Political Representation as a Democratic Process

Abstract

In what follows I inquire into the conditions that make representation democratic, or a mode of political participation that can activate a variety of forms of citizen control and oversight. I make three main claims: that representation belongs to the history and practice of democratization; that different theories of representation are possible depending on the relationship between political institutions and social configurations; and that this relationship calls attention to the role of ideology and partisanship in politics, an aspect that contemporary political theory fails to appreciate with its deep-rooted rationalist approach to democratic deliberation. In order to give the reader the sense of my theoretical approach to political representation in democratic society, I will dedicate some introductory reflection to outlining the broader project to which this article belongs.2 The line of argument that unifies my broader project and that constitutes the context of what follows is that representative democracy is an original form of government that is not identical with electoral democracy. This thesis questions the assumptions about immediacy and existential presence that underwrite the idea that direct democracy is the more democratic political form and representation an expedient or second best. Building upon a critical reading of the seminal work of Hanna Pitkin and Bernard Manin, I argue that political representation is a circular process connecting state and society (that is to say an expression of citizenship in its comprehensive sense). As such, representative democracy is neither aristocratic in