Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

50
DEMOCRACY TODAY
provide citizens with the means to protest against the direction taken
by the state-apparatus.
Elections in political representation are not about the aggregation
of individual preferences but about the opinions and beliefs of citizens.
Aggregating individual preferences is what happens in direct voting,
whereby every vote means a new beginning. Electing a person on
the basis of his/her ideas, however, creates a narrative. “[…] opinions
create a narrative that links voters through time and makes ideological
accounts a representation of the entire society, its aspirations and
problems” (Urbinati 2006, 31). The moment of elections are just a sequel
to what happened before. The ‘losers’ of one election know that they
have a chance to rephrase their claims in view of the following elections.
The full realization of a political narrative where citizens can
assume the role of counter-power is only possible when elections are
preceded and followed by “a rich political life that promotes competing
political agendas and conditions the will of the lawmakers on an
ongoing basis” (Ibid., 26). The citizens hold their right to “negative
power that allows them to investigate, judge, influence and censure
their lawmakers” (Ibid., 28).
We can understand now how representative democracy is a peaceful
means to accommodate discord in society. The right to discord can
be seen as another aspect of the ideal of equality that is characteristic
of representative democracy. This is what Urbinati calls, with the other
Greek term, isegoria. It is the equal “right [of the citizen] to support
or oppose laws or government policies” (Ibid., 42). It is thus the right
to participate in the political process that takes place at all time and
not just at the very instant of casting a vote. This right is crucial as
not every citizen is equal in practice although everyone formally possesses
legal equality. Practicing the right to be heard when one feels
that the promise of equality (for example through discrimination) is
injured is the basis of politics. In contrast to legal equality, which is
blind to differences, political equality takes differences in to account
because only by doing this there is a chance for “proportional equality
(all ideas should have a chance to be represented, not only those
that get the majority of the votes)” (Ibid., 40). Introducing the time
dimension in the representational relation changes representation