Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

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DEMOCRACY TODAY
Third, in any system of representative democracy there will always
therefore be more than one version of ‘the people’ at work. There is
‘the people’ conjured up by formal political representatives in the act of
speaking for them; there are conflicting views of ‘the people’ generated
by group membership and representation; and there are ‘the people’
who pass judgement on these conjuring acts. ‘Indeed, the functioning
of representative democracy depends upon politicians being able to
offer competing versions of the people to the people, in order for the
voters to be able to choose the one they prefer’. [32] It follows from this
that the aesthetic theory of representation is advantageous for a further
reason: it allows us to view representative democracy as a form
of politics that accommodates aspects of all three of the other models.
If groups and their representatives are given greater and greater parity
of power and control (and thus freedom) it is possible to see how
groups and their representatives can have principal-agent, trustee and
interest/identity relationships of representation: the people with an
active role, as the arbiters of representation, act much like principals;
the people with a passive role, as the objects of representation, act
much like the legal fictions characteristic of trusteeship; and in judging
in their active role what they think of the image offered to them
by their various representatives, individual citizens often side with
whom they identify best or with whom they think will defend best
their particular interests.
Finally, none of the versions of the ‘the people’ on offer to ‘the people’
ought ever to succeed in closing the gap between the represented
and their representatives. If they do succeed in closing the gap, or even
aspire to do so, they open up the possibility for tyranny or despotism,
the best recipe for unfreedom. As Ankersmit has argued, the attempt
to close the gap between the people and their representatives is futile
and dangerous: it is not the realization of democracy but an invitation
to tyranny because it thwarts any opportunity for the people to reflect
on and judge the actions of their representatives. [33] As Machiavelli,
Constant and Madison have all argued, this is the case because the effect
of closing the gap – and at the extreme the complete identification of
32
Vieira and Runciman, Representation, p. 141.
33
Ankersmit, Aesthetic Politics, pp. 51-6; and Ankersmit, Political Representation, pp. 112ff.