The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 17, Number 1, 2009, pp.

122

Authorisation and Authenticity:

Representation and the Unelected*
Michael Saward
Politics, Open University

MID the Make Poverty History campaign in 2004, the U2 singer and
political activist Bono said, I represent a lot of people [in Africa] who have
no voice at all . . . They havent asked me to represent them. Its cheeky but I
hope theyre glad I do.1 In all societies, not least in established democracies,
people who are not electedfrom interest group leaders and activists to spiritual
figuresoften claim to be political representatives. The decline of class-based
ideologies and policy positions, the lessening of the significance of national
borders to the shaping of issues and affected constituencies, widespread
disaffection from parties and electoral politics, and the rise of new claims to
represent (e.g.) non-human nature and future human generations, are among a
range of broad trends suggesting that the time is ripe for a reassessment of
non-elective representative claims.2 Can their claims, like Bonos, ever be
accepted as having democratic legitimacy? How can we know?
In this article, I discuss a set of cases of non-elective representative claims, and
generate a set of criteria against which such claims might be assessed. This work
is framed by an account of the characteristic strengths and limits of claims to
be representative based on free and fair election. The overall aim is to extend
and deepen our understanding of the nature and reach of political representation.
To a degree, this involves extending and deepening trends in existing work
on representationa concept and a practice that is receiving renewed critical
attention.3 For example, Mansbridges influential account of theoretical
*My thanks to two anonymous referees, and to John Dryzek, Bob Goodin and Grahame
Thompson, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Initial work was carried out
while I was Visiting Fellow in Social and Political Theory at the Australian National University.
1
Brendan ONeill, What do pop stars know about the world?, BBC News Magazine, June 28,
2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4629851.stm (accessed 31 August 2007).
2
Civil servants, including members of non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) and
ambassadorial and consular staff are, of course, generally unelected and yet have public responsibility
and influence. Their more-or-less direct lines of accountability to elected officials means they are
excluded from my discussion. This is not to say that these bodies and roles do not raise important
issues of accountability, nor that the criteria of acceptability I discuss below may not apply.
3
The reasons for this renewed attention are varied, and arguable. The widespread though selective
acceptance of the analysis of Pitkin for more than 30 years after the publication of her book The
Concept of Representation is a key reason behind the lack of critical attention prior to the late 1990s
2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00309.x

MICHAEL SAWARD

innovations arising from US-based empirical research offers surrogate

representation as a new form. Surrogates, in her terms, are not elected by the
people they are acting as surrogates for, but they are elected by some other
constituency. In my view, the notion of surrogacy can usefully be extended to
include actors who are not elected at all.4 Similarly, Rehfeld shows how unelected
actors can, in fact, be representatives in straightforward definitional terms if we
are sufficiently clear about the factors that make for cases of representation.5 I
will look at a more extensive range of cases, and more importantly discuss
evaluative criteria against which the democratic acceptability of unelected
would-be representatives might be assessed.
It is no part of my aim to undermine representative claims arising from free
and fair elections. Electoral claims have real force, deriving from the formal
strength of popular control that free and fair elections can deliver and our deep
cultural attunement to equating democracy with electoral democracy. But
recognising the strengths of electoral representation should not prevent us
from acknowledging how elections can, in some circumstances, act to restrict
the nature and range of representative perspectives and voices, and that these
restrictions can be democratically troubling. A number of theorists have, of
course, criticised features of electoral and legislative representation, mostly on the
grounds of unjust historical and contemporary exclusions.6 I have little argument
with their views, which conclude with reasons why, and mechanisms by which,
electoral and legislative representation of excluded or marginalised groups should
be improved. Rather, I wish to deepen and extend this concern with exclusion by
exploring the idea that electoral institutions themselves, while indispensable
to contemporary democracy, by their very structure leave open the possibility
for non-elective representative claims that can call on criteria of democratic
in Anglo-American political theory at least. See Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of
Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Concerns with the marginalisation of
certain groups from representative structures; widespread disaffection with representative politics;
and the development of supranational political entities lacking standard modes of accountability and
representation are other factors. The dominant deliberative thread in democratic theory in recent
years has also prompted concern with who gets to deliberate, where and how, thus renewing interest
in representation.
4
Jane Mansbridge, Rethinking representation, American Political Science Review, 97 (2003),
51528. Note that the notion of surrogacy implies that there is a real entity against which we know
the surrogate. In Mansbridges terms, this means that direct electoral connections between
representative and represented are real (or true) representation. Surrogates offer the same thing by
a different personelectoral representation at one remove, as it were. But unelected representatives
can, or so I shall argue, offer different things by different personsdifferent, that is, to what elected
representatives can offer by the very fact that they are elected representatives. In these terms, strictly
speaking I seek to contest aspects of Mansbridges underlying perspective, and not simply to extend
her existing innovations.
5
Andrew Rehfeld, Towards a general theory of political representation, Journal of Politics, 68
(2006), 121.
6
See for example: Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
Melissa Williams, Voice, Trust, and Memory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Jane
Mansbridge Should blacks represent blacks and women represent women? A contingent yes,
Journal of Politics, 61 (1999), 62857; and Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000).

