The affinity between democracy, representation, and elections has always appeared more fragile rather than firm. The alliance of representation and democracy has been questioned, and the place of elections in democracy and their ability to represent have not been self-explanatory. More distant events as well as recent ones surrounding elections encourage a debate on the topic.
Over the last decades, representative democracy has been scrutinized by scholars and questioned by citizens. Citizens have been expressing their discontent with the performance of representatives and representative institutions, and decreasing voter turnout is considered by scholars one of the symptoms of the crisis, or at least transformation, of democracy.
Bernard Manin’s provocative question in The Principles of Representative Government— “Why do not we practice lot, and nonetheless call ourselves democrats?”—reminds us that the presence of elections did not always define democracy.
The ancient Greeks, and later some Italian republics in the Renaissance era, introduced sortition—filling offices and organs based on a random selection of citizens by lot. Together with the Popular Assembly (ecclesia), sortition was one of the defining attributes of Athenian democracy. However, when modern democracy was established by the end of the 18th century, the restoration of the sortition was never seriously considered, and elections were generally agreed upon as the way forward. Nevertheless, after the fight for universal suffrage throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, elections appeared to lose the allure they once possessed in the eyes of many people, and that initially made them part and parcel of representative democracy. The slogan of the 2010s protest—“We have a vote, but we do not have a voice”—encapsulates the sentiments of disenchantment. Some of the criticism directed at elections pointed toward the loss of the ability to represent the citizens and their interests. Pierre Rosanvallon, who analyzed the declining representative function of elections, has argued that, since contemporary societies have lost an evident class character and become more complex and opaque, electoral results can no longer represent this intricacy. While the observation about the character of contemporary societies can hardly be disputed, before ruling out the ability of elections to represent them, we should inquire what representation is and, more importantly, what it means to democracy.
The “uneasy alliance,” as Hanna Pitkin famously put it, between representation and democracy has attracted scholars’ attention for a long time. However, political thinkers have always been suspicious about their troubling relationship. In the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of participatory democracy struggled to acknowledge any value in representation in democracy. Their concerns were seemingly vindicated, mainly in the 2010s, when citizens manifested profound discontent with how democracy worked, or rather how it did not work, and accused representative institutions of being an accomplice in this. Some scholars even declared “the end of representative politics.” Since the late 1990s, however, scholarship has emerged that takes a radically different stance on representation and its place in democracy. Proponents of the “representative turn” have suggested that democracy is, and in fact should be, unthinkable without representation. Democratic theorists like Nadia Urbinati disputed the idea of representative democracy as a second-best option enforced by the size of modern societies and promoted it as a desirable form of government that is more inclusive than participatory and direct democracy could ever be. This turn resulted in even more intense interest in representation as a concept that needed a thorough rethinking.
For a long time, representation was perceived through the lens of a principal-agent model. In it, constituencies delegated someone to represent their political interests. Representatives then acted in the interest of their respective constituency, which granted them a mandate to do so and held them accountable. One part of the scholarship made a constructivist turn out of this static outlook on representation by asking not only what representation is but what it does. In this vein, scholars have emphasized representation’s previously overlooked constitutive character. This broadened the horizon from the fact of representation to the dynamic process of representing, and thereby constituting, the constituency. This can be described by what Michael Saward, an eminent figure of the constructivist turn, calls claim-making. According to him, for representation to occur, someone has to paint a picture of a constituency and propose someone (who can be themselves) or something as its representative, and subject this claim to the judgment of an audience. Another leading scholar of the constructivist turn, Lisa Disch, suggests thinking of representation in terms of mobilization as it does not merely reflect divisions set in stone in society but helps to create them. The constructivist turn has, therefore, also shifted attention to political actors, who indulge in representative claim-making without striving for institutional mandate. It sparked an interest in non-electoral representation in the forms of nongovernmental organizations, protest or civic movements, and public figures who enter politics claiming to represent a constituency but without the urge to turn this constituency into an electorate and be authorized by it.
While this shift reminds us that representation is not limited to elections, it does not exclude them as a powerful vessel and a critical aspect of the representative process. Regularly held elections allow new divisions to be drawn, new identities and interests to be shaped, new constituencies to be mobilized, and new representatives to be authorized. Each election presents an opportunity to rewrite political and social terrain. As Adam Przeworski has remarked, “Elections are the siren of democracy: Whatever the past, regardless of how disgusted or jaded people are with politics, elections invariably renew hope.”
By the end of 2024, at least 73 national elections will have been held all around the world. However, it seems that elections now evoke anxiety instead of hope as we witness how they can pave the way for leaders who do not recoil from evincing autocratic tendencies. Before the recent US presidential election, the world seemed more anxious than ever, fearing what immediate and long-term aftermath it may result in, regardless of the actual electoral result. The aftermath of the 2020 US presidential election tainted the outlook on what was perceived, despite all its shortcomings, as one of the longest-standing democracies in the world. An attempt, for a few hours successful, to take over the Capitol in defiance of the electoral result shook and puzzled many people who could watch it online in real-time. While elections do not guarantee nonviolence in every part of the world – failings of electoral design in societies with deeply rooted cleavages are testament to this – one would probably least expect violence to erupt in the heart of the American democracy.
This experience may caution us about the importance of representation in democracy, namely its constitutive dimension. How and what kind of constituency does the would-be representative paint, and on what grounds do they justify their claims? When judging representative claims, political theorist Sofia Näsström proposes asking in what spirit are they made. Is it in the spirit of emancipation? Or is it to promote the spirit of fear or distinction? At the same time, the American experience alerts us to the importance of elections. While representation deserves to be studied outside the electoral framework, we should also keep delving into a nuanced debate about the role of elections in democracy since the impacts of elections on societies in various aspects remain tangible. And as it appears, elections may, under different circumstances, work for or against democracy.
Manin, B., The Principles of Representative Government, Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 9.
Rosanvallon, P., Good Government: Democracy Beyond Elections, Harvard University Press, 2018.
Saward, M. The Representative Claim, Oxford University Press, 2010.
Kristina Broučková is PhD student in political science at the Charles University, Prague. She was a Jan Patočka Junior Visiting Fellow at the IWM in 2024.
