More specifically, political theorists have provided four main views of the concept of representation. Unfortunately, Pitkin never explains how these different views of political representation fit together. At times, she implies that the concept of representation is unified. At other times, she emphasizes the conflicts between these different views, e. Drawing on her flash-bulb metaphor, Pitkin argues that one must know the context in which the concept of representation is placed in order to determine its meaning.
For Pitkin, disagreements about representation can be partially reconciled by clarifying which view of representation is being invoked. Pitkin identifies at least four different views of representation: formalistic representation, descriptive representation, symbolic representation, and substantive representation. For a brief description of each of these views, see chart below. Each view provides a different approach for examining representation.
The different views of representation can also provide different standards for assessing representatives. So disagreements about what representatives ought to be doing are aggravated by the fact that people adopt the wrong view of representation or misapply the standards of representation.
Pitkin has in many ways set the terms of contemporary discussions about representation by providing this schematic overview of the concept of political representation. Brief Description. The institutional arrangements that precede and initiate representation.
Formal representation has two dimensions: authorization and accountability. Main Research Question. What is the institutional position of a representative? The means by which a representative obtains his or her standing, status, position or office. Main Research Questions.
What is the process by which a representative gains power e. Implicit Standards for Evaluating Representatives. No standards for assessing how well a representative behaves. One can merely assess whether a representative legitimately holds his or her position.
The ability of constituents to punish their representative for failing to act in accordance with their wishes e. What are the sanctioning mechanisms available to constituents? One can merely determine whether a representative can be sanctioned or has been responsive.
What kind of response is invoked by the representative in those being represented? Representatives are assessed by the degree of acceptance that the representative has among the represented. The extent to which a representative resembles those being represented. Does the representative look like, have common interests with, or share certain experiences with the represented?
Assess the representative by the accuracy of the resemblance between the representative and the represented. The activity of representatives—that is, the actions taken on behalf of, in the interest of, as an agent of, and as a substitute for the represented. Does the representative advance the policy preferences that serve the interests of the represented?
One cannot overestimate the extent to which Pitkin has shaped contemporary understandings of political representation, especially among political scientists. For example, her claim that descriptive representation opposes accountability is often the starting point for contemporary discussions about whether marginalized groups need representatives from their groups.
In particular, there has been a lot of theoretical attention paid to the proper design of representative institutions e. Amy ; Barber, ; Christiano ; Guinier In this way, theoretical discussions of political representation tend to depict political representation as primarily a principal-agent relationship.
The emphasis on elections also explains why discussions about the concept of political representation frequently collapse into discussions of democracy. Political representation is understood as a way of 1 establishing the legitimacy of democratic institutions and 2 creating institutional incentives for governments to be responsive to citizens.
David Plotke has noted that this emphasis on mechanisms of authorization and accountability was especially useful in the context of the Cold War. For this understanding of political representation specifically, its demarcation from participatory democracy was useful for distinguishing Western democracies from Communist countries.
Those political systems that held competitive elections were considered to be democratic Schumpeter Plotke questions whether such a distinction continues to be useful.
Plotke recommends that we broaden the scope of our understanding of political representation to encompass interest representation and thereby return to debating what is the proper activity of representatives. For this reason, those who attempt to define political representation should recognize how changing political realities can affect contemporary understandings of political representation.
Again, following Pitkin, ideas about political representation appear contingent on existing political practices of representation. Our understandings of representation are inextricably shaped by the manner in which people are currently being represented.
As mentioned earlier, theoretical discussions of political representation have focused mainly on the formal procedures of authorization and accountability within nation states, that is, on what Pitkin called formalistic representation. However, such a focus is no longer satisfactory due to international and domestic political transformations.
So, as the powers of nation-state have been disseminated to international and transnational actors, elected representatives are not necessarily the agents who determine how policies are implemented. Given these changes, the traditional focus of political representation, that is, on elections within nation-states, is insufficient for understanding how public policies are being made and implemented. The complexity of modern representative processes and the multiple locations of political power suggest that contemporary notions of accountability are inadequate.
Grant and Keohane have recently updated notions of accountability, suggesting that the scope of political representation needs to be expanded in order to reflect contemporary realities in the international arena. Michael Saward has proposed an innovative type of criteria that should be used for evaluating non-elective representative claims.
John Dryzek and Simon Niemayer has proposed an alternative conception of representation, what he calls discursive representation, to reflect the fact that transnational actors represent discourses, not real people.
