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