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

legitimacy which in some ways echo but in important other ways are distinct
from electoral criteria.7
Central to this move is to view political representation through the lens of the
representative claimto view it as an economy of claim-making, rather than as
a fact resulting from (free and fair) election. The nature of and theoretical
grounds for this basic shift in focus I have outlined elsewhere.8 But in brief: none
of us is ever fully representedrepresentation of our interests or identities in
politics is always incomplete and partial. This implies that representation is about
a claim (redeemed, if at all, only partially), and not a fact or a possession. We
might elect a politician or a party into office, but the simple fact of their election,
important though that is, does not mean they can or will speak for the range of
interests and identities that make us up. Adopting this perspective opens up
the possibility of legitimate non-elective representative claims. Crucially, it does
not rule out this possibility by definitional fiata serious weakness of the
conventional representation-as-achieved-fact approach.
But what does the representative claim, which stresses representations
dynamic and contingent character,9 consist of? Normally, the idea of
representation holds that someone stands for, speaks for, or acts for another. In
other words, a Subject stands for an Objectan elected MP for a constituency,
for example. But we need to look more widely than this. Someone makes the
claima Maker. And the thing represented is an idea of it, not the thing itself; the
latter is better called a Referent (if a politician Makes himself the Subject who
stands for an Object, the Object is his idea of his constituencydecent,
hard-working folk for examplerather than the Referent, which is all the other
things the constituency is, or might be). All of this needs, and has, an Audience,
which receives the claims and accepts, rejects or ignores them.10 So there are
7
In part, this means effecting a greater distinction between representative government and
political representation than is evident in the current literature.
8
Michael Saward The representative claim, Contemporary Political Theory, 5 (2006), 297318.
9
Derrida offers a suggestive critique which stresses representations contingency and fluidity as
a practice. See Jacques Derrida, Sending: on representation, Social Research, 49 (1982), 30126.
Note also the close parallels with Rodney Barkers convincing account of legitimation: . . . what
characterizes government . . . is not the possession of a quality defined as legitimacy, but the claiming,
the activity of legitimation; Legitimating Identities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 2.
10
Rehfeld deploys the notion of an audience as the relevant group of people who must recognize
a claimant as a representative, and the relevance of the group will always depend on the particular
Function of a case of representation. See Rehfeld, Towards a general theory of political
representation, p. 5. For example, if the function of Libyas UN Ambassador is to represent Libya at
the UN, the UN assembly is the relevant audience. My conception of the audience is similar, but not
identical. In that conception, the audience for a given claim is that group which receives (listens to,
sees, or is aware of) the claim. The audience for a given representative claim might, in principle, be
coterminous with, overlap with, or even be wholly different from (including larger or smaller than)
the would-be constituency. In other words, objects are offered, as interpretations of would-be
constituencies (referents), to audiences whose members may or may not be part of the referent.
However, in many cases audience and constituency will overlap considerably. Further, there often will
be multiple and contested functions of representation. Function is not so much read off a given case,
but rather read in by participants and observers. This conception of audience reflects the fact that
my priority is to develop a theory that maximises empirical accuracy and interpretive purchase; both,
in my view, require the more fluid and constitutive sense of audience.

MICHAEL SAWARD

certain core ingredients to a representative claim: Maker-Subject-ObjectReferent-Audience. Representation is an ongoing process of making and
receiving claimsin, between, and outside electoral cycles. The democratic
plausibility of claims can in principle rest upon varied grounds, not least, of
course, election. One benefit of this framework is that it invites us to look closely
at the impact of a broad range of representative claimants, asking how, why
and whom they represent (if anyone), without our very definitions determining
whether and to what extent they constitute cases of representation.
Of course, the idea of non-elective representation is not new. Despite the fact
that Burkes notion of virtual representation rests upon a vision of a highly
unified national polity with a single and discernible set of interests, placing it
outside the more diverse forms of non-elective claim today, his argument that
common interest and common sentiment underlie genuinely representative ties
may still have currency (see below). And note that Hanna Pitkins preferred
definition of representationas a substantive acting for othersdoes not in
principle require election. This definition is distinct from other, less preferred ones
which do require formal authorisation in the form of voting (the authorisation
and accountability theories, in Pitkins words). Understandably, she does not
pursue the logic of this point. But arguably that logic says that a substantive
acting for others is prior to the means of achieving it, and in certain cases and
contexts electoral means may be inferior to others.

I. ELECTED AND UNELECTED REPRESENTATIVES:

GENERAL POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS
To think clearly about the potential for unelected figures to be, in some sense,
legitimate democratic representatives, it is necessary to look first at elected actors.
The formality, regularity, equality, publicity and transparency of free and fair
elections remain a profound source of strength for representative claims for the
duly elected. However, there are limits to their claims. Elective representation
does not exhaust democratic representation.
Generally, free and fair elections enact a set of democratically desirable
principles, not least: choice, identification, consent, all-affectedness, control and
accountability. At the same time, however, there are generic features of elections
which place limits on the practical realisation of these principles. Consider the
following.
a.

Choice and consent. Through voting we choose our elected politicians, and
through that we contribute to choosing the composition of the legislature
and the political colour of the government. But bear in mind that while
temporary governments are chosen, they are part of the permanent state,
which is not chosen (or at least cant be, now). From that angle, it is our
fate, and not our choice, to have government in the form that we do (as

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

b.

c.

opposed to our having this government). We can choose particular

politicians, but we cannot choose to have politicians who will not
participate within the compromises and constraints of the electoral game.11
Identification. Even where descriptive or mirror representation in
legislatures is not strongtrue of most countriesvoting and elections do
provide a way of saying these people are in office because they are chosen
by us and bear a formal relationship to us. The limits of identification start
there, however. Elected politicians invariably (and again, of necessity)
highlight particular, selective, aspects of us, their constituents, and
downplay others than dont suit them. Particular claims they make about
the character of constituents crowd out other possible bases of claims.
Further, if we grant that the variety and range of our interests are subject to
more-or-less constant change, then our elected politicians will always be, to
some degree, misrepresenting us.12 This is precisely a point about structural
necessity rather than political manipulation or obfuscation as such. Related
to this, elected politicians have a captive constituency: almost all citizens
are formally structured into electoral districts. This lessens the amount of
work that elected politicians have to do to make convincing claims, since
the structure of the context decrees already that there must be specific,
definable constituency interests which require formal representation. In
other words, interests arising from local residence here will from the start
condition potential conceptions of constituency interest.13
All-affectedness and unity. At a strongly abstract level representation, in its
most familiar contemporary guises, is One to Allone state, to all citizens
in the country. The symbolic architecture of our political systems reflects
and reinforces this metaphor: the gathering of all under one, the legislature
that brings the nation together symbolically under one roof. The symbolism
is that of the pyramid, with state or government at the peak. It runs through
the famous 17th century frontispiece image in Thomas Hobbess
Leviathanthe people contained within the rulers bodyas well as the
encompassing domes of parliaments and legislatures, symbolising the
oneness (or unity) of the nation, for example the Capitol Building in
Washington DC. This oneness is positive. It provides an answer to a basic
political questionwho resolves issues when they are contested?
But the extent to which there is a mismatch between on the one hand the
symbol (which suggests the permanence of the unity, the oneness) and on

11
Note Manins argument that election can be a mechanism for perpetuating distinction as well as
enacting political equality. See Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
12
This is the case despite the mutual engagement between elector and candidate or representative
implied by relational approaches to representation such as this one. A process of to and fro between
the two will always leave them out of synch in some respect, and to some extent.
13
See Andrew Rehfeld, The Concept of Constituency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005) for an extended discussion of territorial constituencies and democratic alternatives.