Domestic transformations also reveal the need to update contemporary understandings of political representation. Associational life — social movements, interest groups, and civic associations—is increasingly recognized as important for the survival of representative democracies.
The extent to which interest groups write public policies or play a central role in implementing and regulating policies is the extent to which the division between formal and informal representation has been blurred. The fluid relationship between the career paths of formal and informal representatives also suggests that contemporary realities do not justify focusing mainly on formal representatives.
Given these changes, it is necessary to revisit our conceptual understanding of political representation, specifically of democratic representation. For as Jane Mansbridge has recently noted, normative understandings of representation have not kept up with recent empirical research and contemporary democratic practices.
Promissory representation is a form of representation in which representatives are to be evaluated by the promises they make to constituents during campaigns. For both are primarily concerned with the ways that constituents give their consent to the authority of a representative.
Drawing on recent empirical work, Mansbridge argues for the existence of three additional forms of representation. In anticipatory representation, representatives focus on what they think their constituents will reward in the next election and not on what they promised during the campaign of the previous election.
Thus, anticipatory representation challenges those who understand accountability as primarily a retrospective activity. Finally, surrogate representation occurs when a legislator represents constituents outside of their districts. For Mansbridge, each of these different forms of representation generates a different normative criterion by which representatives should be assessed. All four forms of representation, then, are ways that democratic citizens can be legitimately represented within a democratic regime.
Yet none of the latter three forms representation operates through the formal mechanisms of authorization and accountability. Recently, Mansbridge has gone further by suggesting that political science has focused too much on the sanctions model of accountability and that another model, what she calls the selection model, can be more effective at soliciting the desired behavior from representatives.
According to Mansbridge, a sanction model of accountability presumes that the representative has different interests from the represented and that the represented should not only monitor but reward the good representative and punish the bad. In this way, Mansbridge broadens our understanding of accountability to allow for good representation to occur outside of formal sanctioning mechanisms.
By specifying the different forms of representation within a democratic polity, Mansbridge teaches us that we should refer to the multiple forms of democratic representation. Democratic representation should not be conceived as a monolithic concept. Moreover, what is abundantly clear is that democratic representation should no longer be treated as consisting simply in a relationship between elected officials and constituents within her voting district. Political representation should no longer be understood as a simple principal-agent relationship.
Andrew Rehfeld has gone farther, maintaining that political representation should no longer be territorially based. In other words, Rehfeld argues that constituencies, e. In response to this dilemma, Disch proposes a mobilization conception of political representation and develops a systemic understanding of reflexivity as the measure of its legitimacy. For this reason, the represented should have the ultimate say in judging the claims of the representative.
The task of the representative is to create claims that will resonate with appropriate audiences. Saward therefore does not evaluate representatives by the extent to which they advance the preferences or interests of the represented. Instead he focuses on the institutional and collective conditions in which claim-making takes place. The constructivist turn examines the conditions for claim-making, not the activities of particular representatives. This standpoint does not mean taking at face value whomever or whatever citizens regard as representing them.
There have been a number of important advances in theorizing the concept of political representation. In particular, these advances call into question the traditional way of thinking of political representation as a principal-agent relationship.
She explains each aspect by using a corresponding theme voice, trust, and memory and by drawing on the experiences of marginalized groups in the United States. Relying on the experiences of African-Americans, Williams shows the consistent patterns of betrayal of African-Americans by privileged white citizens that give them good reason for distrusting white representatives and the institutions themselves.
Finally, representation involves mediating how groups are defined. Williams offers her understanding of representation as mediation as a supplement to what she regards as the traditional conception of liberal representation. Williams identifies two strands in liberal representation. Together, the two strands provide a coherent approach for achieving fair representation, but the traditional conception of liberal representation as made up of simply these two strands is inadequate.
In particular, Williams criticizes the traditional conception of liberal representation for failing to take into account the injustices experienced by marginalized groups in the United States. Thus, Williams expands accounts of political representation beyond the question of institutional design and thus, in effect, challenges those who understand representation as simply a matter of formal procedures of authorization and accountability. Another way of reenvisioning representation was offered by Nadia Urbinati , Urbinati argues for understanding representation as advocacy.
For Urbinati, the point of representation should not be the aggregation of interests, but the preservation of disagreements necessary for preserving liberty. Urbinati emphasizes the importance of the former for motivating representatives to deliberate with each other and their constituents. For Urbinati the benefit of conceptualizing representation as advocacy is that it improves our understanding of deliberative democracy. In particular, it avoids a common mistake made by many contemporary deliberative democrats: focusing on the formal procedures of deliberation at the expense of examining the sources of inequality within civil society, e.
