those concerned with

participation and inclusion. The division of

labor followed the channels dug by Rousseau

well over two centuries ago, which identi-

ﬁed res publica with direct self-government

and representative government with an aris-

tocratic form of power. The English people,

Rousseau famously claimed, are free only in

the moment of their vote, after which they

return to “slavery,” to be governed by the will

of another. “Sovereignty,” Rousseau wrote,

“cannot be represented for the same reason

that it cannot be alienated. It consists essen-

tially in the general will, and the will cannot be

represented. The will is either itself or some-

thing else; no middle ground is possible. The

deputies of the people, therefore, neither are

nor can be its representatives; they are nothing

else but its commissaries. They cannot con-

clude anything deﬁnitively” (Rousseau 1978

[1762] p. 198). Rousseau thus conﬁned repre-

sentation to the terms of principal-agent del-

egation while stripping the delegate of any

role in forming the political will of the people.

In legal usage, Rousseau understood political

representation in terms of “imperative man-

date”: the delegate operates under a ﬁduciary

contract that allows the principal (the citizens)

to temporarily grant an agent their power to

take speciﬁed actions but does not delegate

the will to make decisions, which is retained

by the principal.

Rousseau’s distinction between legitimate

government (or democratic government, in

contemporary terminology) and representa-

tion built upon discourses with quite different

historical roots. Democracy originated as

direct democracy in ancient Greek city-states

whereas representation originated in the

medieval Christian church and the feudal re-

lationships encompassed within the Holy Ro-

man Empire, its monarchies, municipalities,

and principalities (Pitkin 2004). In modern

discourse, however, the concept of political

representation evolved beyond this distinc-

tion, becoming something more complex and

promising than the Rousseauian distinction

between the (democratic) will of the people

and the (aristocratic) judgments of political

elites. Developing along with the constitu-

tionalization of state powers, representation

came to indicate the complex set of relation-

ships that result in activating the “sovereign

people” well beyond the formal act of electoral

authorization. After Rousseau, representative

politics is increasingly understood as having

the potential to unify and connect the plural

forms of association within civil society, in

part by projecting the horizons of citizens

beyond their immediate attachments, and in

part by provoking citizens to reﬂect on future

perspectives and conﬂicts in the process of

devising national politics (see Hegel 1967).

Political representation can function to

focus without permanently solidifying the

sovereignty of the people, while transforming

their presence from formally sanctioning

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(will) into political inﬂuence (political

judgment). And importantly, political repre-

sentation can confer on politics an idealizing

dimension that can overcome the limits

of territoriality and formal citizenship on

political deliberation.

Rousseau’s formulations, however, failed

to shed light on these transformative poten-

tials of political representation. Although he

believed representatives to be necessary, he

held to electoral selection rather than lottery

or rotation—mechanisms traditionally asso-

ciated with democracy. Whatever his inno-

vations in other areas of democratic theory,

with respect to representation he restated

Montesquieu’s idea that lottery is democratic

whereas election is aristocratic. He concluded,

with Aristotle, that whereas all positions re-

quiring only good sense and the basic senti-

ment of justice should be open to all citizens,

positions requiring “special talents” should be

ﬁlled by election or performed by the few

(Rousseau 1978, see Urbinati 2006).

The contemporary view that representa-

tive government is a mix of aristocracy and

democratic authorization is the late child

of Rousseau’s model. “Realist” and “elite”

democrats in the mold of Schumpeter (1976),

Sartori (1965), and Luhmann (1990) repli-

cated Rousseau’s view that representation is

essentially aristocratic, while viewing demo-

cratic participation in political judgment as

utopian. Modern societies—with their bu-

reaucratic concentrations of power, their

scale, and their complexity—dictate that cit-

izens are mostly passive, mobilized period-

ically by elections (see also Bobbio 1987,

Sartori 1987, Zolo 1992; cf. Manin 1997).

Although elite and realist democratic theo-

rists have been widely criticized within demo-

cratic theory, it has not been for their account

of representation as periodic selection, but

rather for their portrayal of citizens as pas-

sive. Pluralist democratic theory, originated

by Truman (1951) and Dahl (1956) in the

1950s, emphasized the many ways in which

citizens of contemporary democracies can

push their interests onto the political agenda

in addition to voting, owing to the porous

design of liberal democracies. Participatory

democratic theorists writing in the 1960s and

1970s pointed out that the many channels of

representation in pluralist democracies were,

in fact, ﬁlled by those with the most re-

sources, particularly education and wealth.

Pulling ideals from Aristotle, Rousseau, Marx,

J.S. Mill, and Dewey, participatory democrats

focused instead on those features of democ-

racy most immediately connected with self-

determination and self-development, while

accepting Rousseau’s view of representation

as essentially nondemocratic (Pateman 1976,

Macpherson 1977, Barber 1984; cf. Young

2000, Urbinati 2006).

Communitarians within democratic the-

ory, borrowing from classical republicanism,

have sometimes overlapped with participa-

tory democrats owing to their focus on active

citizenship. Although classical republicanism

focused on institutional design—particularly

checks and balances—these strains were ab-

sorbed by the standard account of represen-

tation, leaving contemporary communitarians

to focus on closeness rather than distance, and

direct engagement rather than indirectness

(Arendt 2006; Wolin 2004; Held 1996, ch. 2).

Deliberative democratic theory, the third

and most recent wave of contemporary demo-

cratic theory, is centered on inclusive politi-

cal judgment. From this perspective, the stan-

dard account of representative democracy is

suspect for its thin understanding of political

will formation. The standard account, with

its emphasis on elections, pressure groups,

and political parties, suggested that politi-

cal judgments are, in effect, aggregated pref-

erences. Deliberative theories of democracy

were spearheaded by Habermas in the mid-

1980s and rapidly followed by parallel theories

focused on judgment: Gutmann & Thompson

(1996), Pettit (1999a), the later Rawls (2005),

Richardson (2003), and others turned their at-

tention to the formation of public opinion and

judgment, the institutionalization of deliber-

ation, and the relationship between inclusion

and deliberation. Problems of representation,

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however, were bypassed by several strains of

deliberative democratic theory, either because

deliberation was conceived within a participa-

tory framework (Cohen 1996) or because it

was conceived within already established in-

stitutions (Rawls 2005).

For others, such as Habermas (1996), how-

ever, problems of representation reappeared

in potentially productive ways. First in The

Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

(1989 [1962]) and then more completely in

Between Facts and Norms (1996), Habermas

cast representative institutions as mediating

between state and society via public spheres of

judgment, such that representation is incom-

plete without the deliberative attentiveness of

citizens mediated by public spheres, and the

reﬂective transmission of public deliberations

into the domain of representative institutions.

Habermas was interested not only in the

correlation between judgments emanating

from the public sphere and institutionalized

representation, but also in those moments of

disjunction that generate extraparliamentary

forms of representation, particularly through

new social movements and other kinds of

civil society associations. Importantly, these

creative disjunctions are intrinsic to the

functioning of representative democracy. In

this way, Habermas opened a window on

representation beyond the standard account.

Direct attention to representation within

contemporary democratic theory has come

from three other sources as well. The most

broadly recognized of these, Pitkin’s now clas-

sic The Concept of Representation (1967), came

from within the standard account itself. Pitkin

provided a comprehensive theory of represen-

tation, primarily within electoral contexts, just

when participatory democracy had captured

the imaginations of progressive democrats.

Indeed, Pitkin herself turned to the partici-

patory paradigm shortly after publication, re-

turning to the topic only to note that the al-

liance between democracy and representation

is “uneasy” owing to their distinct genealo-

gies (Pitkin 1967, p. 2; Pitkin 2004; Williams

2000). If democracy is based on the presence

of citizens, representation is at best a surro-

gate form of participation for citizens who are

physically absent.

Nonetheless, Pitkin sketched out the

generic features of political representation in

constitutional democracy. For representatives

to be “democratic,” she argued, (a) they must

be authorized to act; (b) they must act in a way

that promotes the interests of the represented;

and (c) people must have the means to hold

their representatives accountable for their ac-

tions. Although Pitkin understood these fea-

tures within the context of electoral democ-

racy, they can in fact vary over a wide range of

contexts and meanings, as we suggest below

(D. Castiglione & M.E. Warren, unpublished

manuscript).

Pitkin did not, however, inquire more

broadly into the kind of political participa-

tion that representation brings about in a

democratic society. Nor were her initial for-

mulations further debated or developed. In-

stead, they stood as the last word on repre-

sentation within democratic theory for three

decades, until the appearance of Manin’s The

Principles of Representative Government (1997).

Manin combined an elitist-realist approach

to democracy with a deliberative approach,

arguing that representative government is a

unique form of government owing to the con-

stitution of deliberative politics through elec-

tion. Manin’s work departed from the stan-

dard model by focusing on the deliberative

qualities of representative institutions. But in

other respects, he replicated the standard divi-

sion between democracy and representation.

