Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

Conclusion
Recognizing the strengths of the model of representative democracy
and at the same time realizing that this model belongs more and more
to the past, it is necessary to see which valuable characteristics will be
lost when moving from government to governance. I will try to elucidate
this by referring to two problems that we might get confronted with in
Saward’s model related to the two aspects of legitimacy in representation:
the ‘legitimacy of what’-question and the scope of manoeuvre of
the representative.
Urbinati offers an interesting reading of the value of the institutional
constellation of representative democracy by argumenting that
the spatial and temporal characteristics of the government-model
enable democratic politics. The interplay between the struggle for
power and the continuity of this struggle form together the conditions
for the ongoing attempt of contesting groups to represent the
general. The attempt to represent the general at state-level is a crucial
characteristic of ‘political representation’ in the ‘government’-model
and can be explained by referring to the ‘legitimacy of what’-question.
Because the relationship between state and society is the central one
in a representative democracy it follows that legitimacy is dependent
on the judgment of all citizens who may hold different partisan
viewpoints. Hence, the candidate-representatives are prompted to
come up with a general story in order to apply for a representative
function at the state-level. With the transition from government to
governance, the centrality and unicity of the relationship between
state and society gradually evaporates and makes place for a plurality
of decision-making units relating to specific constituencies. Saward
recognizes this trend in contemporary politics and wants the reader
to acknowledge the representational nature that characterizes every
single claim for identity- or interest-recognition. For Saward electoral
representation should no longer retain its unique status. In his view it
is just one of the many areas in which representational claims are made,
and therefore he argues that representation is primarily a dynamic
quality of political life spread unevenly across societies. For him “civil
society contains the state and […] civil society is where representation
– unevenly, diversely – happens”. The answer to the ‘legitimacy
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GOVERNANCE
THROUGH THE LENS OF
REPRESENTATION
Femmy Thewissen