In particular, her agonistic conception of representation highlights the importance of disagreements and rhetoric to the procedures, practices, and ethos of democracy. Her account expands the scope of theoretical discussions of representation away from formal procedures of authorization to the deliberative and expressive dimensions of representative institutions.
Other conceptual advancements have helped clarify the meaning of particular aspects of representation. Rehfeld highlights how representatives can be delegates and trustees in at least three different ways. By collapsing these three different ways of being delegates and trustees, political theorists and political scientists overlook the ways in which representatives are often partial delegates and partial trustees.
Other political theorists have asked us to rethink central aspects of our understanding of democratic representation. In Inclusion and Democracy Iris Marion Young asks us to rethink the importance of descriptive representation. Young stresses that attempts to include more voices in the political arena can suppress other voices.
She illustrates this point using the example of a Latino representative who might inadvertently represent straight Latinos at the expense of gay and lesbian Latinos , For Young, the suppression of differences is a problem for all representation , Representatives of large districts or of small communities must negotiate the difficulty of one person representing many.
For Young, the representative should not be treated as a substitute for the represented. Consequently, Young recommends reconceptualizing representation as a differentiated relationship , —; , First, her understanding of representation encourages us to recognize the diversity of those being represented. Second, her analysis of representation emphasizes the importance of recognizing how representative institutions include as well as they exclude. Democratic citizens need to remain vigilant about the ways in which providing representation for some groups comes at the expense of excluding others.
Moreover, based on this way of understanding political representation, Young provides an alterative account of democratic representation. Specifically, she envisions democratic representation as a dynamic process, one that moves between moments of authorization and moments of accountability , The appropriateness of any given representative is therefore partially dependent on future behavior as well as on his or her past relationships. Another insight about democratic representation that comes from the literature on descriptive representation is the importance of contingencies.
Here the work of Jane Mansbridge on descriptive representation has been particularly influential. Mansbridge recommends that we evaluate descriptive representatives by contexts and certain functions. More specifically, Mansbridge , focuses on four functions and their related contexts in which disadvantaged groups would want to be represented by someone who belongs to their group. The need for descriptive representation is contingent on certain functions.
Following Hardin, Suzanne Dovi identifies three democratic standards for evaluating the performance of representatives: those of fair-mindedness, critical trust building, and good gate-keeping. In Ruling Passions , Andrew Sabl links the proper behavior of representatives to their particular office. In particular, Sabl focuses on three offices: senator, organizer and activist. He argues that the same standards should not be used to evaluate these different offices. There are three persistent problems associated with political representation.
Each of these problems identifies a future area of investigation. The first problem is the proper institutional design for representative institutions within democratic polities. The theoretical literature on political representation has paid a lot of attention to the institutional design of democracies.
More specifically, political theorists have recommended everything from proportional representation e. Guinier, and Christiano, to citizen juries Fishkin, However, with the growing number of democratic states, we are likely to witness more variation among the different forms of political representation.
In particular, it is important to be aware of how non-democratic and hybrid regimes can adopt representative institutions to consolidate their power over their citizens. There is likely to be much debate about the advantages and disadvantages of adopting representative institutions. This leads to a second future line of inquiry — ways in which democratic citizens can be marginalized by representative institutions.
Young suggests that representative institutions can include the opinions, perspectives and interests of some citizens at the expense of marginalizing the opinions, perspectives and interests of others. Hence, a problem with institutional reforms aimed at increasing the representation of historically disadvantaged groups is that such reforms can and often do decrease the responsiveness of representatives.
For instance, the creation of black districts has created safe zones for black elected officials so that they are less accountable to their constituents. Any decrease in accountability is especially worrisome given the ways citizens are vulnerable to their representatives. Thus, one future line of research is examining the ways that representative institutions marginalize the interests, opinions and perspectives of democratic citizens. In particular, it is necessary for to acknowledge the biases of representative institutions.
While E. Schattschneider has long noted the class bias of representative institutions, there is little discussion of how to improve the political representation of the disaffected — that is, the political representation of those citizens who do not have the will, the time, or political resources to participate in politics.
The absence of such a discussion is particularly apparent in the literature on descriptive representation, the area that is most concerned with disadvantaged citizens. Anne Phillips raises the problems with the representation of the poor, e. Of course, some have recognized the ways in which interest groups, associations, and individual representatives can betray the least well off e.
