Trata-se de relacionar as duas posições concorrentes que pautaram o debate sobre representação e democracia na filosofia moderna. Em um primeiro momento, reconstruiremos a crítica à representação, feita por Jean-Jacques Rousseau, no Contrato social (1762). A incompatibilidade entre democracia e representação postulada neste livro apoia-se nos seguintes pressupostos: 1) a soberania consiste unicamente na vontade; 2) a representação é uma forma de delegação. Em um segundo momento, investigaremos a defesa da democracia representativa, feita por John Stuart Mill, em Considerações sobre (...) o governo representativo (1861) e destacaremos como Mill busca rebater a crítica à representação feita por Rousseau. Para que pudesse elaborar o conceito de representação democrática, Mill precisou problematizar os dois pressupostos do Contrato social. Como resultado deste esforço, Mill postulou as seguintes teses: 1) a soberania engloba não só a vontade, mas também o juízo; 2) a representação não precisa necessariamente redundar na delegação do poder político do representado para o representante, donde a possibilidade de uma democracia representativa e participativa. (shrink)

In recent decades, theories of representation have undergone a constructivist turn, as many theorists no longer view the represented subject as prior to but rather as an effect of representation. Whereas some critics have claimed that lacking an ontologically pre-given subject undermines the theory of representation, many democratic theorists have sought to reconceptualize representation and its democratic possibilities by turning away from ontological questions altogether. By focusing instead on how representatives come to know the public interest, many scholars now contend (...) that an epistemological account best explains how political representation can foster democratic participation. Yet, theorists of representation have not assessed whether this turn to epistemology has overcome the ontological problems that initially motivated it. This article tracks epistemological defenses of representation to outline two models of political representation that attempt to tackle the epistemological problem of constituent interest without positing a foundational ontology of the subject. I argue that both theoretical tendencies ultimately remain caught in the problems of ontology, thereby undercutting their normative aspirations to foster political participation. Turning to Hannah Arendt’s comments on public interest and her writings on council democracy, the article retheorizes the concept of political representation to avoid the ontological problems that beset current accounts. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Das Internet bietet die Möglichkeit, eine beliebig große Anzahl von Personen durch unterschiedliche Formen der Deliberation und Beschlussfassung politisch einzubinden. Insbesondere im kommunalen Kontext wird die Online-Partizipation – etwa im Rahmen städtischer Bürgerhaushalte – bereits vielfach als Mittel erprobt, um die soziale Akzeptanz und Legitimität politischer Entscheidungen zu erhöhen. Die Legitimität demokratischer Verfahren hängt neben anderen Faktoren maßgeblich von der Konstitution des Demos und der damit festgelegten Allokation der Teilnahmerechte ab. In historischer Perspektive hat vor allem die Exklusion bestimmter (...) Gruppen, insbesondere von Frauen, Besitzlosen oder nichtweißen Personen, die Legitimität klassischer Offline-Verfahren, wie z. B. Parlamentswahlen, in Frage gestellt. Die neuen Formen der Online-Partizipation bergen hingegen – so die zentrale These des Aufsatzes – die Gefahr der Über-Inklusivität, weil sie häufig auf jegliche Zugangsbeschränkung verzichten. Selbst wenn die Verfahren, wie in der Praxis üblich, einen konsultativen Charakter haben und die politischen Entscheidungsträger formal nicht binden, führt ihre Offenheit zu Legitimationsproblemen. Daraus entsteht die Notwendigkeit, normative Kriterien für die Vergabe von Partizipationsrechten zu entwickeln, die den Besonderheiten der Online-Deliberation angemessen Rechnung tragen. (shrink)

This paper discusses the myths regarding both the conceptualization and the expected effects that are implicitly or explicitly presented in analyses of the so-called ‘democratic innovations’, that is, the new institutions that aim to increase public participation beyond regular elections. It is argued that these myths, together with the (fictitious) confrontation between direct and indirect politics, have generated false oppositions and reductionisms that mask the debate and limit empirical approximations to democratic innovation. A research agenda based on the concept of (...) ‘participatory ecologies’ is suggested as a way to gain an understanding of the mechanisms of participation in a systematic way.Este artículo analiza los mitos que se han construido, tanto en un plano conceptual como de efectos esperados, en torno a las denominadas innovaciones democráticas, entendidas como instituciones destinadas a incrementar la participación ciudadana más allá de las elecciones. Argumentamos que tanto estos mitos como la (ficticia) confrontación entre política directa e indirecta ha generado falsas oposiciones y reduccionismos que enmascaran el debate y limitan el estudio empírico de la innovación democrática. Una agenda de investigación basada en el concepto de ecologías participativas se sugiere para el entendimiento de los mecanismos de participación en forma sistemática. (shrink)

