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