In person icon Representation and Democracy – Still a Strong Link?

Abstract

Dwindling turn-outs, the rise of executive politics, the marginalization of parliamentary deliberation and decision-making, call into question the strong link between democracy and representation. While it is certainly true that there is no intrinsic connection between the two (see Ankersmit 2002) modern democracy’s hallmark is a system of representation based on territorially organized competitive elections. What happens if elections no longer deliver what they promised to? If public control, equality, and justification are out of sync? If elections take place as if the nation-state would still provide the decisive and exclusive frame for political action? Recent times have seen more and more groups laying claim to being representative thereby contributing to a proliferation of informal representation at the cost of formal/parliamentary representation. How can accountability/public control be ensured in the resulting complex systems of representation? How can different modes of representation be combined in order to improve the democratic quality of a political system? The panel seeks to discuss the relationship between representation and democracy, identify sources for the ever more uneasy connection and deliberate potential solutions. This includes a discussion of the republican virtues of representation as much as the proliferation of representative modes, the challenges democratic representation faces by European integration as much as by globalization.

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