MICHAEL SAWARD

the other hand the institutional reality (where citizens and residents will feel
different degrees of attachment, for different reasons) is important, and goes
mostly unremarked. Such symbols may capture realities, but they may also
(must alsothe symbolism of oneness is necessarily fictional at some level)
gloss over realities such as necessary misrepresentation, shifting interests
that are not spoken for, the selectivity of portrayals of constituent interests,
and so on.
Note too that the representation of two moderate abstractionsof the
people by governmentis nested within the representation of two higher
level abstractionsrepresentation of the nation by the state. When
they are (deliberately or by structural necessity) not accurately or fully
representing peoples views, political leaders always have the option of
going up a level and claiming to speak for the larger nations interests.
With one level of representation nested inside another, the two are easily,
sometimes deliberately, confused. Charles de Gaulle expressed this point
graphically with his comment that In politics, it is necessary either to betray
ones country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
Even on more straightforward grounds we can question the strength of
representative claims arising from the fact of election. They include: (a) the
effects of first-past-the-post electoral systems, like that of the UK, where
huge parliamentary majorities emerge from a minority of votes; (b) the fact
that rates of voting in noncompulsory systems are low, and (c) the
ambiguous status of nonenfranchised interests, such as those of children
and young people.
Control and accountability. Less abstractly, in most contemporary
democratic systems, parties choose candidates prior to voter choices. Key
choices are therefore made before citizens get to vote, which may enhance
intra-party accountability to the detriment of popular accountability.
Further, though the elected are accountable to the electorate, there are
serious limits to this accountability. As Mansbridge points out, the
electorates actual opportunity and capacity to hold elected officials to
account for their actions and policies is limited; promissory bases of
representation can be hollow, and we need to take seriously alternative
anticipatory and gyroscopic types where links of control and
accountability are so much weaker.14

d.

Taking these points together, in short, the state has a distinctive capacity to
represent us (voters, constituencies), but it also has a distinctive capacity (one
might rather say destiny) to misrepresent us. It, and its agents, also have a strong
incentive to emphasise the former and play down the latter. Elected politicians are
effectively forced to misrepresent us to some degree, precisely as a largely
14

Mansbridge, Rethinking representation.

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

unavoidable part of the workings of the very electoral processes through which
they are able to represent in the first place.
Political leaders are aware, to some degree, that claims based on election
are ambivalent. They bolster their positions by constructing favourable
representations (portrayals, depictions) of themselves, because they know their
representative claims will always be partial, unstable, and perhaps ripe for
exposureand that that can substantially dent their hopes of being elected,
which is likely to be their key concern. Political leaders regularly portray
themselves as standing for the nation, above and beyond narrow and partial
interests (think of the ubiquity of the Stars and Stripes in set-piece images of US
presidents and candidates). The architecture of their contexts also contributes to
this need, and habit. All of this is part of representation seen through the lens of
the representative claim.15
II. NON-ELECTIVE REPRESENTATION?
All of the aforementioned factorscentring on the partial and artificial nature
of any representation, including electiveopen up gaps which can, in principle,
be exploited by the unelected. I am not suggesting, along Burkean lines, that
non-elective representation is superior to elective.16 I am suggesting that despite
its undoubted strengths elective representation contains structural weaknesses
that some forms of non-elective representation may be able to exploit, by offering

15
To argue in this way is to stress, among other things, the performative side of political
representation. Performing representative claims involves careful projection of a leaders personality
and character. Many politicians have recognised the performance involved in what they do.
Long-serving post-war Australian prime minister Sir Robert Menzies believed that the core task of
political leadership was that of the political artist; John Uhr, The rhetoric of representation:
Menzies reshaping of parliament, Legislative Studies, 9 (1995), 92102 at p. 94. One of his
successors, Paul Keating, believed that political leadership involves a public performance, talking
about being out there on stage, doing the Placido Domingo; quoted in John Uhr, Political leadership
and rhetoric, Australia Reshaped, ed. G. Brennan and F. G. Castles (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), at p. 280. Keating used a movie director as his public speaking coach. Irish
prime minister Bertie Ahern has reportedly been taking lessons from the director of the Gaiety School
of Acting in Dublin to help him on the political stage (The Independent, November 19, 2004, p. 29).
As Erving Goffman wrote, All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it
isnt are not easy to specify; The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London: Penguin 1990,
originally published 1959), p.76. And as Richard Fenno, the noted scholar of the US Congress, wrote:
Goffman does not talk about politicians, but politicians know what Goffman is talking about; Home
Style: House Members in their Districts (New York: Longman 2003), p. 55.
16
In Burkes words: Virtual representation is that in which there is a communion of interests and
a sympathy in feelings and desires between those who act in the name of any description of people
and the people in whose name they act, though the trustees are not actually chosen by them. . . . Such
a representation I think to be in many cases even better than the actual. It possesses most of its
advantages, and is free from many of its inconveniences; it corrects the irregularities in the literal
representation, when the shifting current of human affairs or the acting of public interests in different
ways carry it obliquely from its first line of direction. The people may err in their choice; but common
interest and common sentiment are rarely mistaken. See Edmund Burke, A Letter to Sir Hercules
Langrishe, 1792; available at www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/burkee/extracts/chap18.
htm (accessed 4 September 2007).

MICHAEL SAWARD

different sorts of representative claims which may resonate well with specific
audiences.
In principle, non-elective representative claims can enact principles that also
figure heavily with regard to elections: choice in terms of more fine-grained,
multiple, issue-specific choices, including between elections; retroactive consent
on the reception and consideration of unconventional representative claims;
identification in terms of non-party and partial citizen identities; giving voice to
the affected by opening up new lines and styles of representation, which can be
more sensitive to intensity of preference and particular lived experiences, often
beyond territorially defined interests; and more varied and perhaps sometimes
more effective means of control and accountability via governance networks and
deliberative devices.
A variety of non-elected actors claim to be representatives, and sometimes
those claims have a resonance with their audiences because they can sometimes do
things that elective claimants cannot do (or cannot do so readily). Why do we
sometimes listen to their claims? Often, it is because key principles that we
understand as being core to elections canin varied waysbe realised by unelected
actors. This may not be true of all such principles (and their realisation even in
electoral contexts can be patchy) or indeed all such actors, but it can be true of
a range of them. For example, a range of unelected representative claimants:
a.

b.
c.

d.

e.

f.

dont have to pretend to represent the whole persons interests or wants;

they can explicitly be partial (so can elected actors, but they often have less
scope to do so);
can stand for a continuous, evolving sense of us, free from the temptations
of the election-time snapshot;
can be temporary representatives as circumstances demand in a
fast-changing political world (oneness, as discussed above, is about a
(representation of) permanence, implying a permanent structure of
interests, identities and wills);
are not spatially challenged by the borders of nations, but can claim to
speak for interests (or would-be constituencies) that span different countries
with a greater freedom than elected actors can;
have to make their claims explicithave to work harder to make their
representative claims convincing, because the symbolic architecture of our
political systems doesnt do that work for them. They have to invoke and
enthuse (and even build from scratch) an audience for their claims;17
can open up new patterns of representation that are alternative to elective
patterns. There are good reasons for One to All: those who decide for all

17
It could be argued that the present cult of celebrity, for example, provides a potent symbolic
architecture for unelected would-be representatives. Such things might provide some claimants with
access to potential audiences. But it does not provide any close equivalent to the formal constitutional
status of being elected to a legislative seat.

