Political Advocacy and Democratic Spectatorship

Central to the study of democratic politics in as understanding of the relationships between political representatives and those they claim to represent. Accurately describing these relationships is essential for both conceptual clarity and an understanding of the politically possible. This paper is concerned with understanding the primary forms of relation that are possible between representatives in their paradigmatic state as political advocates and citizens in their default mode of engagement as spectators. The starting premise of the paper is what I shall call the basic insight of spectatorship empowerment, which says that actors are subservient to spectators in the sense that the former must communicate in ways that are variously engaging to the latter, if the actors are to be understood, let alone achieve the goals of their speech and action. A consequence of this insight in the present context is that political advocacy will be structured by the possibilities that are inherent in the nature of spectatorship. Following Hannah Arendt’s analysis of ‘the life of the mind’, I identify the four central mental faculties that both limit and enable the possibilities of political advocacy as follows: the will, thought, the intellect and judgment. Put differently, the success of the political advocate will minimally depend on the extent to which the advocate can satisfactorily establish the forms of relation that are appropriate to at least one of these faculties. In a democratic context, the forms of relation that may be singled out as most important and which will guide the analysis in this paper are as follows: communicative relations (concerning the structure of communication that can be adopted by the advocate), normative relations (concerning expectations of the normative goods to be delivered by the advocate and accountability for departures from these expectations), and trust relations (concerning the basis on which trust can be built). How each of these forms of relation can manifest themselves is differently structured by the telos of the aforementioned faculties. To anticipate the argument, the will aims at self-expression, our capacity for thought seeks meaning, our intellect seeks truth, and our faculty of judgment is directed toward finding ways of feeling at home.