In the spirit of Montesquieu, Manin viewed

elections as a means of judging the charac-

ters of rulers. The value of democratic elec-

tion is that the many are better than the few

at recognizing competent individuals, though

worse than the few at acting competently

(Manin 1997, ch. 4). But electoral suffrage in

itself, in Manin’s view, produced no change in

the practice and institution of representation,

which are substantially the same today as they

were when few citizens had the right to vote.

Representative government is inevitably an

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ANRV344-PL11-17 ARI 17 April 2008 13:12

elected form of aristocracy because it discrim-

inates among citizens and excludes some from

the decision-making process. As de Malberg

(1920, p. 208) put it, the very purpose of rep-

resentative selection is to form an aristocratic

regime. On this line of thinking, it follows that

discourses that implicate representative insti-

tutions as exclusionary are simply incoherent.

Such institutions cannot be something other

than they are, namely, aristocratic entities that

are at best constituted and contained by demo-

cratic elections. Thus, in this account, parlia-

mentary sovereignty can be seen as an elec-

toral transmutation of Rousseau’s doctrine of

the general will of the people, which, para-

doxically, transforms the people into a passive

body, with periodic capacities for selection but

not voice (De la Bigne de Villeneuve 1929–

1931, p. 32).

Important though these debates about ac-

tive versus passive representative inclusion

were, they glossed over the glaring fact that

many groups within the established democra-

cies lacked even passive inclusion. Although

earlier participatory critics of the standard ac-

count had turned away from representation,

by the early 1990s, theorists began to focus

on the representative exclusion of marginalized

groups—particularly those based on gender,

ethnicity, and race—from the centers of po-

litical power. The initial questions were about

injustices in the form of exclusion. But these

questions went to the very heart of not only

the meanings of representation, but also its

mechanisms and functions. Kymlicka (1995)

argued for group representation within the in-

stitutions of representative democracy, noting

that the representation of individuals qua indi-

viduals is not sufﬁcient to self-development, as

self-identity depends on group relationships

and resources. Phillips (1995) argued in The

Politics of Presence that the “politics of ideas”—

one in which interests, policy positions, and

preferences are represented by agents within

political institutions—fails to grasp that right-

ful inclusions require that diversities within

society have represented presence, embodied

within representatives who bring distinctive

perspectives into political institutions (see also

Guinier 1994, Gould 1996, Mansbridge 1999,

Young 2000, Dovi 2002).

Within this literature, Williams’ (1998)

Voice, Trust, and Memory most directly en-

gaged the issue of marginalized groups in

the language of representation, framing all

of the classic issues of representation within

the terms of the contemporary debate. “Lib-

eral representation” of the kind descended

from Locke, though promising formal equal-

ity, systematically underrepresents the histor-

ically marginalized. By treating individuals

as individuals rather than as situated mem-

bers of groups, Williams argues, liberal ac-

counts of representation fail to conceptual-

ize patterns of disadvantage that are based

in group situations, and are often replicated

within representative institutions. The lib-

eral account (at least in its Lockean form)

assumes a trustee relationship based on con-

vergent majority interests, which does not in

fact exist for disadvantaged groups. When

such assumptions legitimate electoral sys-

tems that simply aggregate votes based on

territorial constituency—particularly in the

form of single-member districts—they serve

to justify and stabilize existing patterns of

disadvantage. For this reason, Williams ar-

gues, we need to think beyond principal-agent

models of representation in which principals

are presumed to be formally equal individ-

uals. We need to understand representation

as a relationship, mediated by group histo-

ries and experiences, through which relevant

constituencies—particularly those related to

fairness—come into existence. Finally, fair

representation requires some relationship of

trust between individuals and representatives,

based on shared experiences, perspectives, and

interests, and this is demonstrably not present

for historically disadvantaged groups within

residence-based systems of representation.

Still, the relationship between individual

and group representation with respect to fair-

ness remains ambiguous in Williams’ argu-

ment. Disadvantages in society generate ten-

sions between the formal equalities that lend

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legitimacy to representative institutions, and

their results, which will often fail to reﬂect

or address issues related to systematic group

disadvantages. Clearly, for minorities whose

claims consistently fail to be present within

political institutions, representation based on

formal equality also fails basic fairness. Yet the

strongest historical argument for fair repre-

sentation has not been based on group advan-

tage or disadvantage, but rather the propor-

tional representation of individual interests. If

all individuals have an equal claim to represen-

tation, their representatives should have pres-

ence in representative institutions in propor-

tion to the numbers of individuals who hold

interests they wish to be represented. Indeed,

as Mill argued, nonproportional counting as

occurs in majoritarian systems is a violation

of quantitative fairness, whereas proportional

representation “secures a representation, in

proportion to numbers, of every division of

the electoral body: not two great parties

alone” (Mill 1991, p. 310). Altering represen-

tative systems to increase their sensitivity to

historical group disadvantage may trade off

against the fairness embodied in quantitative

proportionality, a tension that continues to

deserve the attention of democratic theorists.

Although Williams’ argument was fo-

cused on representing historically disadvan-

taged groups, she built on the emerging

discourse of group representation to cast po-

litical representation as fundamentally about

inclusion and exclusion—that is, about the

basic problems of democratic theory and

practice (cf. Phillips 1995, ch. 7). At the

same time, the strain of thinking origi-

nated by Manin—that focusing on the rela-

tionship between representation and politi-

cal judgment—increasingly intersected with

deliberative democracy, drawing the “aristo-

cratic” approach to representation closer to

democratic problems of discursive inclusion

(Plotke 1997, Young 2000, Ankersmit 2002,

Urbinati 2005, cf. Williams 2000). Together,

these lineages are now producing a new wave

of democratic theory.

WHEN IS REPRESENTATION

“DEMOCRATIC”?

If democratic representation is to be under-

stood as more than a division of labor be-

tween political elites and citizens, we need to

understand representation as an intrinsic part

of what makes democracy possible. To do so,

we must distinguish between generic norms

of democracy and the institutions and prac-

tices through which the norms are realized.

Much democratic theory has moved in this

direction, conceiving democracy as any set of

arrangements that instantiates the principle

that all affected by collective decisions should

have an opportunity to inﬂuence the outcome

(see, e.g., Habermas 1996, p. 107; Dahl 1998,

pp. 37–38; Held 1996, p. 324; Young 2000,

p. 23; Gould 2004, pp. 175–78). Although

there are important variations in the norma-

tive presuppositions embedded in this prin-

ciple, most democratic theorists hold that

(a) individuals are morally and legally equal

and (b) individuals are equally capable of

autonomy with respect to citizenship—that

is, conscious self-determination—all other

things begin equal. It follows that collective

decisions affecting self-determination should

include those affected.

The advantage of such a norm—call it

democratic autonomy or simply collective

self-government—is that it enables us to avoid

reduction of “democracy” to any particular

kind of institution or decision-making mech-

anism. It allows us to assess emerging in-

stitutions and imagine new ones by asking

whether they fulﬁll the norm of democratic

autonomy—a question we need to be able to

ask, for example, of the many transnational

regimes that increasingly affect the lives of

individuals in ways the standard account of

representative democracy cannot encompass,

nor even conceive.

At the same time, without the relatively

straightforward conceptual apparatus of the

standard account, we need to formulate the

concept of democratic representation with a

rigor sufﬁcient to identify and assess what

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has become a rich domain of representative

relationships—a concern that increasingly

drives the new literature (see, e.g., Williams

1998; Mansbridge 2003; Rehfeld 2006;

Rubenstein 2007; D. Castiglione, A. Rehfeld,

M.E. Warren,et al., unpublished manuscript).

We owe an initial formal speciﬁcation

to Pitkin, who—despite misgivings about

formalizations—observed that democratic re-

sponsiveness includes, in one way or another,

(a) authorization of a representative by those

who would be represented, and (b) account-

ability of the representative to those repre-

sented. Building on Pitkin, D. Castiglione &

M.E. Warren (unpublished manuscript; see

also Rehfeld 2006) characterize these rela-

tionships as follows:

1. Political representation involves repre-

sentative X being authorized by con-

stituency Y to act with regard to good

Z. Authorization means that there are

procedures through which Y selects or

directs X with respect to Z. Ultimate re-

sponsibility for the actions or decisions

of X rests with Y.

2. Political representation involves repre-

sentative X being held accountable to

constituency Y with regard to good Z.

Accountability means that X provides,

or could provide, an account of his or

her decisions or actions to Y with re-

spect to Z, and that Y has a sanction

over X with regard to Z.