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

should be accountable to all. But if there are more, and more types, of
representatives beyond the elected ones, why not, for example, think of
other potential patterns that could operate alongside, or within, One for
All? Consider for example One to Many; One to Some; or Some to Some;
even Each to Each? In other words, we can think of different sorts of
representatives speaking for different parts of us, of our varied interests, in
a more fluid way than the (nonetheless crucial) One to All metaphor can
capture.
We choose specific elected representatives, on a particular level, but we
cannot choose not to be represented by elected representatives, on a more general
level. States are (in principle) compulsory entities. We do not choose non-elected
representatives in such a clear way, but neither are we fated to have them or
follow them. Choice works differently in the case of unelected representatives
it is a choice in the mode of representation rather than a choice of a specific
representative.
In short, non-elective representation can potentially give us some of what
elective representation cannot.
III. NON-ELECTIVE REPRESENTATIVE CLAIMS
But who are these potential unelected representatives? I dont claim that the types
and examples I now go on to discuss are all (automatically) legitimate democratic
cases of representation. They are indications of representative claims that are,
and can be, made by non-elected figures. The claims may or may not be
acceptable, or accepted, by their audiences or by their would-be constituencies. I
come to the question of criteria for the evaluation of claims later.
In the first part of this section, I present a range of types and examples of
representative claims by the unelected. Each of these claims is a claim that
someone represents the interests of a specified group. I emphasise in what follows
the basis for justification of the claimthe X in I [he/she] represent[s] these
peoples interests because of X. The list is indicative rather than definitive, and
in this section of the article I present each type of claim without making explicit
evaluative comments. My goal is to take a step towards understanding the range
of representative claims, and the types of justification they invoke.
The claims listed vary in a number of ways. For example some are claims
about the selfI represent . . .. Others are claims about othersShe
represents . . . or It represents . . .. Some are explicit, others implicit. For the
moment I simply present the different types of claim-basis.18
18
One might protest that a number of these representative claims involve other
thingschampions, stewards, leaders, advocates, figureheads, or spokespersonsrather than
representatives. But each of these roles can readily be assimilated to, or sufficiently strongly equated
to, representation.

10

MICHAEL SAWARD

The claims are grouped as follows:

1.
2.
3.

deeper roots representative claims;

expertise and special credentials claims; and
wider interests and new voices claims.

A. DEEPER ROOTS REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM 1: DEEP GROUP MORALITY and

TIES OF TRADITION
Representative claims may be based on core aspects of a groups identity or
attachments, reinforcing a notion that the group has a profound interest in these
deeper aspects of their being having a voice and being defended apart from
electoral vicissitudes. Many religious representative claims take this form. Irans
Guardian Council, which claims to represent the deeper and enduring interests of
Irans Muslim believers, is one prominent example. The Guardian Council is
enshrined in the post-1979 Iranian constitution. It has various key roles, one
being the vetting of nominated candidates for national elections for their Islamic
credentials. The core of such a claims basis may be that constituted earthly
authority is bound to be partial and compromised, whereas deeper codes of
morality sometimes require separate (though not necessarily opposed)
representation or advocacy on behalf of Iranian Muslims. Another example,
which combines religion and tradition differently, may be the legitimacy among
Tibetans of the rule of the Dalai Lama. His claim to represent the interests of
Tibetans is based on long traditions, and owes nothing to election and everything
to a very special status among a large group of people sharing a (religious) belief
system.
Monarchs, of course, make representative claims based on tradition. The
contemporary kings of Morocco, for example, base their claims to legitimate
political power within the Moroccan constitutional monarchy upon the deeply
symbolic connections between rituals of royalty and meaningful practices in the
everyday life of Moroccans.19 A different sort of example would be the House of
Chiefs in Botswana or Ghana, which as their name suggests consist of traditional
community leaders who belong to the House by virtue of that capacity, and not
through election. Members of a House of Chiefs would claim to represent the
interests of tribal members by virtue of the importance of tribal membership to
members material and spiritual well-being. The representative claim here is
based around the embeddedness of any political system in a set of historical or
traditional structures of leadership and authority. All democracies, like any
polity, are democracies somewhere, and those somewheres will often have nonor pre-democratic political attributes which it may be felt are desirable to
accommodate constitutionally.
19

See M. E. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

11

B. DEEPER ROOTS REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM 2: HYPOTHETICAL CONSENT

A representative claim might be based on what people hypothetically would have
agreed to in (for example) a state of nature, or an original position. A claimant
might assert that he represents the underlying interests of a group on the grounds
that the groups members would have agreed to a certain view of their interests
in ideal decision circumstances. One might read John Rawlss A Theory of
Justice, for example, as offering a basis upon which a political figure could claim
that our deeper, more rational selves would all sign up to a certain, specifiable
distribution of primary goods such as rights and duties.20 The claimant might
argue that even if most constituents had never reflected upon the nature of a just
society in a manner analogous to Rawlss thought experiment, he or she could
nevertheless represent constituents interests at that level. Similarly, it is no error
that the idea of democracy does not figure at all in that famed riposte to Rawls,
Anarchy, State and Utopia by Robert Nozick.21 To have democracy you need
there to be legitimate dispute about the nature and scope of the structure and
activities of the constituted political authority. Within Nozicks libertarian
framework there is no space for such dispute; the tasks of the state are set and
incontestable. His is a vision of a polity derived (within the terms of the argument
offered for it) from a historical theory of its emergence and evolution. In general,
then, someone might claim to speak for others on the basis of the deeper interests
of all on the basis of hypothetical consent.
C. EXPERTISE AND SPECIAL CREDENTIALS REPRESENTATIVE CLAIMS:
SPECIALIST EXPERTISE
A claim may be based on the possession of authoritative knowledge arising from
specialist expertise. Here, a person may claim to represent a group because he or
she possesses specialist expertise (in, say, environmental science) which fosters a
distinctive insight into potentially neglected or underplayed interests of the
group. One might cite here members of a group like the Union of Concerned
Scientists in the USA, or a range of scientific advisors who claim to act on the
interests of citizens. Such claims occupy a difficult area between political and
expertise roles.22 Their substantiation will depend in part on the existence of the
appropriate interpretive community, i.e. in this case a body of recognised
experts.23 Not all political claims made by a group such as the UCS will be
representative claims, of course. But by the same token many will, if they invoke

20

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1972).