The ‘constructivist turn’ in political representation literature has clarified that representation is crucial in forging identities – through the creation of ideological and symbolic representations that mobilize and coalesce otherwise scattered and undefined social forces – and thus also why it is essentially an interpretative and performative activity. In this article I argue that, as a consequence of this emphasis on interpretation and performativity, this approach makes clear why the ethos of representatives is important in representation. To prove this, I (...) employ some insights from rhetoric. Rhetorical persuasion and democratic representation, indeed, call for a similar kind of judgment, as they both need to mediate between opposing exigencies: rhetoric between attentiveness to the specificity of the audience and the creation of new beliefs, and representation between being responsive to specific interests and giving them a new articulation. Mediating this tension requires an exercise of judgment that, being directed toward the future, inevitably introduces uncertainty into the relation. This is why both in rhetoric and representation the ethos is an essential element. However, as I argue in the conclusion, the personal qualities that should be considered relevant here are above political qualities, rather than technical or moral ones. (shrink)

Does the politicization of international authority help to reduce democratic deficits beyond the state? In this paper I argue that politicization provides a useful springboard for remedying democratic deficits at the EU and global level. Despite this promise, there are a range of concerns that inhibit a direct relationship between politicization and increased democratic legitimacy. The paper unpacks what politicization is and how it might relate to democratic legitimacy. It then argues that problems surrounding representation – in particular the constructivist (...) view of representation – complicates this relationship. Significantly the notion of mobilization generates suspicions of democratic representational legitimacy. In response, the paper details a framework for assessing the democratic legitimacy of representative claims under conditions of politicization that responds to the aforementioned concerns. This framework is briefly applied to the cases of TTIP and TPP to show its merits. (shrink)

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other related, yet ultimately different, (...) modes of political illegality. The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of... (shrink)

Changing patterns of political participation observed by political scientists over the past half-century undermine traditional democratic theory and practice. The vast majority of democratic theory, and deliberative democratic theory in particular, either implicitly or explicitly assumes the need for widespread citizen participation. It requires that all citizens possess the opportunity to participate and also that they take up this opportunity. But empirical evidence gathered over the past half-century strongly suggests that many citizens do not have a meaningful opportunity to participate (...) in the ways that many democratic theorists require, and do not participate in anything like the numbers that they believe is necessary. This paper outlines some of the profound changes that have been experienced by liberal democratic states in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, changes which are still ongoing, and which have resulted in declines in citizens participation and trust, the marginalisation of citizens from democratic life, and the entrenchment of social and economic inequalities which have damaged democracy. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom in rejecting the idea that the future of democracy lies in encouraging more widespread participation. The paper takes seriously the failure of the strategies adopted by many states to increase participation, especially among the poor, and suggests that instead of requiring more of citizens, we should in fact be requiring less of them. Instead of seeking to encourage more citizen participation, we should acknowledge that citizens will probably not participate in the volume, or in the ways, many democratic theorists would like, and that therefore we need an alternative approach: a regime which can continue to produce democratic outcomes, and which satisfies the requirements of political equality, in the absence of widespread participation by citizens. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the “spillover thesis” which constitutes a pillar of much of contemporary participatory democratic theory; specifically, we assess the claim that workplace democratization leads to a higher degree of political participation amongst labourers. The paper analyses the thesis as formulated by Carole Pateman, including its later revisions triggered by ambiguous results of empirical studies aiming to (dis)prove it. The spillover thesis is then confronted with important methodological and theoretical critiques, the upshot being that in order to be (...) able to arrive at determinate conclusions, more carefully designed empirical studies are needed. Normatively speaking, however, blame can always be laid on the wider environment of market economy and/or representative democracy, to the effect that the spillover thesis is both difficult to disprove and radically subversive. Given the recent dominance of deliberative democratic theory which incorporates a strong participatory element, we finally discuss whether a recent innovation – namely, the concept of deliberative systems – could be fruitfully employed as a flexible umbrella-type framework for the spillover thesis and the participatory ideals related to it. (shrink)

Bruno Latour purports to transform political ecology by turning attention away from presumed damages to ‘nature’ and toward unproblematised scientific and social processes through which people and things stabilise their identities. He extends the categories of political representation to those processes in hopes of founding a ‘parliament of things’. Such an assembly would settle the terms of coexistence between people and things without undue deference to scientific knowledge claims and without a priori judgments about nature's value. This article challenges Latour's (...) reliance on the concept of representation on three grounds. First, his theory of subject-object ‘entanglements’ undermines traditional justifications of representation, and offers no convincing ethical limits to put in their place. Second, Latour describes environmental issues in ways that are inconsistent with representation by discrete spokespersons. Third, Latour's open-ended proceduralism provides no way of creating overarching, legitimate norms capable of resolving environmental disputes. Occasionally, however, Latour hints at constitutionally structured reforms that might help overcome these objections – provided that they drew lessons from theories of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Despite the increasing attention devoted to the theme of political judgment, the question of how to theorize judgment as specifically democratic remains elusive. This article shows the promise of Spinoza for approaching such a vexing issue. Through a combined reading of his major political and metaphysical texts, I develop a new concept of political judgment that I call ‘citizen jurisprudence’. Citizen jurisprudence is at once a right and a power that is internally related to the ‘power of the people’. Put (...) another way, citizen jurisprudence is the figure and effect of democracy understood in an expansive sense: not solely as a state form but as an activity of equally free individuals determining the sense and the scope of common affairs. An account of this concept simultaneously nuances Spinoza’s current profile as a political thinker and contributes to efforts within contemporary political theory to recuperate the radical potential of judgment as a mode of democratic agency. (shrink)