These elements are generic; they specify

only that a democratic relationship of rep-

resentation is one of empowered inclusion

of Y in the representations of X with re-

spect to Z. Under this formula, the individuals

or groups who are represented are not pas-

sive. There are points at which they assent to

be represented, and the practices of assent—

including communication—typically require

multiple kinds of participation. For their part,

if representatives are democratic, they are re-

sponsive to those they would represent, with

respect to particular goods. A wide variety

of actors may potentially ﬁt these criteria:

elected representatives, nongovernmental or-

ganizations, lay citizens, panels, committees,

and other entities. A wide variety of goods may

be formulated and represented: preferences,

interests, identities, values. And, in principle,

a wide variety of authorization and account-

ability mechanisms are possible. Along with

elections, the possibilities include voice, de-

liberation, exit, oversight, and trust. This vari-

ety of relationships, entities, and mechanisms

is close, we think, to encompassing the nu-

merous kinds of representative relationships

that inhabit contemporary democracies. Each

should be parsed out and speciﬁed both in its

own terms and in terms of its role within the

broader political ecology.

CONSTITUENCY DEFINITION

Because it deﬁnes the initial terms of au-

thorization and thus the nature of inclusion

in representative relationships, the concept

of constituency is receiving new attention.

As Rehfeld (2005; see also Burnheim 1989,

Pogge 2002) points out, the idea that con-

stituencies should be deﬁned by territorial dis-

tricts has been all but unquestioned until very

recently, although it has long been recognized

that initial decisions about who is included in

(or excluded from) “the people” constituted

the domain of democracy (Dahl 1989, Held

1996).

But there is an even more fundamental

issue. For the most part, the project of

democratizing “democracies” has been con-

ceived as a matter of progressively including

more classes of individuals within territorial

communities. But no matter how universal

these inclusions, when represented geograph-

ically, the people are only a “demos” insofar

as their primary interests and identities are

geographical in nature. Nongeographical

constituencies—those emerging from race,

ethnicity, class, gender, environment, global

trade, and so on—are represented only inso-

far as they intersect with the circumstances

of location, producing only an accidental

relationship between democratic autonomy

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(particularly the distributions of opportunities

necessary for self-determination) and forms

of representation (Bohman 2007; cf. Gould

2004, Held & Koenig-Archibugi 2005).

More generally, issues of justice raised by

representation are issues of isegoria, or the

equal chance each citizen should have to

have his or her voice heard (Dworkin 2000,

pp. 194–98). “Democratic representation is

fair or just representation insofar as it involves

issues of advocacy and representativity; is-

sues of a meaningful presence, not simply

presence alone, in the game of discord and

agreement that is democracy” (Urbinati 2006,

p. 42). Fraser (2007, pp. 313–14) has formu-

lated the relationship between representation

and justice quite precisely (see also Williams

1998, Fraser 2005, Rehfeld 2005, Saward

2006a):

[R]epresentation furnishes the stage on

which struggles over distribution and recog-

nition are played out. Establishing criteria

of political membership, it tells us who is

included, and who excluded, from the cir-

cle of those entitled to a just distribution

and reciprocal recognition. ... Representa-

tion, accordingly, constitutes a third, politi-

cal dimension of justice, alongside the (eco-

nomic) dimension of redistribution and the

(cultural) dimension of recognition.

From this perspective, the equality en-

sured by universal suffrage within nations is,

simply, equality with respect to one of the

very many dimensions that constitute “the

people.” Thus, from a normative perspec-

tive, geography-based constituency deﬁnition

introduces an arbitrary criterion of inclu-

sion/exclusion right at the start. Exclusions

work not on people, who are, after all, univer-

sally included through residency-based fran-

chise, but rather on issues, since residency-

based constituencies deﬁne residency-based

interests as most worthy of political conver-

sation and decision—an effect that is arbi-

trary from the perspective of justice. Although

the costs of territorial constituency deﬁni-

tion are highest for disadvantaged groups, as

suggested above, the theoretical point cuts

even more broadly and deeply, as suggested

by Fraser’s formulation: Representation is a

dimension of justice.

But territory is not entirely destiny, even

when it is the starting point for constituency

deﬁnition as well as the residence-based

distribution of one vote to every citizen. The

history of race-based districting in the United

States can be understood as attempts to mold

geographical constituencies in ways that en-

compass nongeographical issues, and to do so

through the inclusion of racial minorities in

decision-making bodies. Quotas and reserved

seats also compensate for the inﬂexibilities

of geography, although each arrangement

comes with costs to other dimensions of

representation (Guinier 1994; Williams

1998, chs. 3, 7; James 2004). Functional role

adjustments, even if ad hoc, may sometime

compensate. Mansbridge (2003) notes that

empirical political scientists increasingly

identify forms of representation that are not

based on standard “promissory” mechanisms,

whereby candidates make promises to voters

and are then judged in subsequent elections

by the results. In “surrogate representa-

tion,” for example, a representative claims

a constituency beyond his or her electoral

district, as when Barney Frank (a member

of the US House of Representatives from

Massachusetts) represents gays beyond his

district, or Bill Richardson (Governor of New

Mexico) represents Latinos beyond his state.

These functional adjustments testify not just

to the inadequacies of territorial constituency,

but also to its malleability. A key challenge

for democratic theorists is to imagine how

this malleability might be harnessed beyond

the borders of nation-states.

RETHINKING ELECTORAL

REPRESENTATION

Electoral democracy is that subset of rep-

resentative relationships in which represen-

tatives are authorized through election to

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represent the citizens of a constituency to act

on behalf of their interests, and then are held

accountable in subsequent elections. These

relationships have been examined and reex-

amined by political scientists during the post-

war period (e.g., Eulau & Karps 1977). What

is new is the reemergence of electoral repre-

sentation as a topic within democratic theory.

Constitutional Design

Most fundamentally, electoral representation

is established and molded by constitutional

design—that is, the way in which political

institutions form and formulate the patterns

of inclusion to which they are subject. Again,

this is an issue with an old pedigree. Contem-

porary interest is found primarily within the

ﬁeld of comparative politics—most notably,

in debates about the democratic merits of

presidential versus parliamentary forms of

government. Here we highlight renewed in-

terest within democratic theory, particularly

in the impact of constitutional assignments of

responsibility on the capacities of representa-

tives for deliberation and political judgment.

Most generally, constitutions provide two

concurrent forms of responsibility, one demo-

cratic (through elections) and the other hi-

erarchical (appointment by superior organs

of political power). The relationship be-

tween representation and political judgment is

molded by choices between these forms. Con-

sider, for example, the quite different ways in

which the US and European constitutions lo-

cate the positions of judges, the clearest ex-

ample of representatives assigned particular

responsibilities of judgment. In the United

States, many local and state judges are elected

just like any other political representative and

are therefore directly responsible to the peo-

ple (see Kelsen 1999). In Europe, the judge is

accountable only to the law and must not defer

to the opinions of the people (Friedrich 1963,

Kelsen 1992). In the US case, the role of the

judge as representative of law often clashes

with the political responsiveness required of

an elected representative—which perhaps ex-

plains why many states seek to increase judges’

independence by declaring elections to be

nonpartisan (Thompson 1987), and certainly

explains why higher courts are insulated from

direct representative accountability. In the

European case, however, the democratic le-

gitimacy of judges is borrowed entirely from

representative bodies that create the law, and

judgment is viewed as limited to the applica-

tion of law. In this way, European constitu-

tions preserve the democratic element of rep-

resentation within the judiciary, but at the cost

of conceiving judges’ powers of judgment as

the application of rules.

The broader implication of this judicial

example is that the ways in which constitu-

tions assign responsibility and structure ac-

countability affect representatives’ capacities

for judgment. Elections establish the nonin-

dependence of the representative from the

represented in principle, although in practice,

representative institutions require enough au-

tonomy to carry out their political functions,

which will require bodies that can engage in

deliberative political judgments (Bybee 1998).

Accordingly, most constitutions forbid imper-

ative mandate. But because political represen-

tation can only exist in the juridical form of

a mandate that is not legally bounded, some

other form of mandate is needed to check rep-

resentatives, which is why almost all demo-

cratic constitutions delimit the responsibility

of the representatives.

Electoral System Design

The central feature of democratic legitimacy,

of course, resides in the electoral system.

When we vote, we do two things at once: We

contribute to forming a government or oppo-

sition, and we seek representation of our po-

sitions and preferences. This means that elec-

tions are not just a race that some win at the

expense of others, but a way of participating

in the creation of the representative body, as

is suggested by Plotke’s (1997) argument that

the opposite of representation is not partici-

pation but exclusion.

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Although comparative analysis is beyond

the scope of this essay (cf. Lijphart 1999,

Powell 2000), it is worth noting here that dif-

ferent electoral systems empower this kind

of participation quite differently, primarily by

structuring the inclusiveness of the initial au-

thorization and the strength of vote-based ac-

countability (Urbinati 2006). The key design

choice is between electoral systems based on

single-member plurality (SMP) districts and

those that seek proportional representation

(PR) through multi-member districts (Farrell

2001, Przeworski et al. 1999, Powell 2004).

From the perspective of representing res-

idence, it is worth noting that PR systems

are inherently less geographical than SMP.

