Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

are two aspects that need to be specified in order to come up with
a criterion for legitimacy that starts from the given of the representational
relation. First, in democratic theory authors have defended
opposing views on the room of manoeuvre that the representative
should have at its disposal in order to use the power that is delegated
to him. Some have argued that the representative is better informed
than the represented and should be given the freedom to exercise his
power, i.e. an elitist rendition of representation, while the opposing
view defends the need for close scrutiny of the representative. In the
following I will try to show that an intermediary position is possible
as well. Secondly, one should specify the ones partaking in the representational
relationship, because it is the answer to ‘legitimacy of
what?’. For example, while representation in a ‘government-system’
consists in a relation between state and society, representation in a
‘governance-system’ does not consist in this unique relationship but
consists in a plurality of representation-relationships arising in the
overlapping zones between state, society and market. By making
explicit the underlying representational relationship, and hence ‘who’
the representative and represented are, one can offer a more specific
account of one’s view on legitimacy. To illustrate this: The examples
in the subsection on Governance in search of legitimacy show that there
exist contrasting views on who should be the ones offering input:
Scharpf is thinking of a pre-existing demos (which is more in line with
the ‘government-model’), while others, like Risse, talk about participatory
input of specific groups in specific policy-making issues (which
is more in line with the ‘governance-model’).
Below I will deal with these two aspects of legitimacy in representation.
First I will present two different models of representation,
which have implications for the normative question of the scope of
manoeuvre that should be attributed to the representative. Secondly,
on the basis of the most appropriate descriptive term I will look into a
comprehensive theory of representation (the representative claim) that
offers an untraditional answer to the ‘legitimacy of what’-question.
A rather formalistic way of formulating representation is the
principal-agent relationship. It consists in authorization of the agent
by the principal and accountability of the agent to the principal. The
use of the terms authorization and accountability suggest that the agent
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GOVERNANCE
THROUGH THE LENS OF
REPRESENTATION
Femmy Thewissen