1
Winfried Thaa
Universität Trier
Paper (draft) for:
ECPR General Conference, Glasgow, 3. - 6. September 2014
Section 010 – Contemporary Challenges to Political Representation
Panel
Equal Representation in Electoral and Non-Electoral Settings
Issues and Images – New Sources of Inequality in Current Representative Democracy
1. Introduction
Without doubt, the normative understanding of present-day representative democracy is
contested in many respects. Nonetheless, we may agree that the normative core of modern
democracy includes two elements:
 First, political equality in the sense of equal opportunities to participate in the political
process1,
 Second, the ability to influence society’s course by political decisions, which might be
summed up as self-government.
It is the widely perceived weakening of both of these elements which makes the talk about a
crisis or even about the end of democracy so popular these days. In my paper I will focus on
the element of equality. After all, this is the subject of our panel. And yet, I think it will be
necessary to refer also to the second element, because, as I hope to demonstrate, equality and
self-government are closely intertwined.
Democracy and in particular so-called “pure” or direct democracy has often been associated
with equality. In contrast, right from its beginning, representative democracy has been
criticized for promoting inequality and oligarchy. Nonetheless, for many decades,
representative democracy has led to more equality – politically as well as socially.
Meanwhile, this has dramatically changed in most western societies.2 In my paper I will first
elaborate theoretically on the principal egalitarian potential of representative democracy and
then, subsequently, I will try to identify more specifically some of the political reasons for the
current weakening of the egalitarian effects of representative democracy. I am quite aware
that there are also other than political reasons for the development towards more inequality,
1
2
Some authors would add to procedural equality substantial equality in the sense of diminishing material
inequality. See Jörke 2010: 273.
See, for example, Bartels 2008; Rosanvallon 2013/2011; Wehler 2013.
2
most prominently socio-economic ones. Even if those should turn out to be more influential
than the political ones, I think it worthwhile to identify and discuss these.
My thesis, simply put, is that, starting around the middle of the 19th century, political
representation of societal difference, or even antagonism, in the various forms of party
democracy worked as an egalitarian force; whereas today, in what is called audience
democracy (Manin 1997), the centrality of marketable single issues and vague images for
political competition deepens existing disparities in political representation and contributes to
more social inequality.
Referring to the tradition of Marxist and radical democratic theory, the thesis formulates a
paradox: it states that the differentiation between the societal and the political sphere as
implied by representative democracy opens up the possibility for collective self-determination
based on equality. And vice versa: the weakening of representative institutions like parties
and parliaments favours the direct grip of societal power on the political process.
2. Representation and Equality
2.1 Representation’s twofold inequality
From the point of view of normative democratic theory, representation has traditionally been
understood as a source of inequality in two respects: first, with regard to the political
autonomy of the modern individual – since representation implies the division between an
elite of decision makers and the great mass of predominantly passive, privatized and
heteronomous subjects. From this point of view representative democracy is just another form
of oligarchy and incompatible with political freedom. This is the classic participatory
criticism of representation from Rousseau (Rousseau 1762: III, 15, p.135) to Barber (Barber
1984). Second, representation has been associated with inequality with regard to the
distributive effects of political decisions. From the outset of modern democracy,
representatives saw themselves confronted with the charge of giving preferential treatment to
the interests of the rich, thereby deepening the already existing socio-economic divisions. The
authors of the Federalist Papers already had to struggle with the reproach that the
representatives “will be taken from that class of citizens which will have least sympathy with
the mass of people, and be most likely to aim at an ambitious sacrifice of the many to the
aggrandizement of the few” (Hamilton/Madison/Jay: No. 57). Modern political science has
3
discussed the second charge under the concept of disparity from Schattschneider to Olson,
Offe and Bartels.3
2.2 The revisionism of the so-called representative turn
As a consequence of the so-called “representative turn” (Näsström 2011) in normative
democratic theory, the described correlation between representation and inequality has been
modified or even reversed. With regard to the first, the political or participatory aspect, David
Plotke, one of the forerunners of the more recent re-evaluation of representation, formulates
concisely: “The opposite of representation is not participation. The opposite of representation
is exclusion” (Plotke 1997: 19). Much of what has been written in the debate on a positive reevaluation of representation elaborates on this sentence by demonstrating that representation
does not prevent, but on the contrary opens up possibilities for political action.
