Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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128<br />
DEMOCRACY TODAY<br />
representation emerge. It should therefore come as no surprise that<br />
accounts of political representation have generally been conceived in<br />
similarly stark terms: either representation of the state or representation<br />
of individuals’ opinions or preferences; or, in other words, the<br />
representation of ‘unity’ – the collective whole and its interests – or<br />
extreme ‘diversity’ – directly tracking the expressed interests of the<br />
represented (usually via some means of aggregation). [2]<br />
With reference to South Africa I argue here that we can enhance<br />
our understanding of free<strong>do</strong>m and representative democracy if we<br />
buck this trend of reducing free<strong>do</strong>m and representation to the level of<br />
either that of the individual or that of the state. Rather, a more realistic<br />
conception of both emerges if we focus our attention on the free<strong>do</strong>m<br />
and representation of groups that cut across not only one another but<br />
also the various ways in which individuals and states are represented.<br />
This is only possible, however, on the basis of a more substantive and<br />
concrete account of free<strong>do</strong>m than is the norm within contemporary<br />
political philosophy, an account in which free<strong>do</strong>m is understood not<br />
exclusively in terms of the lack of humanly-generated impediments<br />
(the liberal position) or living freely within free states (the republican<br />
version), but in terms of free<strong>do</strong>m of action, or more particularly<br />
in terms of the power to act and the requirements for that power. I<br />
then go on to argue that groups can be agents, and even when they<br />
are not agents themselves their representatives give them agency;<br />
and the dynamics of this relationship of representation is one vital<br />
determinant of a group’s free<strong>do</strong>m. The main claim I defend, following<br />
aesthetic accounts of representation, is that the free<strong>do</strong>m of the group<br />
is dependent upon whether or not the representative of the group<br />
can generate the right kinds of new interests and then defend them in<br />
the relevant formal institutions of representation. Representation is<br />
thereby a central component of individuals, groups and states powers<br />
to act. Like individuals and states, since groups can be represented,<br />
they can be more or less free.<br />
2<br />
For examples of the former, see Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. 121, 128, 184; Burke, ‘Speech to<br />
the Electors of Bristol’, in Selected Works of Edmund Burke (Liberty Fund 1999); Rousseau,<br />
Social Contract, pp. 41, 58-65; Siéyès, Political Writings, ed. M. Sonenscher (Hackett 2003).<br />
For examples of the latter, see Dahl, <strong>Democracy</strong> and its Critics (Yale UP 1989); Przeworski,<br />
Stokes and Manin, <strong>Democracy</strong>, Accountability and Representation (CUP 1999), p. 2.