Strolovitch, And some Dovi, have argued that descriptive representatives need to be selected based on their relationship to citizens who have been unjustly excluded and marginalized by democratic politics. However, it is unclear how to counteract the class bias that pervades domestic and international representative institutions. It is necessary to specify the conditions under which certain groups within a democratic polity require enhanced representation. Recent empirical literature has suggested that the benefits of having descriptive representatives is by no means straightforward Gay, A third and final area of research involves the relationship between representation and democracy.
Historically, representation was considered to be in opposition with democracy [See Dahl for a historical overview of the concept of representation]. When compared to the direct forms of democracy found in the ancient city-states, notably Athens, representative institutions appear to be poor substitutes for the ways that citizens actively ruled themselves. Barber has famously argued that representative institutions were opposed to strong democracy. In contrast, almost everyone now agrees that democratic political institutions are representative ones.
Bernard Manin reminds us that the Athenian Assembly, which often exemplifies direct forms of democracy, had only limited powers. According to Manin, the practice of selecting magistrates by lottery is what separates representative democracies from so-called direct democracies.
Consequently, Manin argues that the methods of selecting public officials are crucial to understanding what makes representative governments democratic. He identifies four principles distinctive of representative government: 1 Those who govern are appointed by election at regular intervals; 2 The decision-making of those who govern retains a degree of independence from the wishes of the electorate; 3 Those who are governed may give expression to their opinions and political wishes without these being subject to the control of those who govern; and 4 Public decisions undergo the trial of debate 6.
For Manin, historical democratic practices hold important lessons for determining whether representative institutions are democratic. While it is clear that representative institutions are vital institutional components of democratic institutions, much more needs to be said about the meaning of democratic representation.
In particular, it is important not to presume that all acts of representation are equally democratic. After all, not all acts of representation within a representative democracy are necessarily instances of democratic representation.
Henry Richardson has explored the undemocratic ways that members of the bureaucracy can represent citizens. Michael Saward also discusses how existing systems of political representation do not necessarily serve democracy. Does democratic representation require representatives to advance the preferences of democratic citizens or does it require a commitment to democratic institutions? At this point, answers to such questions are unclear. What is certain is that democratic citizens are likely to disagree about what constitutes democratic representation.
One popular approach to addressing the different and conflicting standards used to evaluate representatives within democratic polities, is to simply equate multiple standards with democratic ones.
More specifically, it is argued that democratic standards are pluralistic, accommodating the different standards possessed and used by democratic citizens. Theorists who adopt this approach fail to specify the proper relationship among these standards. Since the s, the earmark has become a common vehicle for sending money to various projects around the country.
Many a road, hospital, and airport can trace its origins back to a few skillfully drafted earmarks. Relatively few people outside Congress had ever heard of the term before the presidential election, when Republican nominee Senator John McCain touted his career-long refusal to use the earmark as a testament to his commitment to reforming spending habits in Washington. As the country sank into recession and Congress tried to use spending bills to stimulate the economy, the public grew more acutely aware of its earmarking habits.
Congresspersons then were eager to distance themselves from the practice. In fact, the use of earmarks to encourage Republicans to help pass health care reform actually made the bill less popular with the public. In , after Republicans took over the House, they outlawed earmarks. But with deadlocks and stalemates becoming more common, some quiet voices have begun asking for a return to the practice. They argue that Congress works because representatives can satisfy their responsibilities to their constituents by making deals.
The earmarks are those deals. Are earmarks a vital part of legislating or a corrupt practice that was rightly jettisoned? Pick a cause or industry, and investigate whether any earmarks ever favored it, or research the way earmarks have hurt or helped your state or district, and decide for yourself. Follow-up activity: Find out where your congressional representative stands on the ban on earmarks and write to support or dissuade him or her.
Consider, for example, the passage of the ACA in The desire for comprehensive universal health care had been a driving position of the Democrats since at least the s. During the campaign, that desire was so great among both Democrats and Republicans that both parties put forth plans. When the Democrats took control of Congress and the presidency in , they quickly began putting together their plan.
Soon, however, the politics grew complex, and the proposed plan became very contentious for the Republican Party. Nevertheless, the desire to make good on a decades-old political promise compelled Democrats to do everything in their power to pass something. They offered sympathetic members of the Republican Party valuable budgetary concessions; they attempted to include allocations they hoped the opposition might feel compelled to support; and they drafted the bill in a purposely complex manner to avoid future challenges.
These efforts, however, had the opposite effect. The more Democrats dug in, the more frustrated the Republicans became.