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell 1974).
22
Alan Hudson, NGOs transnational advocacy networks: from legitimacy to political
responsibility?, Global Networks, 1 (2001), 33152, p. 332.
23
James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Democratic Governance (New York: Free Press, 1995),
p. 176.
21

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MICHAEL SAWARD

directly a conception of peoples interests that is deemed accessible through the

possession and exercise of specific forms of specialist expertise.
D. WIDER INTERESTS AND NEW VOICES REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM 1:
SURROGACY FOR WIDER INTERESTS
A representative claim may be based on the fact that an important perspective
within a debate is not being heard or even voiced, especially due to structural
limitations arising from the institutional configuration of conventional
representative government. One might consider for example the rock stars Bob
Geldof and Bono and their advocacy of third world debt relief, famine relief and
poverty alleviation. Such figures may not only claim to represent non-national
interests on the basis of common humanity, but potentially also to represent the
better interests of those in their home countries (or the West) whose actions are
linked to the plight of many in the South in ways that are not immediately
obvious to the people concerned. This category broadens surrogacy beyond
extra-constituency claims made by elected representatives.24 One might cite for
example Martin Luther King, the unelected but widely respected and venerated
American civil rights leader of the 1960s. Rubinstein notes a range of
trans-national actors who act as agents fostering surrogate accountability
outside electoral contexts.25
E. WIDER INTERESTS AND NEW VOICES REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM 2:
THE WORD FROM THE STREET
A claim may be based on massive and tangible demonstration of popular support,
especially in contexts of reasonable freedom of expression. For example, two
million people marching in a London demonstration against Britain going to war
against Iraq (without a second UN resolution) is a basis for representative claims
for those leading or addressing such demonstrations to be representative of
a significant swathe of public opinion.26 In such a case, one could claim that
she represents those opposed to the Iraq war because she was a popular key
speaker at a huge rally on the issue. Another example might be a claim to be
24
Mansbridge (in Rethinking representation, p. 8) cites the example of Barney Frank, a gay US
congressman who explicitly takes on a task of representing gay and lesbian interests well beyond the
territorial boundaries of his own constituency. Sawer cites Australian and British parliamentarians
who take it as a core part of their role to be surrogate representatives of, inter alia, young people, gays
and lesbians, and minority ethnic communities. She also writes of voteless constituencies, such as
children, in a similar vein. See Marian Sawer, Representing trees, acres, voters and non-voters:
concepts of parliamentary representation in Australia, Speaking for the People: Representation in
Australian Politics, ed. M. Sawer and G. Zappala (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 2001), pp.
3663.
25
Jennifer Rubinstein, Accountability in an unequal world, Journal of Politics, 69 (2007),
61632.
26
See David Beetham, Political participation, mass protest and representative democracy,
Parliamentary Affairs, 56 (2003), 597613.

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

13

representative of a group by virtue of a large petition calling for specified political

action27I represent these people because they have explicitly supported my
views on this issue. The notion of the word from the street captures the idea
that the interests that are claimed to be represented emerge from specific
grass-roots techniques or events.
F. WIDER INTERESTS AND NEW VOICES REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM 3:
MIRRORING
A mirroring claim is based on descriptive similarity between the claimant and the
constituency he or she claims to speak or stand for. For example, one could claim
to represent working class single mothers on the ground that being a working
class single mother affords special insight into that groups interests. As for the
other categories, the mirror examples are varied. For instance, a deliberative
poll or a citizens jury might actually be incorporated into the policy-making
process and gain legitimacy from the random basis of its selection and therefore
the relative accuracy of its descriptive representation.28 Selection by lot can fit in
here too. Random selection has a long history in the study of democracy; one
prominent account suggests that elections are by their nature less democratic than
random selection.29 In a quite different sense, a mirroring representative claim
may arise along the lines of the case of Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista
army in Chiapas, Mexico. Marcos argues that his army does not speak for the
people of Chiapas. Rather, it listens, or echoes, the voices of the people.30
G. WIDER INTERESTS AND NEW VOICES REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM 4:
STAKEHOLDING
A representative claim might be based on the notion that one stands for or speaks
for a group that has a material or other stake in a process or a decision, and
therefore has a right to have its interests included in the process. Procedures
which incorporate stakeholders in deliberative and decisional forums can be
quite formal, as was the case at the Johannesburg World Summit on Environment
and Development in 2002. In Johannesburg several Major Groups such as
business and labour peak groups, NGOs and indigenous peoples were regarded
formally as stakeholders and took part in summit deliberations. Potential
27
John Parkinson, Hearing voices: negotiating representative claims in public deliberation,
British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6 (2004), 37088.
28
James S. Fishkin and Robert C. Luskin, The quest for deliberative democracy, Democratic
Innovation, ed. M. Saward (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 1728.
29
See Manin, Principles of Representative Government.
30
An echo that reproduces its own sound, yet opens itself to the sound of the other; An echo that
takes its place and speaks its own voice, yet speaks with the voice of the other. Quoted in Simon
Tormey, Not in my name: Deleuze, Zapatismo and the critique of representation, Parliamentary
Affairs, 59 (2006), 13854.