Within the boundaries of a district (which may

be the size of the entire state, as in the cases

of Israel and the Netherlands), voters deter-

mine their constituency at the time of the vote

(Duverger & Sartori 1988, Rehfeld 2005). In

addition, because PR enables representation

at lower thresholds (depending on the num-

ber of representatives within each district), PR

systems tend to include a broader range of in-

terests and identities than SMP systems. It is

because of their greater inclusiveness and fair-

ness that democratic theorists at least since

Mill have favored PR over SMP systems. A

government should reach decisions on the ba-

sis of debates among representatives of “every

opinion which exists in the constituencies” in

a body that reﬂects “its fair share of voices”

(Mill 1991 [1861], pp. 448–50; see also Kelsen

1929, Friedrich 1968, Fishkin 1995). Demo-

cratic theorists concerned with the represen-

tation of disadvantaged groups also prefer PR,

simply because its more inclusive logic in-

creases the chances that disadvantaged groups

will have representation (Amy 1996, Barber

2001). In addition, PR may result in more de-

liberative legislative bodies: Because the elec-

toral system is less likely to produce governing

majority parties, parliaments operating un-

der PR are more likely to develop consensus

forms of government (Sartori 1976, Lijphart

1999, Powell 2000, Steiner et al. 2005). For

similar reasons, the design of local electoral

systems—particularly municipal systems—is

now back on the table (Guinier 1994).

Electoral systems that produce more inclu-

sion may have costs to one feature of repre-

sentation. They often produce coalition gov-

ernments that can diffuse accountability, as

party platforms that were authorized by voters

are subsequently compromised for purposes

of governing. Likewise, because they separate

powers, presidential systems are often said to

dampen responsiveness to citizens and diffuse

accountability (Dahl 2003). In contrast, par-

liamentary arrangements based on SMP tend

to provide citizens with stronger ex post ac-

countability.These systems authorize govern-

ing majorities, which are then clearly respon-

sible for governing as long as they retain the

conﬁdence of majority party members of the

legislature.

It is not clear, however, that inclusiveness

and accountability necessarily trade off against

one another, given the variety of possible

accountability mechanisms (Warren 2008).

Some of these other forms of accountabil-

ity are deliberative in nature, and depend on

publics demanding that representatives pro-

vide accounts of their positions and deci-

sions, even as they change (Mansbridge 2004,

Urbinati 2006). This increasing attention to

discursive accountability is yet another rea-

son democratic theorists have paid more at-

tention to the impact of constitutional design

on deliberative judgment (Habermas 1996,

Manin 1997, Elster 1998, Sunstein 2002,

James 2004). These issues have returned also

in contemporary debates over fair representa-

tion (Beitz 1989, Williams 1998, Thompson

2002). At this time, however, theories relat-

ing constitutional forms and electoral systems

to new accounts of democratic representation

remain underdeveloped.

Because of the normative importance of

proportionality to the democracy-justice rela-

tionship, a small but growing number of the-

orists are becoming interested in represen-

tative bodies that are randomly constituted.

Randomness would, on average, ensure that

such assemblies would represent whatever

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issues are salient to the public at the moment

of selection, not only in proportion to the

numbers of individuals with interests in par-

ticular issues, but also in proportion to the in-

tensity with which interests and opinions are

held (Burnheim 1989, Fishkin 1995, Pogge

2002, Rehfeld 2005; cf. Dahl 1989, Warren &

Pearse 2008). Closely related is the concept of

randomly selected citizen representative bod-

ies, discussed below.

Political Parties

Although democratic theorists have been

reengaging questions of institutional de-

sign, they have ignored political parties (cf.

Rosenblum 2008). No doubt the explanation

for inattention mirrors the more general pic-

ture: Parties have been viewed as strategic or-

ganizations that are primarily instruments of

political elites rather than venues of participa-

tion. Moreover, parties are, well, partisan—

and thus do not provide a hospitable en-

vironment for reasoned deliberations about

common ends, the preferred mode of politi-

cal interaction for political philosophers from

Plato to Rawls.

Yet if elections provide real choices for

citizens—that is, if citizens are able to use the

vote to authorize and to hold to account those

who would represent them—parties will nat-

urally form, structurally determined by the

characteristics of electoral systems, the reg-

ulations that enable elections, and the consti-

tutional form of government. As Rosenblum

(2008) notes, in contrast to democratic the-

orists, most political scientists view demo-

cratic representation as unthinkable without

parties. They are arguably the key representa-

tive bodies within representative government.

Their representative functions include aggre-

gating and deliberating interests and values,

and linking issues through programmatic vi-

sions within political environments that are

increasingly segmented. Because they per-

form these functions in ways that can be more

or less inclusive and more or less delibera-

tive, political parties should ﬁnd their way

back onto the agenda of democratic theory

(see Beitz 1989). Such integration, however,

will require that we understand partisanship

as an essential feature of deliberation. Parties

as organizations are not to be confused with

factions since they can and should transform

particular forms of advocacy into more com-

peting accounts of common goods and inter-

ests, and in this way structure public discourse

(Urbinati 2006, pp. 37–38; Rosenblum 2008).

Ethical Obligations

of Representatives

If representative roles are structured in part by

institutional rules and inducements, they are

also structured by the ethical duties of pub-

lic ofﬁce. Representatives are elected to do

certain jobs, and their jobs come with obli-

gations. The question of representative roles

was famously conceived by Burke (1968), who

argued that representatives should serve as

trustees of the interests of those who elected

them—“virtual representatives”—rather than

serving as delegates. Representatives should

not be bound by the preferences of con-

stituents; they should use their autonomous

judgment within the context of deliberative

bodies to represent the public interest.

The notion that representatives are

trustees is widely understood as a quasi-

aristocratic understanding of representation:

the best judgment of elites replaces the judg-

ment of the people. This understanding of

the delegate-trustee distinction crowds all

“democratic” meanings of representation into

the delegate model. The formulation drains

the meaning from “democracy” and tells us

nothing about how constituents’ interests are

converted into decisions within the context of

a representative institution. That is, the con-

cept of delegation provides no explanation of

decision making and thus fails to provides an

account of democratic rule. Pitkin (1967) of-

fered more nuance when she noted that rep-

resentatives cannot simply reﬂect their con-

stituents’ interests—in part because interests

are often unformed (thus, it is unclear what

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should be represented) and in part because

their jobs include making collective decisions

that accord with democratic institutions. In-

stead, Pitkin argued, we should understand

representatives as having the ethical obliga-

tion to be responsive to their constituents’ in-

terests. This formulation had the advantage of

covering the complexities of the relationship,

although it did not provide much more.

Ironically, perhaps, early incarnations of

group representation arguments fell on the

trustee side of the dichotomy, with its eli-

tist leanings. If a representative is descrip-

tively representative of a group, then the

group’s members must trust their represen-

tative, since descriptive similarity in itself

implies no mechanisms for accountability—

and, indeed, carries ambiguous role obli-

gations. But working through the require-

ments for group representatives has put the

problem of role ethics back on the agenda

(Phillips 1995, Williams 1998, Mansbridge

1999, Young 2000, Dovi 2002). Interestingly,

the category of trust has proved more fruitful

than that of delegate, reconﬁgured so it is clear

that, as a trustee, the representative is obli-

gated to keep his or her constituents’ interests

in view (Dovi 2007, ch. 5). Mansbridge (2003)

argues that much democratic representation

is “gyroscopic”: Voters select a representa-

tive because she holds values that converge

with theirs. Voters then pay little attention

to the representative, trusting her to do the

right thing. They often “select” rather than

“sanction”; they trust rather than monitor. On

Mansbridge’s view, there is nothing undemo-

cratic about this strategy. Voters are, in effect,

judging character rather than performance,

but they retain their capacity to remove a rep-

resentative should the bases of their trust be

disappointed or betrayed ( J. Mansbridge, un-

published manuscript).

Interest in the ethical obligations of repre-

sentatives has also been fueled by problems

of campaign ﬁnance and corruption (Beitz

1989, ch. 9; Thompson 1995; Stark 2000;

Warren 2006). We are likely to see full the-

ories of representative ethics in the near fu-

ture (cf. Dovi 2007; E. Beerbohm, unpub-

lished manuscript).

Deliberation and Judgment

As we suggested above, one of the most im-

portant inspirations for rethinking political

representation within electoral democracy has

been the increasingly sophisticated empha-

sis on deliberation within democracy. From

this perspective, representation induces and

forms relationships of judgment that enable

democracy, some of which may be formalized

by election, and others of which may work

through group advocacy, voice, the media, or

indeed, representative claims by any number

of actors from both within and outside insti-

tutionalized politics (Rosanvallon 1998). In-

trinsic to these processes of judgment is what

Urbinati (2006) calls indirectness in politics—

the representation of citizens’ judgments to

them by their representative and vice versa—

through which the demos reﬂects on itself and

judges its laws, institutions, and leaders (see

also Ankersmit 2002).