Instead of equating representation with the isolated act of authorization by which one side of
the relationship – the citizens – renounces its ability for political action in favour of the other
side, the representatives, representation is understood as an ongoing political process, taking
place between the representatives and the constituency as well as among representatives and
within the citizenry.4 As a result, representative democracy is no longer seen as a
contradiction in terms, but as a tautology (Näsström 2006).
The theoretical background of the authors in this debate is quite diverse. They refer to the
post-structuralism of Derrida (Young 1997), to a reinterpretation of classical theories of
representation (Urbinati 2006) or to postmodern aesthetic theory (Ankersmit 1996).
Irrespective of this theoretical diversity, the common core of their argument is the rejection of
the strong ideal of autonomy in the sense of direct self-government of the people, and
correspondingly the conceptualisation of representation outside the logic of identity entailed
by this ideal. For all these theories it is precisely the non-identity between representatives and
the represented which allows for political processes of deliberation, influence, protest and
judgement. Therefore, what makes representation democratic is not “the making present” of
some common identity or some shared values, but “the making present” of differences: the
3
4
For a short summary of the debate, see Linden/Thaa 2014. Bartels links the political and the economic
aspect with what he calls a “debilitating feedback cycle”: “increasing economic inequality may produce
increasing inequality in political responsiveness, which in turn produces public policies that are increasingly
detrimental to the interest of the poor citizens which in turn produces even greater economic inequality, and
so on” (Bartels 2008: 286).
Both, Iris Marion Young and Nadia Urbinati describe representation as a political relationship. See Young
1997 and Urbinati 2005, 2006a and 2006b.
4
one between representatives and the represented as well as those between different opinions
or interests for which the representatives stand.5
Such an understanding of difference marks a fundamental turn in participatory democratic
theory. Still in 1989, Sheldon Wolin, in an interpretation of the Federalist Papers’ famous
article No. 10, charges James Madison with praising the representation of difference because
he associated it “with inequality of ability and acquisition” (Wolin 1989: 127). By contrast, in
the present debate the representation of difference becomes praiseworthy not because it would
be equated in a meritocratic sense with the affirmation of inequalities of wealth or status but
because it is understood as a “making present” of the contradictions and conflicts in society
and therefore as a precondition of a pluralistic political process.
If democratic representation has to be understood as a process that empowers citizens and
ensures the openness and contingency of the political realm, we may rightly dismiss
Rousseau’s equation of representation and heteronomy. But what about the above-mentioned
second aspect of inequality, the unequal opportunities for influencing the political process and
its outcomes? Although some of the more prominent voices of the so-called representative
turn are motivated by the struggle for special representation of exploited or historically
oppressed groups,6 the question of how political representation as a process is influenced by
social inequality, the old question of disparity has received little attention in this debate. This
is remarkable since the understanding of representation as a relation not of identity but of
difference, its understanding as a principally open political process, should dramatize
questions about the character of this process and the factors influencing it.
3. Representation´s configurative function and political equality
3.1 Representation and political action
In order to clarify this process of political representation, I suggest we distinguish analytically
three different aspects by which democratic representation allows for political action:
1. in the fundamental sense of constituting a political society and a space for political
action;7
5
6
7
Inspired by the writings of Claude Lefort, Ernst Vollrath systematically distinguishes between the
representation of unity („Einheitsrepräsentation“) and the representation of difference
(„Differenzrepräsentation“). See Vollrath 1992.
This is most obviously the case with the writings of Iris Marion Young (1997 and 2000), Jane Mansbridge
(1999 and 2000) and Suzanne Dovi (2002).
Young formulates in a constructivist manner that there is “no constituency prior to the process of
representation, no people who form an original identity they then delegate onto the derivative
representative” (Young 1997: 359).
5
2. in the sense of configuring the plurality of interests and of opinions into a manageable
number of competing options on the political stage, i.e., on a field which is
distinguished from and lifted out of society;
3. in the sense of unfolding controversial political processes in the public sphere.
