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