Political representation: concepts, theories and practices in historical perspective

Abstract

The concept of representation is, without doubt, at the centre of what can be termed the most important political invention of the last two centuries, that is to say, liberal democracy. As such, it has animated vigorous theoretical and normative debates, has been used as a powerful flag in crucial political struggles (such as those for the extension of suffrage, or today for gender equality) and has inspired fundamental institutional arrangements at national, sub-national and also supra-national level. As a synthetic metaphor for delicate and complex political relations between rulers and the ruled it is a fundamentally polysemic and evocative rather than empirically analytic concept. It is not a surprise, therefore, that its meaning(s) have been highly debated throughout its history, which began well before the breakthrough of contemporary democracy. We will therefore start by briefly tracing ‘pre-democracy’ discussions on political representation, move to the issue of the relationship between representation and contemporary democracy and then devote our attention to how the debate on political representation has been influenced by the seminal work of Hanna Pitkin (1967). Next, we will discuss how her account has been discussed with regard to several dimensions, such as the direction of the relationship between represented and representatives, the proper object of representation, the normative criteria for evaluating representation and the context in which political representation takes place.