Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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efore being represented; instead the act of representing them creates<br />
a new version of the people and their interests, and this creative process<br />
gives representation its dynamism. Political representation is not<br />
designed therefore as a means either to ‘track’ pre-existing interests or<br />
provide a reflection of the people and their interests/identities; ‘rather<br />
it is designed to give the people an image of themselves to reflect on’. [28]<br />
This ‘gap’ between the rulers and ruled is itself filled by groups and<br />
their representatives, and so it is in this gap that the degree of a group’s<br />
free<strong>do</strong>m is therefore played out.<br />
Group Representation and Group Free<strong>do</strong>m<br />
The free<strong>do</strong>m of the group will depend ultimately not on the individual<br />
free<strong>do</strong>m of any of its constitutive members (however that may be measured<br />
or aggregated) but on the relationship of representation that exists<br />
between the group and its representative and the power of the representative<br />
in question. The internal warrant for a representative to act ‘for’ the<br />
group can come from any (or a mix) of the four kinds of representation<br />
outlined above. However, the extent to which the representative (and by<br />
extension the group) is free to act will depend not only on internal warrant,<br />
but also on a number of other powers, capacities and conditions,<br />
such as the power to overcome any internal and external obstacles to<br />
its decisions and actions and its relative power vis-à-vis other representatives.<br />
This relationship between representation and free<strong>do</strong>m is<br />
most obvious in the case of a group with the collective agency to act as a<br />
principal, but given that the principal-agent relation of representation in<br />
groups is the exception rather than the rule, we have to look elsewhere for<br />
the normal relation between group representation and group free<strong>do</strong>m.<br />
This is where the ‘aesthetic’ theory of representation really comes into<br />
its own, particularly with regard to the nature of representation and the<br />
role of representation in the formation of interests.<br />
First, the aesthetic theory of representation establishes that what<br />
matters is not whether representatives establish a mimetic form of<br />
139<br />
FREEDOM, POWER AND<br />
REPRESENTATION<br />
Lawrence Hamilton<br />
28<br />
Vieira and Runciman, Representation, p. 139; Ankersmit, Political Representation (Stanford<br />
UP 2002), pp. 112ff.