Rethinking the Work of Representation: Election Campaigns of Minority Candidates in India

How do minority candidates establish representativeness with a mixed electorate during national election campaigns? Building on recent re-appraisals of representation in political theory, this paper demarcates “representation-work” – the work that representatives do to persuade voters that they will stand for or act in their interests –for comparative study. Drawing on original field research data from the Indian elections of 2014, the paper analyses identity-work, involving mediation and incorporation of the multiple identities of voters. Its findings suggest that the political party played a central role in mediating the relationship between representatives and constituents. In particular, party ideology mattered significantly for representative claims, as well as their reception and authorization by voters. In a context marked by the rise of religious majoritarianism, representatives from different minority backgrounds, Dalit and Muslim, encountered very different constraints in the making, reception, and outcomes of their claims. Highlighting the creative and dynamic nature of identity-work, this paper suggests that influential accounts of political work in the empirical literature fail to grasp important aspects of the role of representatives in the democratic process.