Representative Democracy in an Age of Distrust: Members of Parliament on Political Representation and Sovereignty

The insight that ‘the people, as a totality, taken in the singular’ is not absent but nowhere to be found (Rosanvallon 2008, 206) radically altered theorising on representative democracy. It not only upgraded the status of political representation in democratic theory but also altered how we conceptualise the relationship between representation and sovereignty. Abandoning traditional ‘linkage’ conceptions – which chronologically separated an extra-institutional constituent power and constituted power –, political representation is increasingly conceived as a means of self-actualisation; facilitating a circular movement between both powers (cf. Urbinati 2006, 177; Plotke 1997). This paper explores how this circular ideal of representative democracy relates to political practice. To this end, it researches how members of parliament (MPs), as central gate-keepers to decision-making processes, conceptualise political representation and sovereignty. Drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with members of the Flemish parliament (Belgium), the paper first finds that the circularity between constituent and constituted power is interrupted by MPs’ attempts to secure the legitimacy of constituted power. Although considerate of the lack of objective unity, MPs invoke a contractarian conception of representative democracy; reducing citizens to audiences that can only exercise sovereignty at the ballot (cf. Severs et al. 2016). The interviews, second, demonstrate how the circularity between society and government is further mediated by prevailing repertoires of liberal democracy. These repertoires impose standards (rationality, impartiality and majority rule) upon citizens which we know are biased towards more privileged citizens.