In what follows, I will focus on the second aspect. Once we accept that there is no original
identity or substance which may simply be mirrored by political representation, representation
becomes an activity not only in the sense of acting for somebody and his or her interests but
more fundamentally in the sense of forming or at least co-forming what it stands for. In his
aesthetic theory of political representation, Frank Ankersmit goes as far as claiming that the
representative is autonomous with respect to the person he represents, pretty much like a
painter with respect to the object he portrays (Ankersmit 1996). However, even if we may say
that representatives are portraying their constituencies, the latter, unlike a landscape portrayed
by an artist, are able to refuse a representative’s work in favour of another one.8 In other
words: Political representation is an intersubjective relationship. Aesthetic metaphors in
theories of representation may be appropriate in order to demonstrate the constructivist aspect
of any sort of representation. For political representation in particular, however, they run the
risk of substituting in the name of creativity a new elitism for the interactive relationships
among and between representatives and citizens. I think we understand more about the
character of democratic representation as a political process if we perceive it as a performing
activity.9 This includes the active and formative aspects of representation, while keeping open
the interactive dimensions of democratic political representation.
3.2 The metaphor of the stage and political equality
Political representation as a performing activity entails the metaphor of the stage. Political
representation is enacting; it puts something on the stage of public politics. This means, first
of all, that the presentation of social conflicts on this specific stage implies a principal
distinction between the political sphere in the narrow sense and society at large. Whereas any
claim of an immediate expression of the people’s will tends to entail a levelling out of the
differences between “citoyen” and “homme” as well as between the general and the
particular, the stage of democratic political representation seems very well suited to represent
and visualize this distinction. Political representation is only democratic insofar as it allows
8
9
Michael Saward makes this point by formulating that representatives are framing their constituencies “in
particular, contestable ways”(Saward 2006: 302). However, he does not elaborate on the difference this
makes for political as opposed to aesthetic representation.
On the performative character of democratic representation, see Saward 2006; Disch 2011 and 2013.
6
for contesting any presentation of interests and opinions. Therefore it brings to light the
principal non-identity of social reality and political form.10 This, by the way, seems to be the
fundamental reason for the repudiation of representation in the Marxist tradition:
representation stands in the way of the envisioned abolition or “Aufhebung” of the political as
a distinct sphere, separated and alienated from society. However, it is precisely the
presentation of social conflicts on a stage different from society which renders these conflicts
debatable for a broader public, grants them a reflexive dimension and allows for settling these
conflicts on the basis of political equality. Therefore, I think it is important not to blur the
distinction between the sphere of society and the stage of democratic politics. Of course, there
are all kinds of representative claims, some made by interest-groups, others by pop-stars in
charity activities and again others by religious leaders like the pope. All of them appeal to an
audience and may or may not be accepted by it. However, unlike democratic political
representatives, these claim-makers do not necessarily appear on the same specific stage of
democratic politics, which is systematically distinct through political equality from the sphere
of society and its unequal distribution of power resources.
The performative character of representation implies, secondly, the already mentioned active
role of representatives in depicting and articulating interests, structuring the political field and
forming groups. I refer to this as the configurative function of representation.11 An essential
element of this function is the rhetorical linking of partial interests to specific and normally
competing interpretations of generally accepted norms, principles and values. Interests and
opinions cannot succeed on the stage of political representation without any plausible
generalization. At least one has to claim that what is good for General Motors is good for the
United States. In a democratic political system any such claim usually does not remain
unchallenged by alternatives. In that context, one should not forget that the enduring presence
of conflicting interpretations of a complex set of values, norms and principles on the political
stage promotes the formation of groups, loyalties and political orientations in society. Nadia
Urbinati is right when she identifies a decisive function of representation in offering the
democratic society a complex fabric of meanings and interpretations which allows for
opinions to build on historical continuity and for narratives that link voters over time
(Urbinati 2006b: 28).
10
11
On this aspect see Bielefeld 2011.
Claude Lefort and Marcel Gauchet, as well as Lisa Disch use the term “figuration” and “figurative” in
French and English respectively (Lefort/Gauchet 1990: 112; Disch 2011: 108). I prefer “configurative”
because to my understanding “figurative” refers more to the meaning of the scenic and visual presentation
than to the one of actively transforming and structuring something (see Thaa 2011 and 2013).