These reﬂexive relationships often go

unnoticed, but they are essential to mak-

ing political judgment work in complex,

pluralistic, democratic societies. Represen-

tation functions to depersonalize claims and

opinions, for example, which in turn allows

citizens to mingle and associate without eras-

ing the partisan spirit essential to free political

competition. Representation serves to unify

and connect citizens, while also pulling them

out of the immediate present and projecting

them into future-oriented perspectives. Rep-

resentation, when intertwined with citizens’

reﬂexivity and participation, evokes and

focuses the natality of politics, through which

individuals transcend the immediacy of their

interests, biographical experience, and social

and cultural attachments, and enlarge their

political judgment on their own and others’

opinions (Urbinati 2006; see Arendt 1989).

Thus, even at its most divisive, in a democratic

society representative institutions are never

solely descriptive of social segmentations

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and identities. And at their best, they tend

toward transcendence of the here and now

in a process that is animated by a dialectic

between what is and what can be or ought to

be (Przeworski 1991, p. 19; cf. Hegel 1967).

Finally, of course, representation also enables

citizens to survey and discipline power hold-

ers, not only through the direct mechanisms

of voting but also through the gathering and

exposure of information by groups and the

media who claim (not always credibly) to act

as representatives of the public.

In short, we should think of representative

democracy not as a pragmatic alternative to

something we modern citizens can no longer

have, namely direct democracy, but as an in-

trinsically modern way of intertwining partic-

ipation, political judgment, and the constitu-

tion of demoi capable of self-rule. Understood

in this way, elections are not an alternative

to deliberation and participation, but rather

structure and constitute both. Elections are

not a discrete series of instants in which the

sovereign will is authorized, but rather con-

tinuums of inﬂuence and power created and

recreated by moments in which citizens can

use the vote to select and judge representatives

(Dahl 1971, pp. 20–21). Likewise, we should

understand electoral representation as having

an elective afﬁnity with deliberative politics

because it structures ongoing processes of ac-

tion and reaction between institutions and so-

ciety, between mistrust and legitimacy, and

between sanctioned will and censuring judg-

ment from below (Rosanvallon 2006).

THE NEW FRONTIER:

NONELECTORAL

DEMOCRATIC

REPRESENTATION

As we argued above, there are limitations

to a purely electoral rendering of democracy

and representation. Some of these limitations

are mutable in principle but unlikely to be

changed in practice. The central organizing

principle of territorial constituency, for ex-

ample, is likely to remain, if only because it

provides a transparent and practical basis for

the distribution of votes to persons. But some

of the primary virtues of electoral democracy

are also limitations. Elections, for example,

can and should be institutionalized in such

a way that the rules are knowable and pre-

dictable, and accountability can be achieved

over long periods of time (Thompson 2004).

Yet the very stability of elected representatives

and electoral institutions means that they are

slow to respond to emerging or marginalized

constituencies. Neither are elections very sen-

sitive to information. Although the campaigns

leading up to elections are, ideally, energetic

periods of issue-focused deliberation, votes

in themselves are information-poor. Elected

representatives are left to rely on other means

(polls, advice, focus groups, letters, petitions,

and the like) to guess what voters intend

them to represent—over what spectrum of is-

sues, in what proportion, and with what in-

tensity. Although electoral cycles of autho-

rization and accountability provide a strong

check against gross abuses of power, as rep-

resentative devices they lack nuance and sen-

sitivity (Dunn 1999). Stated more positively,

insofar as electoral representation works, it

does so in conjunction with a rich fabric of

representative claimants and advocacy within

society (Rosanvallon 2006, Urbinati 2006).

This point was appreciated within early plu-

ralist theory, though without the critical eye

for the social and economic inequalities that

group advocacy–based democracy usually en-

tails (Truman 1951; Dahl 1956; cf. Held 1996,

ch. 6).

Further limitations of electoral represen-

tation inhere in its partisan qualities, how-

ever necessary they are if elections are to

serve as instruments of authorization and ac-

countability (Urbinati 2006). This necessity

trades off against others: If speech is always

strategic, it will dampen or subvert delibera-

tion oriented toward norm- or fact-based con-

sensus (Chambers 2004, Mansbridge 2004).

The deliberative elements of representation

are likewise dampened by the fact that legisla-

tive institutions are responsible for decisions

402 Urbinati ·Warren

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ANRV344-PL11-17 ARI 17 April 2008 13:12

affecting the exercise of state power, mean-

ing that they are poor venues for representing

emerging agendas, which do much better in

the less restricted give and take of deliberation

in the public sphere (Habermas 1996).

In addition, these features of electoral

representation—their inability to refract ﬁne-

grained representation into political insti-

tutions and their dampening effects on

deliberation—ﬁt poorly with the norms of

citizenship evolving in the developed democ-

racies. Dalton (2007) argues that new gener-

ations of citizens are voting less but engag-

ing more. They want more choice; they want

more direct impact. These are goods that elec-

toral representation cannot provide. This fact

alone should spur us to think about repre-

sentation more broadly, including nonelec-

toral venues—not necessarily as competing

forms of representation (though they can be),

but possibly as complementary forms (Saward

2006a,b).

Finally, as we noted above (When is Rep-

resentation “Democratic”?), the globalization

of democratic norms and expectations simply

does not ﬁt with any electorally based con-

stituencies at all—not only within the inter-

national domain but also in contexts that have

weak or nonexistent electoral democracies.

Owing to these functional limitations of

electoral representation, practices of demo-

cratic representation increasingly go beyond

electoral venues, a phenomenon that testiﬁes

to the expansion and pluralization of spaces

of political judgment in today’s democracies.

One of the most remarkable developments has

been the proliferation of representative claims

that cannot be tested by election. These claims

come from at least two classes of representa-

tives, discussed below. First, there are innu-

merable agents who, in effect, self-authorize:

Advocacy organizations, interest groups, civil

society groups, international nongovernmen-

tal organizations, philanthropic foundations,

journalists, and other individuals, including

elected ofﬁcials functioning as surrogate rep-

resentatives, claim to represent constituen-

cies within public discourse and within col-

lective decision-making bodies. Second, gov-

ernments and other entities are increasingly

designing “citizen representatives”: new, non-

elected forms of representative bodies such as

citizen panels, polls, and deliberative forums

(Warren 2008).

Self-Authorized Representatives

Self-authorized representatives are not new.

Individuals and groups have always petitioned

government and made representative claims

on behalf of interests and values they believe

should have an impact. Interest group lib-

eralism and pluralism assume that this kind

of representation does much, if not most, of

the work of conveying substance (Dahl 1971;

Held 1996, ch. 6). Moreover, history is replete

with unelected leaders and groups making

representative claims in the name of groups,

peoples, or nations precisely because they are

not formally represented. The constitutional

revolutions of the seventeenth century were

induced by groups such as the Levellers. In the

French Revolution, Sieyes declared the exis-

tence of a “third class” that was the nation,

and they proposed themselves as the speakers

or representatives of this class, and thus for

the nation.

It is not the existence of self-authorized

representatives that is new, but rather their

large number and diversity (Warren 2001).

Collectively, self-authorized representatives

organize what might be called the “nega-

tive power of the people” (Urbinati 2006)

and can function as a “counter-politics” when

institutionalized politics fails its representa-

tive purposes (Rosanvallon 2006). Groups

claim to represent women, a particular eth-

nic group, victims of landmines, the im-

poverished and marginalized, parents, and

children (Strolovitch 2006). They claim to

represent a wide variety of goods: human

rights and security, health, education, an-

imals, rainforests, community, spirituality,

safety, peace, economic development, and so

on. They often claim to represent positions

and arguments, functioning as “discursive”

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ANRV344-PL11-17 ARI 17 April 2008 13:12

representatives (Keck 2003; cf. Alcoff 1991,

Dryzek 2000, ch. 4). So representation of

this kind can be targeted and issue-speciﬁc;

it can be ﬂexible and respond to emerg-

ing issues, and particularly to constituencies

that are not territorially anchored. The col-

lectivities representatives seek to inﬂuence

are increasingly diverse: not only govern-

ments and power holders but also public

discourse and culture, as well as powerful

market actors such as corporations. These

kinds of representatives can and do func-

tion beyond borders. Not only do they have

the potential to compensate for electoral

inﬂexibilities—providing high levels of tar-

geted, information-rich representation—but

they also function in areas where no elec-

toral democracy exists: in the global arena,

and in authoritarian contexts (Dryzek 2000,

ch. 5; Grant & Keohane 2005; Saward 2006b;

Bohman 2007; Rubenstein 2007). Indeed,

these representative functions are increasingly

recognized by international organizations.

For instance, the United Nations has begun

recognizing civil society organizations within

its programs as representative of groups that

are not well represented by its member states.