I elicit some of Foucault’s insights to provide a more realistic picture than is the norm in social and political theory of how best to identify and overcome domination. Foucault’s vision is realized best, I argue, by combining his account with two related conceptions of domination based on human needs and realistic accounts of politics that focus on agency, power and interests. I defend a genealogical, inter-subjective account of how the determination of needs and interests forms the basis of ascertaining, (...) on a continuum, the extent to which relations of power generate states of domination. To that end I propose institutional changes that would empower citizens in positive and negative ways: power over legislation in district assemblies and via veto and repeal; real control over representatives through various means; and decennial constitutional plebiscites. (shrink)

In Federalist 10 James Madison drew a functional distinction between “parties” (advocates for factional interests) and “judgment” (decision-making for the public good) and warned of the corrupting effect of combining both functions in a “single body of men.” This paper argues that one way of overcoming “Madisonian corruption” would be by restricting political parties to an advocacy role, reserving the judgment function to an allotted (randomly-selected) microcosm of the whole citizenry, who would determine the outcome of parliamentary debates by secret (...) ballot—a division of labour suggested by James Fishkin’s experiments in deliberative polling. The paper then defends this radical constitutional proposal against Bernard Manin’s (1997) claim that an allotted microcosm could not possibly fulfil the “consent” requirement of Natural Right theory. Not only does the proposal challenge Manin’s thesis, but a 28 th Amendment implementing it would finally reconcile the competing visions that have bedevilled representative democracy since the Constitutional Convention of 1787. (shrink)

This article compares the ‘enfranchisement lottery’, a novel method for allocating the right to vote, with universal suffrage. The comparison is conducted exclusively on the basis of the expected consequences of the two systems. Each scheme seems to have a relative advantage. On the one hand, the enfranchisement lottery would create a better informed electorate and thus improve the quality of electoral outcomes. On the other hand, universal suffrage is more likely to ensure that elections are seen to be fair, (...) which is important for political stability. This article concludes that, on balance, universal suffrage is prima facie superior to the enfranchisement lottery. Yet the analysis shows that the instrumental case for the ‘one person, one vote’ principle is less conclusive than democratic theorists usually suppose. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta e analisa as principais teses que constituem a concepção de educação cívica de Rousseau. Além disso, faz-se considerações críticas acerca da proposta político-pedagógica de Rousseau, apontando tanto para elementos equivocados e potencialmente problemáticos, quanto indicando aspectos relevantes para se pensar questões relativas a política e a educação.

Partindo de uma visada crítica das chamadas “teorias políticonormativas”, este artigo rediscute a questão das relações entre política e moralidade sob regimes democráticos e explora a hipótese de que o esforço mesmo de realização de seus valores fundamentais, ao produzir efeitos não intencionados – um “excedente de sentido” – induz esses regimes a um movimento de fuga da moralidade. Movimento contraditório, apto a produzir um mal-estar difuso com a própria democracia. Contudo, o artigo explora a hipótese complementar de que é (...) exatamente por meio dessa contradição que emergem as possibilidades de um campo próprio da ação política. Palavras-chave: Moralidade. Excedente de sentido. Política democrática. (shrink)

Este trabalho analisa o conceito de esperança nas obras de Condorcet e Kant. Defende-se que o conceito de esperança no progresso da humanidade é de fundamental importância para a compreensão da filosofia política de ambos os autores. Por um lado, esperança oferece um horizonte de sentido que protege suas propostas políticas de visões de mundo antagônicas; por outro, ela se incorpora no próprio projeto político tendo ao mesmo tempo a função de motivação e de criação de instituições políticas com caráter (...) pedagógico. This paper analyses the concept of hope in the works of Condorcet and Kant. It will be advocated that the concept of hope in the progress of humanity is of great importance for the comprehension of the political philosophy of both authors. On the one hand, hope gives a horizon of meaning to political philosophy that protects it against antagonistic world views. On the other hand, hope is incorporated into the political philosophy itself having, at once, a motivational function and creation of political institutions with a pedagogical character, as well. (shrink)