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MICHAEL SAWARD

stakeholders might be new or potential, often cross-border or international

constituencies. A radical vision of such a new constituency might be non-human
animals and their interests, for example. Claims to represent or speak for human
communities-of-fate which cross national boundaries may be another example.31
These examples, to be sure, involve a radical deconstruction of our received
ideas of what a constituency is, and can very quickly probe the limitations
of our conventional vocabularies of representation and enfranchisement.32
Constituencies, arguably, can be short-lived, non-territorial, spontaneously
formed, and still form the basis of competing demands for, and claims of, political
representation.
H. WIDER INTERESTS AND NEW VOICES REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM 5:
EXTRATERRITORIAL RULES AND LAWS
An extraterritorial body or entity, e.g. an international court or an agency of the
UN, may establish laws or formal procedures with respect to which its agents can
make representative claims which bear on internal matters within a state (human
rights regimes for example). In such cases claims can be advanced regardless
of the location of the would-be constituents with respect to traditionally
understood political boundaries.33 One might cite, for example, the case of the
UN mandate and its representative organisations in Kosovo in recent years, or
the representative claims being made on behalf of the people of Darfur by UN
and other actors in 2006 and 2007.34
I. WIDER INTERESTS AND NEW VOICES REPRESENTATIVE CLAIM 6:
SELF-REPRESENTATION
It is implicit in the role of political citizenship in an open society that the option
remains open for one to speak for, or represent, ones own interests. Political
citizenship in democracy would be a hollow category indeed if it did not
encompass the idea that in a range of ways and on a range of matters citizens
could rightly represent themselves; to say, as one often hears, that my voice is not

31
The foundations of such claims, and innovative institutions through which they might be
crystallized, are discussed by: Andrew Dobson, Representative democracy and the environment,
Democracy and the Environment, ed. W. M. Lafferty and J. Meadowcroft (Cheltenham: Elgar, 1996);
and Robyn E. Eckersley, Deliberative democracy, representation and risk: towards a democracy of
the affected, Democratic Innovation, ed. M. Saward (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 11732.
32
See Robert E. Goodin, Enfranchising the earth, and its alternatives, Political Studies, 44 (1996),
83549.
33
The works of David Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Cambridge: Polity, 1995), and
John S. Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) offer
influential and contrasting approaches to cosmopolitan or transnational democratisation.
34
In some respects officials sanctioned by the UN are civil servants, but their operating beyond the
mandates of elected national governments makes them examples of potential nonelective claimants.

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

15

being heard or represented and attempt to make good the perceived shortfall.
The notion of individualised collective action is evocative here.35
IV. EVALUATING NON-ELECTIVE REPRESENTATIVE CLAIMS:
SOME POSSIBLE CRITERIA
Those are some common enough examples of non-elective representative claims.
So much for making claims. What might make some such claims convincing, in
democratic terms? What tests might we want to apply? I do not suggest that there
are hard-and-fast criteria, or that many cases would not fall into a grey zone
between the plainly bogus and the strongly convincing; close attention to the
impact of claims over time and in their context is crucial. I will sketch very briefly
possible evaluative criteria, leaving to readers to consider, in empirical terms, how
they might connect with the types of non-elective claims discussed above.
The first response might simply be: if representative claims on any of these
bases are made, let the claimants stand for election and see if their claims get them
into office. This is, of course, a powerful democratic response. But it is not the
only potential or (I hope to show) reasonable democratic response. As we have
seen when discussing the limits of electoral representation in general terms, there
is scope, in principle, for potentially legitimate non-elective representative claims.
In this respect, I maintain that we should not adopt any prior assumption or
stipulation of illegitimacy for non-elective claims.
The criteria I discuss define ways in which, in a reasonably open democratic
society, citizens are most likely to be able to recognise and weigh up
representative claims.36
The nature of the criteria varies. Some refer to the verifiability of a claim with
respect to an invoked constituency. Others refer to the position of the claimant
within larger sets of institutions or processes. Yet others tap into a sense of
genuineness of chosen attachments and positions. Principled currents run
through the criteria, such as (again) choice, accountability and affectedness.
There are also deeper, underlying principled currents too, which centre upon
fundamental tensions and contrasts between authorisation and authenticity. I
turn to these currents in the concluding section.
The criteria come under three headings:
A.

Connecting criteria, which focus on the positioning of claimants within

certain formal and informal structures which connect them to institutions
in a way that may bolster their democratic credentials.

35

See Michele Micheletti, Political Virtue and Shopping (New York: Palgrave, 2003).
I focus on claims within electoral democracies in part because these tend to be the harder cases
to evaluate. There is much more scope for actors opposing fundamentally undemocratic governments
or political orders to claim democratic legitimacy.
36

16

B.

C.

MICHAEL SAWARD

Confirming criteria, which focus on whether constituencies of varied

kinds do or can accept claims in a way that lends them some democratic
credibility.
Untaintededness criteria, which focus on claims located deliberately
outside governmental institutions.

I present the criteria in the form of questionsaffirmative answers to which

support the building of a case for legitimacy.
A. CONNECTING CRITERIA
The concern here is with dangers of disconnected, loose cannon, and
unaccountable claims. Connection to more conventionally legitimate institutional
structures, so the argument goes, moderates and helps us to evaluate claims.
i. Does the Claimant Occupy an Appropriate Position in the Line of
Democratic Delegation?
Principal-agent models see parliamentarism as a chain of delegation from voters
to the ultimate policy makers. Thus, those authorised to make political decisions
(sometimes referred to as principals) conditionally designate others (also known
as agents) to make such decisions in their name and place.37 On a standard
interpretation we might specify five positions in an ideal-typical line of
delegation: (1) from voters to legislators, (2) within legislatures, (3) from
legislators to executives, (4) within executives, and (5) from executives to
bureaucracies.38 We might ask if a non-elective representative claimant might
seek justification by asserting his or her position within such a chain of formal
democratic delegation, most often within the larger structures of public
management and administration. Appointment from such a position, or
accountability to such a position, is a possible factor in the acceptability of such
claims.
ii. Is the Claim Acceptable Because It Is Embedded in a
Larger Democratic System?
Eckstein once argued that it did not matter if pressure groups were not internally
democratic themselves so long as they were operating within a broadly
democratic system and context.39 Similarly, a defence of the House of Lords in the
UK has been mounted on the basis that it remains subordinated to the elected
37
Torbjorn Bergman, Wolfgang C. Muller and Kaare Strom, Parliamentary democracy and the
chain of delegation, European Journal of Political Research, 37 (2000), 25560 at p. 257.
38
Rudy B. Andeweg and Jacques J. Thomassen, Between electorate and executive: parliament as
a linchpin, paper presented at the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research,
Edinburgh, 2003.
39
Harry Eckstein, Pressure Group Politics: The Case of the British Medical Association (London:
Allen and Unwin 1960).