The challenges for democratic theory are to

understand the nature of these representa-

tive claims and to assess which of them count

as contributions to democracy and in what

ways. It is now clear, for example, that self-

authorized representation is not necessarily a

precursor to formal, electoral inclusion but

rather a representative phenomenon in its

own right, which may contribute to democ-

racy in ways that electoral representation can-

not. But unlike electoral mechanisms, the

arena of self-authorized representatives of-

fers no discrete domain of institutional pro-

cesses, and so identifying and assessing their

democratic contributions will take imagina-

tion (D. Castiglione & M.E. Warren, unpub-

lished manuscript).

One way to begin would be to ask the same

generic questions asked of electoral represen-

tation, as suggested above: (a) How are the

representatives authorized by those in whose

name they act? (b) How are they held ac-

countable by those they claim to represent?

With respect to authorization, the nature of

the representative agent will make a differ-

ence. Many self-authorized representatives

are voluntary organizations with followings

and memberships. In such cases, authoriza-

tion might work through members’ votes and

voices. Other kinds of self-authorized repre-

sentatives make claims on behalf of ascriptive,

involuntary constituencies, such as racial or

ethnic groups (Alcoff 1991, Strolovitch 2006).

Then there are agents who claim to represent

those with little or no voice, such as interna-

tional human rights organizations, or organi-

zations representing the interests of children

or animals. Finally, there are many agents—

nongovernmental organizations and founda-

tions, for example—who claim missions on

behalf of others, more or less formally (Grant

& Keohane 2005, Saward 2006b). In these

kinds of cases, initial authorization is inher-

ently problematic; agents claim representative

status and it is up to those who are claimed

as “represented” to say yes or no or to of-

fer alternative accounts. Authorization is, as

it were, reﬂexive and retrospective at best.

Where those who are represented are silent

because of their context—or absent, as in

the case of future generations—the analogy

to electoral authorization breaks down alto-

gether, and we are better off to look at generic

norms and functions of democratic represen-

tation, and then to imagine nonelectoral de-

vices that might serve these norms and func-

tions (Rubenstein 2007).

No doubt because of the absence of for-

mal authorization in most cases, the work

relevant to these new forms of representa-

tion has focused primarily on accountabil-

ity (Ebrahim 2003, Kuper 2004, Held &

Koenig-Archibugi 2005, Castiglione 2006).

There are several potential mechanisms of

accountability. When membership-based vol-

untary organizations claim to represent their

members, for example, members can either

lend their names to the organization, or they

can exit, producing market-like accountability

404 Urbinati ·Warren

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(Goodin 2003). Groups without power may

go public, gaining inﬂuence precisely because

they can justify their representations (Warren

2001, ch. 4). A group may be held to ac-

count indirectly through “horizontal” polic-

ing by other groups, by boards, or by the

media, often through comparisons between

the group’s representative claims (e.g., in its

mission statement) and its actions (Grant &

Keohane 2005). Devices such as performance

indicators, audits, and surveys can add ele-

ments of accountability.

Of course, this list of possible ways and

means of authorization and accountability

only tells us that, in principle, we could de-

velop theories that would stretch to the do-

main of self-authorized representatives. It is

neither a theory in itself, nor a judgment

as to whether or how this emerging do-

main contributes to democratic representa-

tion (cf. Warren 2001, ch. 7; 2003). But one

key issue for democratic theory is increas-

ingly clear, even in advance of well-developed

theories. In the case of electoral representa-

tion, an abstract equality is achieved through

the universal franchise. There is no equiva-

lent equality of inﬂuence or voice in the non-

electoral domain, where the advantages of

education, income, and other unequally dis-

tributed resources are more likely to trans-

late into patterns of over- and underrepre-

sentation (Warren 2001, Cain et al. 2003,

Strolovitch 2006). The many advantages of

self-authorized representation—and they are

considerable—may also result in increasingly

unequal representation.

Citizen Representatives

Self-authorized representation provides a

possible frame for understanding the rapid

evolution of what we call, following Warren

(2008), “citizen representatives” (Rowe &

Frewer 2000, Brown 2006). These forms in-

volve nonelected, formally designed venues

into which citizens are selected or self-

selected for representative purposes. The old-

est form of citizen representative is the court-

room jury, which represents the considered

judgment of peers. We can now add more

recent experiments with citizen juries and

panels, advisory councils, stakeholder meet-

ings, lay members of professional review

boards, representations at public hearings,

public submissions, citizen surveys, deliber-

ative polling, deliberative forums, and focus

groups (Pettit 1999b, Fung 2006b). Citizen

representatives typically function not as alter-

natives but rather as supplements to elected

representative bodies or administrative bod-

ies in areas of functional weakness, usually

related to communication, deliberation, legit-

imacy, governability, or attentiveness to pub-

lic norms and common goods (Brown 2006,

Warren 2008).

Although these representative forms are

typically categorized as participatory democ-

racy, direct democracy, or citizen engage-

ment, these terms are misleading because only

a tiny percentage of citizens are actively in-

volved in any given venue. The more im-

portant properties of these forms of citizen

participation, we think, are representative. A

few citizens actively serve as representatives of

other citizens. What is most interesting about

these new forms is that they have the poten-

tial to represent discursively considered opin-

ions and voices that are not necessarily rep-

resented either through electoral democracy

or through the aggregate of self-authorized

representatives in the public sphere. Fung

(2003) highlights this unique representative

function by referring to these new forms as

“minipublics.” They have the potential to cap-

ture opinions and voices that are not heard,

not necessarily because of group-based dis-

advantage, but because the sum total of ad-

vocacy will often fail to represent unorga-

nized interests and values. Minipublics can

also represent considered public opinion, par-

ticularly opinions representing compromises

and trade-offs in complex or fractious issue

areas. Under the standard model, the work

of deliberatively crafting policies belongs to

the formal political institutions—and these

institutions ﬁnd it increasingly difﬁcult to

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ANRV344-PL11-17 ARI 17 April 2008 13:12

represent considered, legitimate solutions be-

fore the public. Under the citizen representa-

tive model, venues are designed, as it were,

to generate considered opinion. Deliberative

polls, for example, involve a random selec-

tion of citizens who are convened for a week-

end to discuss an issue such as health care

policy. During this time, participants learn

about the issue, deliberate, and then regis-

ter their opinions (Fishkin 1995). The re-

sults should represent what informed pub-

lic opinion would look like, were citizens to

organize, become informed, and deliberate.

Presumably, the results are not simply coun-

terfactual; they represent a statistically rep-

resentative snapshot of the existing but la-

tent preferences of citizens—preferences that

power holders seeking to represent “the peo-

ple” should need to know.

For similar reasons, governments increas-

ingly constitute citizen juries and panels

charged with representing the views of citi-

zens more generally, on a given issue (Brown

2006). In an unusual experiment in non-

electoral representation, the government of

British Columbia (BC) sought to assess the

province’s electoral system and recommend

an alternative in the form of a referen-

dum question. Rather than leaving the job

to the legislature or an expert commission,

the government constituted a “citizens’ as-

sembly” composed of 160 members, selected

from voter rolls though a near-random pro-

cess. The assembly met over a period of

nine months, which included learning, pub-

lic hearings, and deliberations. Professional

representatives—in particular, organized ad-

vocates and professional politicians—were ex-

cluded. They were invited to speak with the

assembly, but the designers assumed that the

public interest would be represented only

if stakeholder advocacy were separated from

learning, listening, and deliberation (Warren

& Pearse 2008). In short, because it combined

authorization by an elected government, ran-

dom selection, a deliberative format, and ac-

countability through a referendum, the BC

Citizens’ Assembly was designed as a counter-

balance to both electoral representation and

self-authorized representation. Its democratic

credentials stemmed from its initial constitu-

tion by elected representatives, its statistically

representative makeup (so as to “look like the

people of BC”), and its submission of its ﬁnal

recommendation directly to the people.

Randomly selected bodies represent a

novel and potentially important new form of

representative—or, more precisely, the redis-

covery of an ancient form (Fishkin 1991, Lieb

2004). Should these forms grow, they will

bring new challenges. Because any randomly

selected deliberative body will inevitably gen-

erate opinions that differ from public opin-

ion, for example, connecting them to broader

publics will require new institutions, yet to

be devised (cf. Fung 2003, Warren & Pearse

2008). At worst, randomly selected bodies

might become tools that elites use to le-

gitimate policies while bypassing electoral

accountability, or they might substitute for

broader citizen judgment and participation

(Ackerman 1991, p. 181). At best, however,

such bodies might function as an important

supplement to existing forms of representa-

tion. They have the potential to link the judg-

ments of political elites much more closely

to public opinion, while correcting for the

inequalities introduced by the rise of self-

authorized representatives.

THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

If elections alone qualify as representative

democracy, then it is hard to ﬁnd good ar-

guments against the critics of contemporary

democracy who seek to unmask the role of

the people as a mere myth, and point to

the oligarchic degeneration and corruption

of electoral democracy. Such criticism de-

pends on an institutional history of repre-

sentative government that has not been sub-

stantively edited since the eighteenth cen-

tury. Moreover, the suggestion that we extend

the meaning of democratic representation

to include the informal, discursive character

of a pluralistic public sphere of associations,

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political movements, and opinions risks look-

ing like an ideological refurbishment, func-

tional to the new legitimation strategies of

political elites. Indeed, almost without ex-

ception, it remains the case that only an

elected political elite has both deliberative and

decision-making power, unlike the citizens,

whose formal freedom to discuss and criticize

proposals and policies does not ensure that

their opinions will affect legislation and pol-

icy making.

Here, however, we draw attention to the

important changes in representative institu-

tions. These changes began with the adop-

tion and extension of universal suffrage, which

generated new forms of political life within so-

ciety, in turn altering the nature and functions

of representative institutions. Dahl’s (2003)

comment on the US case goes precisely to this

point. “Even if some of the Framers leaned

more toward the idea of an aristocratic re-

public than a democratic republic, they soon

discovered that under the leadership of James

Madison, among others, Americans would

rapidly undertake to create a more demo-

cratic republic” (pp. 5–6). Given the complex

and evolving landscape of democracy, how-

ever, neither the standard model of represen-

tation nor the participatory ideal can encom-

pass the democratic ideal of inclusion of all

affected by collective decisions. To move

closer to this ideal, we shall need com-

plex forms of representation—electoral rep-

resentation and its various territorially based

cousins, self-authorized representation, and

new forms of representation that are capable

of representing latent interests, transnational

issues, broad values, and discursive positions.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of

this review.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Dario Castiglione and Nancy Rosenblum for their comments on previous drafts of

this article.

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Annual Review of

Political Science

Volume 11, 2008

Contents

State Failure

Robert H. Bates pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

The Ups and Downs of Bureaucratic Organization

Johan P. Olsen ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp13

The Relationships Between Mass Media, Public Opinion, and Foreign

Policy: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis

Matthew A. Baum and Philip B.K. Potter ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp 39

What the Ancient Greeks Can Tell Us About Democracy

Josiah Ober pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp67

The Judicialization of Mega-Politics and the Rise of Political Courts

Ran Hirschl pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp93

Debating the Role of Institutions in Political and Economic

Development: Theory, History, and Findings

Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp119

The Role of Politics in Economic Development

Peter Gourevitch pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp137

Does Electoral System Reform Work? Electoral System Lessons from

Reforms of the 1990s

Ethan Scheiner ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp161

The New Empirical Biopolitics

John R. Alford and John R. Hibbing pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp183

The Rule of Law and Economic Development

Stephan Haggard, Andrew MacIntyre, and Lydia Tiede ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp205

Hiding in Plain Sight: American Politics and the Carceral State

Marie Gottschalk ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp235

Private Global Business Regulation

David Vogel ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp261

Pitfalls and Prospects in the Peacekeeping Literature

Virginia Page Fortna and Lise Morj´e Howard ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp283

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by University of British Columbia Library on 06/09/08. For personal use only.

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Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas

and Discourse

Vivien A. Schmidt pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp303

The Mobilization of Opposition to Economic Liberalization

Kenneth M. Roberts pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp327

Coalitions

Macartan Humphreys pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp

351

The Concept of Representation in Contemporary Democratic Theory

Nadia Urbinati and Mark E. Warren pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp387

What Have We Learned About Generalized Trust, If Anything?

Peter Nannestad pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp413

Convenience Voting

Paul Gronke, Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum, Peter A. Miller, and Daniel Toffey ppppppppp437

Race, Immigration, and the Identity-to-Politics Link

Taeku Lee ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp457

Work and Power: The Connection Between Female Labor Force

Participation and Female Political Representation

Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp479

Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical Political Science

Dennis F. Thompson pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp497

Is Deliberative Democracy a Falsiﬁable Theory?

Diana C. Mutz ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp521

The Social Processes of Civil War: The Wartime Transformation of

Social Networks

Elisabeth Jean Wood pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp539

Political Polarization in the American Public

Morris P. Fiorina and Samuel J. Abrams ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp563

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 7–11 pppppppppppppppppppppppppp589

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 7–11 pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp591

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Political Science articles may be found

at http://polisci.annualreviews.org/

vi Contents

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by University of British Columbia Library on 06/09/08. For personal use only.

Engaging the Future of Minorities: Political Participation and (Dis)engagement of Roma Minority Youths in Albania

Article

Apr 2025
Polit Pol

Levels of political participation among marginalized groups are essential indicators of the health of a democratic, just, and inclusive society. This study examines the youth of the Roma minority in Albania, investigating perceptions and attitudes regarding their political (dis)engagement and participation, as well as issues of intersectionality in shaping respective patterns. Utilizing a mixed methods model, a survey is followed by individual in‐depth interviews, focus group discussions, and national validation workshops. Findings confirm low levels of political activism and participation among the Roma minority at large and the respective youth in particular, which is at odds with the higher levels of Roma youth activism in the civil society sector. Distrust in politics, prejudice, and discrimination are primary barriers. Addressing them while enhancing educational and economic opportunities can help overcome the impediments to political engagement. Civil society appears to be crucial in promoting best practices/role models and advocating for sustainable results. Related Articles Kostadinova, T., and P. Kostadinova. 2016. “Party Promises, Voter Understanding, and Mandate Responsiveness in East European Politics.” Politics & Policy 44, no. 1: 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12145 . Özer, S., A. G. G. Gülal, and Y. K. Polat. 2023. “The Rule of Law in the Grip of Populist Authoritarianism: Hungary and Poland.” Politics & Policy 51, no. 5: 936–959. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12554 . Zafirovski, M. 2022. “Toward a New Political Democracy Index: Construction, Validation, and Calculation for Individual Societies and Types of Society.” Politics and Policy 50, no. 4: 663–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12488 .

A Little Too Little, A Little Too Late: The Political Impact of Russia’s Anti-Corruption Enforcement

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2025

Similarly to “wars” on drugs and terrorism, the fight against corruption has recently emerged as an attractive political tool. From Argentina and India to the United States and the Philippines, anti-corruption rhetoric has been successfully utilized by political outsiders to challenge establishment candidates. It remains less clear, however, whether anti-corruption enforcement allows incumbent politicians to hold on to power. In this article, we use a comparative subnational design to analyze the impact of corruption prosecutions on electoral support for the president of Russia. By combining original survey data on popular political attitudes and behaviors as well as citizens’ own participation in petty corruption with official statistics on corruption prosecutions, on the one hand, and data on media coverage of regional corruption scandals, on the other, we reveal a small negative effect of anti-corruptionism on voting for Putin. Our data allow us to adjudicate among several theoretical mechanisms that may lead to this effect. We find that, although ordinary Russians dislike corruption and expect the federal government to fight it, Putin’s anti-corruption enforcement has failed to convince the population that he is the right man for the job. Some Russians, we argue, take the Kremlin’s prosecutions as an indicator of the regime’s failure to prevent corruption among its agents, while others resent the administration for trying to score political points through hyped-up and punitive anti-corruptionism.

Finding Space in Politics: Perceptions of Representation Among Dutch Citizens With an Immigration Background

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2025

Representative democracy functions optimally when all citizens can participate, are heard, and feel represented. We know, however, that those interested and satisfied in politics rarely reflect a cross-section of the population. What’s more, the influence exercised by certain groups in a democracy is unevenly distributed, and citizens with an immigration background feel on average less represented politically than citizens without one. This article explores how processes of perceived inclusion and exclusion influence the sense of political representation experienced by Dutch citizens with an immigration background. Our study aims to offer greater insight into perceptions of political representation and gain an understanding of what leads to these experiences. We draw on data from six focus group discussions with people who share the categorical trait of being deemed “different” by the majority society along various dimensions, such as ethnic and religious background, race, postcolonial background, and migration motive (e.g., asylum-seeking). Prior to our analysis, we expected these potential grounds for exclusion to have differing influences on perceived representation and how members of the groups relate to the political institutions. Our results show that descriptive representation is a critical start though not enough for adequate substantive political representation of people with an immigration background. Our respondents felt substantive representation fails in the Netherlands due to a lack of perceived representation in the form of politicians with shared experiences who know what it feels like to be excluded, opposed, and dismissed as problematic.

The impact of social learners on collective decision-making across varying interaction ranges

Article

May 2025
CHAOS SOLITON FRACT

Disaster and political trust: Evidence from the 2017 Mexico city earthquake

Article

May 2025
WORLD DEV

Representation

Chapter

Mar 2025

Nadia Urbinati

This Handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars of constitutional theory, with backgrounds in law, philosophy and political science. Its sixty chapters not only offer an exceptional survey of the field but also provide a major contribution to it. The book explores three main areas. First, the values upheld by a constitution, including rights, freedom, equality, dignity and well-being. Second, the modalities of a constitutional system, such as the separation of powers, democratic representation and the rule of law. Finally, the institutions through which it operates, both legal and political, including courts, elections, parliaments and international organisations. It also considers the challenges confronting constitutional arrangements from growing inequality, populism, climate change and migration.