In , the extended debates and legislative maneuvering in Congress over the proposed health care reform bill triggered a firestorm of disapproval from the Republicans and protests from their supporters. In many cases, hyperbole ruled the day. The Republican opposition, which took control of the House during the midterm elections, promised constituents they would repeal the law. Their attempts were complicated, however, by the fact that Democrats still held the Senate and the presidency.
Yet, the desire to represent the interests of their constituents compelled Republicans to use another tool at their disposal, the symbolic vote. During the th and th Congresses, Republicans voted more than sixty times to either repeal or severely limit the reach of the law. And if they did, he would certainly have vetoed them. But it was important for these representatives to demonstrate to their constituents that they understood their wishes and were willing to act on them.
Historically, representatives have been able to balance their role as members of a national legislative body with their role as representatives of a smaller community.
The Obamacare fight, however, gave a boost to the growing concern that the power structure in Washington divides representatives from the needs of their constituency. This has exerted pressure on representatives to the extent that some now pursue a more straightforward delegate approach to representation. Indeed, following the election, a handful of Republicans began living in their offices in Washington, convinced that by not establishing a residence in Washington, they would appear closer to their constituents at home.
The concept of collective representation describes the relationship between Congress and the United States as a whole. That is, it considers whether the institution itself represents the American people, not just whether a particular member of Congress represents his or her district. Predictably, it is far more difficult for Congress to maintain a level of collective representation than it is for individual members of Congress to represent their own constituents.
Not only is Congress a mixture of different ideologies, interests, and party affiliations, but the collective constituency of the United States has an even-greater level of diversity. Nor is it a solution to attempt to match the diversity of opinions and interests in the United States with those in Congress. Indeed, such an attempt would likely make it more difficult for Congress to maintain collective representation. Its rules and procedures require Congress to use flexibility, bargaining, and concessions.
Yet, it is this flexibility and these concessions, which many now interpret as corruption, that tend to engender the high public disapproval ratings experienced by Congress. After many years of deadlocks and bickering on Capitol Hill, the national perception of Congress is near an all-time low.
According to Gallup polls, Congress has a stunningly poor approval rating of about 16 percent. This is unusual even for a body that has rarely enjoyed a high approval rating. For example, for nearly two decades following the Watergate scandal in the early s, the national approval rating of Congress hovered between 30 and 40 percent. The reason has to do with the remarkable ability of many in the United States to separate their distaste for Congress from their appreciation for their own representative.
As decades of polling indicate, few events push congressional approval ratings above 50 percent. Indeed, when the ratings are graphed, the two noticeable peaks are at 57 percent in and 84 percent in War has the power to bring majorities of voters to view their Congress and president in an overwhelmingly positive way.
It has declined fairly steadily ever since, reaching a low of 9 percent in November , just after the federal government shutdown in the previous month. Nevertheless, all things being equal, citizens tend to rate Congress more highly when things get done and more poorly when things do not get done. Millions were suffering economically, out of work, or losing their jobs, and the idea that Congress was busy passing large stimulus packages, working on finance reform, and grilling unpopular bank CEOs and financial titans appealed to many.
Approval began to fade as the Republican Party slowed the wheels of Congress during the tumultuous debates over Obamacare and reached a low of 9 percent following the federal government shutdown in October A deficit is what results when Congress spends more than it has available. It then conducts additional deficit spending by increasing the national debt. Many modern economists contend that during periods of economic decline, the nation should run deficits, because additional government spending has a stimulative effect that can help restart a sluggish economy.
Despite this benefit, voters rarely appreciate deficits. They see Congress as spending wastefully during a time when they themselves are cutting costs to get by. The disconnect between the common public perception of running a deficit and its legitimate policy goals is frequently exploited for political advantage. For example, while running for the presidency in , Barack Obama slammed the deficit spending of the George W.
Following the election of President Obama and the Democratic takeover of the Senate, the concern over deficit spending shifted parties, with Republicans championing a spendthrift policy as a way of resisting Democratic policies. Find your representative at the U. House website and then explore his or her website and social media accounts to see whether the issues on which your representative spends time are the ones you think are most appropriate. However, most representatives combine the two approaches and apply each as political circumstances demand.
Representation can also be considered in other ways. Collective representation is the extent to which the institutional body of Congress represents the population as a whole. Despite the incumbency advantage and high opinion many hold of their own legislators, Congress rarely earns an approval rating above 40 percent, and for a number of years the rating has been well below 20 percent.
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