The intensifying speed-up of contemporary economic, social and political life troubles democratic theorists because they assume that democracy depends on patience. This article turns to Martin Luther King, Jr. to challenge democratic theory’s temporal bias. I argue that King demonstrates that impatience, too, is a democratic virtue. Building on impatient knowledge, democratic impatience aides in overcoming undemocratic legacies, fosters democratic subjectivity and agency, ensures political accountability, and creates a more inclusive practice of democratic belonging. I furthermore show that King reveals (...) the temporal sophistication of democratic impatience, thereby contradicting the prevailing interpretation of self-defeating instantaneousness. In particular, democratic impatience’s temporal origins of centuries of injustice, human mortality, and the context of social acceleration provide a mature impetus for democratic action. Moreover, democratic impatience persists over time. On the one hand, it does so because injustice persists. On the other hand, democratic impatience contains within itself a subordinate operational patience. In other words, democratic impatience is always already somewhat ‘patient.’ King’s democratic impatience therefore not only redresses democratic theory’s shortcomings, but it also generates a renewed sense of democratic possibility in our age, as democratic impatience is well suited to help us in redressing the crises and injustices deepened or generated by social acceleration. (shrink)

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Many have pointed to Blade Runner's humanization of its 'replicants' as a compelling statement against exploitation and domination. I argue, however, that the film has another kind of agenda: a Rousseauvian concern about the dangers of representation, about confusing the imitation with the real and confusing the consumption of images with political action. Rather than humanizing the other, Blade Runner's central concern is to humanize our own social and political relationships, which are in danger of (...) falling into the same trap Rousseau outlined in his Letter to D'Alembert. To do so, we must learn to appreciate the difference between mutual surveillance and mutual regard. To live freely in any regime, we must understand the dangers of representation, even if, in a large state, we must continue to make use of it. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with John Stuart Mill’s democratic theory. In chapter I, I examine the relations between political philosophy and political theory and science before providing a detailed outline of the aims of the dissertation. In chapter II, I argue that in order to reconcile the concepts of progress and equality within a utilitarian theory, a Millian political system needs to devise institutions that promote general happiness, protect individual autonomy, safeguard society from mediocrity. Chapter III discusses what different authors (...) have said about Mill and liberty, then explores James Mill’s theory of education and Coleridge’s influence on John Stuart Mill’s thought. I conclude by criticising Richard Arneson’s interpretation according to which the Considerations and On Liberty are inconsistent, and some of Gregory Claeys’ conclusions on Mill and paternalism. Chapter IV explores the methodology of the social sciences and the philosophy of history as found in Mill’s writings; then it considers Mill’s thought in regard to his father’s Radical proposals. I also discuss at some length the idea of the tyranny of the majority. Chapter V begins with a discussion of Hanna Pitkin’s theory of representation. I then provide a critical account of Richard Krouse and Nadia Urbinati’s interpretations of Mill. I conclude by arguing that, in a Millian democracy, the higher is the degree of complexity or the need for expertise in dealing with affairs, the greater is the bearing of the principle of competence in assessing whether a representative should act as a trustee or a delegate. I also introduce the idea of rational debate as a sort of ‘influence multiplier’, arguing that this would help to make a democracy rational and effective along Millian lines. In the last two chapters, I stress the relevance of Mill’s political philosophy as for some contemporary issues (nationalism, European federalism, current social and economic changes) while suggesting some potential further investigations, and summarise my conclusions. (shrink)

In many countries patient involvement is high on the healthcare policy agenda, which includes patient representation in collective decision-making. Patient organizations are generally considered to be important representatives of patients. Other actors also claim to represent patients in decision-making, such as politicians, healthcare professionals, and client advisory councils. In this paper we take a broad view of patient representation, examining all the actors claiming to represent patients in the Dutch debate on the decentralization of care. We conclude that variety in (...) forms of representation could help do justice to the variety of patient preferences. In addition we conclude that in order to ensure the democratic quality of patient representation, actors making representative claims have to reflect on how their claims relate to each other and how they can ensure authorization and accountability in the representative relationship with those they claim to represent. (shrink)

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Many have pointed to Blade Runner's humanization of its 'replicants' as a compelling statement against exploitation and domination. I argue, however, that the film has another kind of agenda: a Rousseauvian concern about the dangers of representation, about confusing the imitation with the real and confusing the consumption of images with political action. Rather than humanizing the other, Blade Runner's central concern is to humanize our own social and political relationships, which are in danger of (...) falling into the same trap Rousseau outlined in his Letter to D'Alembert. To do so, we must learn to appreciate the difference between mutual surveillance and mutual regard. To live freely in any regime, we must understand the dangers of representation, even if, in a large state, we must continue to make use of it. (shrink)