Silent stakeholders in regulatory policy

Article

Apr 2025

Kati Rantala

Silent stakeholders in regulatory policy In this first of a four-part series, Kati Rantala from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki examines silent stakeholders in regulatory policy – identifying who they are, explaining their significance, and exploring ways to enhance their involvement. The article begins a series of four pieces focusing on silent stakeholders in regulatory policy: who they are, why their position matters, and what can be done to improve it. Generally, silent stakeholders are individuals and groups who remain outside the participatory processes involved in creating regulations that impact them. Insofar as silent stakeholders are affected by regulations, they are relevant stakeholders despite their social status.

Authorised, Accountable and Autonomous? A Comparison of Elected and Non‐Elected Representatives and Their Potential for Democratic Legitimacy

Article

Mar 2025
SCAND POLIT STUD

Karin Fossheim

In contemporary politics, both elected officials and non‐elected actors, such as interest groups, activists, and experts, serve as political representatives. However, the potential for democratic legitimacy likely varies among these different types of representatives, raising questions about their ability to provide proper representation. Consequently, this article first examines different representatives' perceptions of three core practices: authorisation (i.e., acceptance) by, accountability (i.e., the need to explain and justify actions) to, and autonomy (i.e., independence) from constituents. These practices allow constituents to determine whether they support a representative, thereby ensuring democratic legitimacy. Using their perceptions, I compare the democratic potential of elected representatives with that of non‐elected group representatives and non‐elected individual representatives. Based on survey data from representatives in governance networks across 16 European democracies, my findings suggest that all types of representatives generally perceive themselves as authorised, accountable and autonomous, indicating the potential for democratic legitimacy. However, this potential differs among representatives according to the degree of perceived authorisation, accountability and autonomy. I contend that these differences can be explained by variations in the clarity of constituencies rather than by the elected or non‐elected status of the representatives.

In-between worlds: the unsettled politics of child and youth representation in international institutions

Article

Mar 2025
Globalizations

Dicionário ILP+ABRIG de Campos e Conceitos Fundamentais em Relações Institucionais e Governamentais

Book

Full-text available

Mar 2025

Disponível em: https://www.al.sp.gov.br/alesp/biblioteca-digital/obra/?id=25808. Acesso Livre Instituto do Legislativo Paulista Associação Brasileira de Relações Institucionais e Governamentais Dicionário ILP+ABRIG de Campos e Conceitos Fundamentais em RELAÇÕES INSTITUCIONAIS E GOVERNAMENTAIS Organizadores e editores: Any Marise Ortega Eduardo Fayet Autores: Abel Franco Larini Agnes Thaís Sacilotto Andréa Cristina Oliveira Gozetto Ariela Zanetta Arthur Gonçalves Beatriz Freire Caio Cardoso de Moraes Carlos Américo Pacheco Cristina de Miranda Costa Eduardo Fayet Eliezer Ribeiro da Costa Fabiany Moreira Fabrício Araujo Mirandola Graziela Testa Humberto Dantas Karoline Rodrigues de Moraes Manoel Leonardo Santos Pedro Victor Nery Petula Nascimento Rafael Thomaz Favetti Silmara Helena Pereira de Paula Tacyra Valois São Paulo / Brasília 2025 Sumário 1. Fundamentação Relações Institucionais e Governamentais: introdução aos conceitos Rafael Thomaz Favetti 29-38 Lobby e Advocacy: dois elementos das Relações Institucionais e Governamentais Andréa Cristina Oliveira Gozetto 39-52 ________________________________________ 2. Conceitos e temas em RIG Relações Institucionais e Governamentais: escopo da atividade, desafios e perspectivas Fabiany Moreira 55-63 Relações Institucionais e Governamentais e Políticas Públicas Manoel Leonardo Santos Caio Cardoso de Moraes Karoline Rodrigues de Moraes 65-77 ________________________________________ 3. Campos e Aplicações Relações Institucionais e Governamentais no Poder Legislativo Municipal Abel Franco Larini Silmara Helena Pereira de Paula 81-95 Relações Institucionais e Governamentais no Poder Legislativo Estadual Agnes Thaís Sacilotto Eliezer Ribeiro da Costa 97-114 Relações Institucionais e Governamentais no Poder Executivo Municipal Tacyra Valois Pedro Victor Nery 115-134 Relações Institucionais e Governamentais no Poder Executivo Estadual Ariela Zanetta Graziela Testa Humberto Dantas 135-150 Relações Institucionais e Governamentais na Administração Indireta Beatriz Freire Arthur Gonçalves 151-158 Relações Institucionais e Governamentais nas Empresas Públicas Petula Nascimento 159-170 Relações Institucionais na área de Fomento à Pesquisa Carlos Américo Pacheco 171-183 Relações Institucionais na área de Pesquisa em Ciência e Tecnologia Fabrício Araujo Mirandola Cristina de Miranda Costa 185-201

Democracy and Representation: Or, Why Should it Matter Who our Representatives Are?

Chapter

Mar 1998

Anne Phillips

Series Blurb: Oxford Readings in Feminism provide accessible, one-volume guides to the very best in contemporary feminist thinking, assessing its impact and importance in key areas of study. Collected together by scholars of outstanding reputation in their field, the articles chosen represent the most important work on feminist issues, and concise, lively introductions to each volume crystallize the main line of debate in the field. Is there too much gender in politics, too much stereotyping of female and male? Or is there too little gender, too little attention to differences between women and men? Should feminists be challenging male dominance by opening up politics to women? Or is 'women' a fictitious entity that fails to address differences by class or race? Is equality best served by denying differences between the sexes? Or best promoted by stressing the special needs of women? The essays in Feminism and RPolitics answer these questions in a variety of ways, but all see feminism as transforming the way we think about and act in politics. Spanning issues of citizenship and political representation, the ambiguities of identity politics, and the problems in legislating for sexual equality, the readings provide an exciting overview of recent developments. This outstanding collection will be essential reading for any feminist who has doubted the importance of political studies, and any student of politics who has doubted the relevance of feminism.

Situating Democratic Political Accountability

Chapter

Sep 1999

John Dunn

This book examines whether the mechanisms of accountability characteristic of democratic systems are sufficient to induce the representatives to act in the best interest of the represented. The first part of the volume focuses on the role of elections, distinguishing different ways in which they may cause representation. The second part is devoted to the role of checks and balances, between the government and the parliament as well as between the government and the bureaucracy. The contributors of this volume, all leading scholars in the fields of American and comparative politics and political theory, address questions such as, whether elections induce governments to act in the interest of citizens. Are politicians in democracies accountable to voters in future elections? If so, does accountability induce politicians to represent citizens? Does accountability limit or enhance the scope of action of governments? Are governments that violate campaign mandates representative? Overall, the essays combine theoretical discussions, game-theoretic models, case studies, and statistical analyses, within a shared analytical approach and a standardized terminology. The empirical material is drawn from the well established democracies as well as from new democracies.

Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy

Book

Jan 2006

Nadia Urbinati

Political Representation

Book

Mar 2002

F. R. Ankersmit

Nine Diversity and Democracy: Representing Differences

Chapter

Dec 1996

Carol C. Gould

Five Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy

Chapter

Dec 1996

Joshua Cohen

Full Representation, Deliberation, and Impartiality

Chapter

Mar 1998

Roberto Gargarella

It is sometimes assumed that voting is the central mechanism for political decision-making. The contributors to this volume focus on an alternative mechanism, that is decision by discussion or deliberation. The original contributions include case studies based on historical and current instances of deliberative democracy, normative discussion of the merits of deliberation compared to other models of collective decision-making, and studies of the conditions under which it tends to improve the quality of decisions. This volume is characterized by a realistic approach to the issue of deliberative democracy. Rather than assuming that deliberative democracy is always ideal, the authors critically probe its limits and weaknesses as well as its strengths.

Republicanism

Book

Sep 1999

Philip Pettit

The long republican tradition is characterized by a conception of freedom as non‐domination, which offers an alternative, both to the negative view of freedom as non‐interference and to the positive view of freedom as self‐mastery. The first part of the book traces the rise and decline of the conception, displays its many attractions and makes a case for why it should still be regarded as a central political ideal. The second part of the book looks at the sorts of political and civil institutions that would be required in a society in which freedom as non‐domination is systematically fostered. It outlines the causes and policies, the constitutional and democratic forms, and the regulatory controls that a republican state ought to endorse. And it argues for a vision of the state's relation to civil society in which there is no pretence of doing without widespread civility and trust; the argument is that the state ought, at once, to foster and build on such extra‐political foundations.

Deliberation and Constitution Making

Chapter