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

17

House of Commons in terms of the passage of legislation. The alternative source

of potential legitimacy for claims like those of some members of the House of
Lords arises, curiously, through the reflected glow of electoral processes. The
acceptability of this version of the connectedness criterion may depend on the
acceptability of democracy as a diffuse as well as an institution-specific quality of
an overall system.
iii. Locked in to Networks?
Is a representative claim acceptable if it is made by an actor who is locked into
a tight or dense network of organisational or other like ties, such that alternative
forms of accountability operate?
This is still a criterion of connectedness, but it is more informal, invoking
connectedness as an emergent property of informal alliances among a range of
people and organisations. One might for example think in terms of the thickness
of the cobweb of connections in the ecology of communities.40 Dense networks
lend legitimacy arguably in part because they constrain actors in ways that are
analogous to electoral constraints. For example, Majone writes: What is
required to reconcile independence and accountability are richer and more
flexible forms of control than the traditional methods of political and
administrative oversight. Statutory objectives, procedural requirements, judicial
review, budgetary discipline, professionalism, expertise, monitoring by interest
groups, even inter-agency rivalry can all be elements of a pervasive system of
control which only needs to be activated. When the system works properly no
one controls an independent agency, yet the agency is under control.41
Organisational links and network histories can have wide social legitimacy in
their host communities: trade union networks for example, where elections are
not necessarily prominent, or as broad as the representative claims that union
leaders sometimes make. One might also apply a logic of appropriateness
herehow deep in a given society do certain networks operate, how far are
they a part of the settled and distinctive political history or tradition of that
community? Further, we might consider the completeness of networks as well
as the density of their internal connections. As Bagchi has written, . . . the
legitimacy of the role of interest groups is, like that of corporatist groups, not
simply a function of their internal representativeness but of how effective they
are as a network, how complete their combined representation of social
interests . . .42

40

March and Olsen, Democratic Governance, p. 177.

Giandomenico Majone, Independence versus accountability? Non-majoritarian institutions and
democratic governance in Europe, European Yearbook of Comparative Government and Public
Administration, Vol. 1 (1994), eds. J. J. Hesse and T. A. J. Toonen (Baden-Baden: Nomos
Verlagsgesellschaft, 1995).
42
Aditi Bagchi, Political citizenship in Britain and Germany, German Politics, 9 (2000), 16180
at p. 166.
41

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MICHAEL SAWARD

B. CONFIRMING CRITERIA
The confirming criteria are embedded within two questions.
i. Can the Representative Claim Be Tested in Principle?
Does it suggest the existence of a specifiable constituency to which the claim
refers, and which might therefore be able to attest in some way to the claims
veracity or reasonableness? Alternatively, does it trigger into existence a new
constituency by successfully articulating interests in a new way? If neither of these
is the case, we might suspect there are no secure grounds for the claim. A
constituency of interest must be articulated by the claimant.
ii. Is the Claim Accepted, or Provisionally Acceptable?
A representative claim might immediately be acclaimed by public action on the
part of large numbers of the would-be constituency of the claim-maker. Or, it
may not be opposed when repeatedly, publicly expressed, in which case one
might charitably apply a notion of provisional acceptability43the claim
can be respected by observers as long as it receives validation by the relevant
proto-constituency at some reasonable future date, and rejected if it does
not.44
In short, with regard to confirming criteria, we need to see if there is some
constituency that could respond to a claim. Does Bonos claim, or the Dalai
Lamas, or did Martin Luther Kings, evoke a clear and reasonably bounded
sense of constituency? Could we, in other words, reasonably identify the
referent in the claim, normally via thinking through the would-be constituency
that specific claims address while evoking or hailing? Subsequently, we should
look for some evidence of such response amongst potential constituents and
possibly wider audiences. How did audiences of their various claims receive
them? What reliable evidence is there that such claims were accepted, rejected,
or ignored, and to what degree in each case? And we need to allow time for
these thingsagain, denying an immediate assumption of illegitimacy of nonelective claims. So here, the focus is on the extent to which claims are or can
be confirmed over time through specifiable, invoked constituencies. In this
respect, confirming criteria clearly invoke deliberative principles; with respect
to a given, non-elective representative claim, has there been scope and time for
public consideration and deliberation, and what range of views have those
deliberations produced?

43
On the idea of provisionality in such contexts, see Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson,
Democratic disagreement, Deliberative Politics, ed. S. Macedo (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), pp. 243279.
44
See the discussion of the non-objection criterion in David Runciman, The paradox of political
representation, Journal of Political Philosophy, 15 (2007), 93114.

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

19

C. UNTAINTEDEDNESS CRITERIA
It is fair to say that untaintedness criteria form an equal and opposite category
to connectedness criteria. On one level, this shows the plurality of ways we need
to consider regarding the potential legitimacy of non-elective representative
claims. Of course, all manner of individuals and groups might be untainted
by participation in government or state institutions and procedures. It is not
untaintedness in itself we are interested in here, but rather representative claims
which may invoke interests which, along the lines of my earlier discussion, are
marginalised or excluded under the present structure or operation of electoral
politics in a certain context.
i. Is the Claim Acceptable Precisely Because It Is Untainted by
Formal Election Processes?
If Carl Schmitt was right that parliamentary democracy involved the embodiment
of a certain principled unprincipledness,45 elected members must be prepared to
negotiate and compromise, and to that extent be unprincipled; and if this very
preparedness must be held as a principle, then perhaps there is always a space
for such untaintedness claims? Does disinterestedness, in the older sense of the
word (where it does not mean uninterested but rather unbiased detachment)
sometimes require independence of electoral pressures? Electoral pressures,
it is sometimes argued, press those subject to them to look to short-term
and parochial interests. Disinterestedness may require distance from these
pressures. From another angle, being an elected representative forces one to
addressrhetorically at leasta wide array of concerns more or less all at the
same time. The resulting bundling of issues may do disservice to individual
concerns, and give rise to grounds to argue that non-elected representatives can
stand for or speak for or champion such concerns effectively. We could add
claims to represent intensities and singularities of preference that get diluted in
the structures of formal representation.
ii. Is the Claim Acceptable Precisely Because It Is Untainted by Virtue of
Disconnection from a State Apparatus?
From a still wider perspective, we could say that electoral processes are linked to
the state, and that the state is tied into structural imperatives that prevent it from
acting systematically in the interests of its citizens. Dryzek argues that . . . we
can step back and ask whether democracy does indeed require counting heads.
I would argue that a logically complete alternative exists based on a
conceptualisation of intersubjective communication in the public sphere as a

