Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

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DEMOCRACY TODAY
identity between themselves and the groups they represent or between
rulers and ruled, that is, that they provide a copy of the people and
their interests, but that they give the people an image of themselves
to reflect on. This is why the most important forms of representation
have developed within the gap that representation itself opens up
between the government and the people. [29] To this I add the idea that
it is possible to see this best if we analyse in any given context how
this gap is filled by a variety of group representatives with varying
relations of power between themselves and those that govern, power
relations that are characterised by more or less domination and thus
enable more or less freedom as power for the representatives and
thereby the groups in question. The relation between freedom, power
and domination discussed above is thus better conceived here as one
regarding the relationship between groups and their representatives
and these representatives and the rulers.
Second, needs and interests are never pre-existing and fixed in
politics. On the contrary, they require identification, articulation,
expression, evaluation and so on. Needs and interests are more objective
than wishes, opinions and preferences, in that they are more easily
detached from any specific group of ‘holders’ (e.g. the collective interest
in a sustainable environment), but they are never totally unattached
either. Like needs, interests have a dualistic nature – they are attached
and unattached, subjective and objective – and this lies at the heart of the
ambiguities of any form of interest group representation. [30] Moreover,
individual and group interests are more often than not constructed in
the process of representation itself. In other words, pace the assumptions
of both ‘aggregative’ and ‘deliberative’ models of democracy, needs
and interests are never simply objective givens waiting to be tracked
through representation. [31] They often only become present as a result
of representation, that is, they may only be experienced, identified and
29
Ankersmit, Aesthetic Politics; Ankersmit, Political Representation; Lefort, Democracy and
Political Theory (University of Minnesota Press 1988).
30
Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (University of California Press 1967).
31
Despite many other differences, ‘aggregative’ and ‘deliberative’ models share the
assumption that legitimate representation must track interests. For more on the problems
of both models, see Hayward, ‘On representation and democratic legitimacy’, in Shapiro
et al, Political Representation, pp. 111-35; Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (Verso 2000); and
Wolin, ‘Fugitive Democracy’, in Benhabib (ed.) Democracy and Difference.