Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

from something that is an instant of delegation into a political process
of representation.
This theory brings with it the second surplus. Representation is
coupled with a temporal framework, or a temporal narrative. In this
way representation itself becomes the telling of a story, the process
of history, as the circular relationship between state and society is a
never-ending play taking place from election to election.
Power and Politics
After having pointed to the two surpluses that are characteristic of
representative democracy, I will now look at what it means for the role
of power and for our understanding of politics. The characterization
of representation as having constitutive capacities makes us aware of
the “dark side” of political representation (Saward 2006, 314). Giving
decision-making capacities to a representative is the basic trait of the
creation of power. For Ankersmit power finds its origin in the aesthetic
gap between the ruler and the ruled (1996, 105). [8] As representation
is suited with the power to create and possibly transform the identity
of the represented it also disposes of the power to misrepresent and
to commit a coup on the identity of the represented. It is a thin line
between using and abusing the power to represent.
It is clear that the juridical and institutional theories of representation
leave too much space to the representative to (ab)use the
delegated power. The contract-relation we there described can be
read in light of what we know as trusteeship. It is an elitist rendition
of representation, as the representative is entrusted to judge about its
relation to society. There can be good reasons to give extensive room
of manoeuvre to the representative, for example because “no citizen
can participate in all decisions that affect them”, but as Castiglione
and Warren correctly remark, “as pure trustees, no democratic element
remains, and representatives are little more than paternalistic
aristocrats” (2006, 8-9).
51
GOVERNANCE
THROUGH THE LENS OF
REPRESENTATION
Femmy Thewissen
8
I want to remark that he contests the vision of “Lefort [who] situates its origin in a sphere
beyond both the ruler and the ruled” (Ankersmit 1996, 108). The topic of the origin and
localization of power needs further investigation.