45
F. R. Ankersmit, Political Representation (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002),
pp. 989.

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MICHAEL SAWARD

matter of the contestation of discourses.46 Can dominant representations

of discourses in such a contest of discourses be the basis of substantive
representative claims regardless of election? Where states foster, to one degree or
another, narrowness and even repression, untaintedness can potentially extend to
an array of actors who may make representative claims; for example, . . . under
conditions where the state monopolises the conventional forms of political
communication and seeks to regulate all forms of artistic expression, it becomes
possible for musicians and other performers to assume a leadership role,
legitimated by their success as artists.47 That was a comment about Soviet era
Eastern Europe, but it may not be stretching things too far to suggest that
established democracies sometimes display analogous monopolies.
Similarly, people can do it for themselves,48 pursuing individualised collective
action in new and innovative ways outside the institutions of the electoral
arena49for example in the No Sweat movement. Again, in an open and
democratic society the right to petition and lobby and take part in deliberations
comes alongside a right to make representative claims for oneself and
othersthis is no less than a core component of an adequate conception of
political citizenship.50 We need to pay attention to the claims. Do the people
claimed to be represented not have a voiceor an adequate voice in democratic
opportunity termsin electoral politics? From what we do know of different
cases, do certain claimants (such as No Sweat) appear to speak for genuinely felt
interests of relatively marginalised groups? What we know, and what we can find
out, is highly relevant to the assessment of this and other non-elective claims.
Untaintedness is a serious criterion which taps into the very real constraints that
party-based and territory-based state structures of representation operate within.
Dissenting activism can be conceived in terms of major social movements that
seek to force a system to live up to its own ideals. A key argument here is that
democracy is not just about deliberation within established forums. Those
forums can become sclerotic if they are not subject to pressure and renewal
through outsider activism and dissent.51
In general, then, these criteria are guides that can be fleshed outand
themselves evaluatedin interpretive work on specific claims or types of claim.

46
John S. Dryzek, Discursive democracy vs. liberal constitutionalism, Democratic Innovation, ed.
Saward (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 7889 at p. 84.
47
John Street, Celebrity politicians: popular culture and political representation, British Journal
of Politics and International Relations, 6 (2004), 435452 at p. 448.
48
Henrik P. Bang and Torben Bech Dyrberg, Governance, self-representation and democratic
imagination, Democratic Innovation, ed. Saward (London and New York: Routledge, 2000),
146157.
49
Micheletti, Political Virtue and Shopping.
50
For reflections that are highly suggestive on this topic, see Hans von Rautenfeld, Thinking for
thousands: Emersons theory of political representation in the public sphere, American Journal of
Political Science, 49 (2005), 18497.
51
See Iris Marion Young, Activist challenges to deliberative democracy, Political Theory, 29
(2001), 67090.

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY

21

V. UNDERLYING SHIFTS? FOCUSING ON

AUTHORISATION AND AUTHENTICITY
In this article I have set out an indicative set of types of non-elective
representative claims and some criteria we might expect to be invoked to defend
such claims. To summarise, the distinctive strengths of electoral claims tend to be
closely linked to underlying values of authorisation, or apparent and episodic
prior consent. The distinctive strength of key types of non-elective claims tends
to be closely linked to underlying values of authenticity, or what we might call
apparent and constant responsive consent. Authorisation often arises from
fidelity of cases to confirming and connecting criteria; and authenticity from
fidelity to an idea of untaintedness. The tensions between authorisation and
authenticity run deep. Authorisation and authenticity share a common root in the
idea of authoring, being ones own author, telling ones own story (and being
self-determining). The words and their associated political practices express two
views of which side of self-authorship matters most. Arguably the tension
between the two creates and enlivens democracy, a tension for which we cant
expect final resolution. We can ask for example what it might mean to delegate
authenticity, which in many ways is what elections are supposed to be able to do.
The tensions are very evident in that phrase; it might reasonably be taken to be
self-contradictory.
But could authorisation and authenticity both be necessary aspirations for
a representative democracy? Are there ways in which both electoral and
non-electoral representation can be regarded as legitimate modes of democratic
representation, in certain configurations? Sartori has suggested that there are two
key questions about democracyis this country a democracy, and if so, how
democratic is it? There is a threshold, and beyond that a continuum.52 Could
it be that threshold democracy requires elections, while advancing along
the democracy continuum (to make a democracy more democratic) requires
additionally non-elective representation? Could the formal achievement of
effective electoral authorisation establish structural divides between leaders and
led which in their train give rise to democratic demands for a greater sense of
immediacy and authenticity which (some) modes of non-electoral representation
seem to offer? From a different angle, there is a case for saying that the value to
democracy of electoral and non-electoral representation is positive-sum.
Relatedly, the democratic credentials of non-elective representative claims set
out in the article mirror the founding paradox of democracy. Democratic
polities, like others, require undemocratic foundingsDerridas founding
violence.53 We might add to this an energising paradoxelectoral politics
52
Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Part One: The Contemporary Debate)
(Chatham, N. J.: Chatham House, 1987), pp. 1825.
53
Jacques Derrida, Force of law: the mystical foundations of authority, trans. Mary
Quaintance, Cardozo Law Review, 11 (1990), 9201045.

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MICHAEL SAWARD

requires non-electoral action to shake up and re-set its agenda on a regular

basisas new claims to authenticity challenge the products of established
processes of authorisation. We might say that democracies need a series of mini
refoundings as well as a single, initial founding, and that some of the refoundings
need the relative absence of constraint that some non-electoral modes of
representation foster.
In the light of this analysis, we might also ask if we need a radical rethink of
the status of elections and voting with regard to democratic representation.
Perhaps the primary democratic contribution of elections lies in their
contribution to the extent and quality of public deliberation, over and above
their role as the core medium of democracy or a key guarantor of genuine
representation? Constituencies are no longer only singular, territorial, fixed, and
possessed of transparent interests. Rather, constituency is fluid, functional and
cultural, permanent or temporary, within or across borders, evoked as well as
given. And if we recognise this fact, we will begin to recognise the inevitability,
even the democratic necessity, of a wide array of other, non-elective
representative claims in complex contemporary democratic politics. Elections
could be seen as one factor in a chain of factors that provide us with a context in
which representative claims can be made and evaluated. Elections may be a basis
on which officials can speak for interests. But the structural and other
constraints on elections may limit efforts to speak, or as well to speak to,
interests whose location, configuration and newness might squeeze them out of
(present) electoral consideration. Here, authenticity arises as an underlying basis
for non-elective representative claims, and offers a challenge to elective claims
which base their deeper appeal on the alternative principle of authorisation.