7
The point where the stage analogy ends is the role of the audience: in democracies it not only
applauds or boos the show; it votes, i.e., it decides on the basis of one person, one vote which
of the different political options performed on stage should be realized in society. This
implies, first, that the difference between actors and audience is periodically eliminated in
general elections, the ritual and nonetheless effective equalizing mechanism of democracies,
and, second, that the performing action on stage is part of a broader political praxis of society
at large, i.e., of its democratic self-government. These implications mark the crucial
difference between democratic and other forms of political representation.12 Representative
claims in general may activate recipients or observers (Saward 2006: 304). Democratic
representation in particular, however, not only empowers the represented as interpreting,
discussing, and judging members of an audience but also empowers them as citizens who may
hold the representative accountable and change the society they live in by decisions taken in
accordance to the majority rule, i.e., based on political equality.
Therefore, elections in representative democracies are not adequately understood as an
opportunity for citizens to participate in the making of authoritative decisions. Their
outstanding importance results from the fact that they prominently institutionalize a social
practice based on equality and thereby constitute a political sphere of action as distinct from
the social one. One may argue that representative claims can be made by all kind of actors, by
interest groups, NGOs, famous intellectuals or rock stars. And all of these claims may be
discussed and judged by the various audiences to which they are offered. However, in none of
these cases do participants interact as equals. Therefore, it is the close linkage to voting and
the majority rule what makes representation a sphere of action among equals.
Summarizing these thoughts, I would distinguish three elements of the configurative function
of democratic representation:
First, representation brings the heterogeneity of society and the conflicts it entails to the
political stage – representation performs, renders visible, lets things appear, and of course, is
at the same time actively depicting the image of what is to be represented.
Second, by doing so, representation has to transform the multiplicity of interests, perspectives
and opinions into more generally acceptable programs – the configurative function in the
more narrow sense. Representation structures political cleavages and the respective political
groupings.
12
The making of a representative claim to a public is much older than democracy. It is an essential element of
religious communities, feudal systems and also of authoritarian and totalitarian societies. The question is
whether representative claims are democratically contested or not.
8
Third, since democratic representation is linked to elections, it offers decidable alternatives to
a public of citizens considered as political equals. Democratic representation empowers. It
enables people to act not only as an audience but as deciding citizens. Insofar as it is linked to
the principle of majority rule,13 representation constitutes a practice among equals.14 Such an
element of participatory parity (Fraser 2003: 253) may – as the history of western
democracies shows – spread to other social spheres and foster an egalitarian political culture,
based on “relational equality” (Rosanvallon 2013: 19).
4. The weakening of the egalitarian effects of representative democracy
4.1 General threats for the egalitarian effects of democratic representation
Even without considering the more recent developments of representative democracies, we
are able to identify three different threats to the egalitarian effects of democratic
representation’s configurative function:
First, the eroding relevance of elections within the political sphere may further undermine the
autonomy of the political, promote the direct transformation of social power into political
power and weaken the impact of relational equality on society at large.
A second anti-egalitarian effect may result from changes in the transforming and generalizing
aspects of political representation. If representatives feel less obliged to translate different
social interests into more generally acceptable demands and programs, they will be more
accessible to lobbying by special interest groups and, on the other hand, less subjected to the
influence of citizens via elections.
Third, informal types of representation which no longer refer to the stage of elective
competition, like protest or cause movements, may prove effective in deploying negative
power. However, the power of social movements to prevent or undo state decisions is not
necessarily based on political equality. In many cases it rests on organizational, financial or
other highly unequally distributed resources. Therefore, the multiplication of representative
claims may revitalize political conflict but further weaken political equality at the same time.
4.2 Audience democracy and the growing relevance of issues and images
In his eminent book on “The Principle of Representative Government” Bernard Manin
describes the recent changes in representative democracy as a shift from party democracy to
audience democracy (Manin 1997). Among the most important characteristics of this
13
14
For the outstanding importance of the principle of majority rule for the autonomy of the political and the
norm of equality, see Flaig 2013.
On Citizenship as a social practice, see Seubert 2013.
9
development, he names the erosion of class-based cleavages and clearly defined political
camps, the weakening of parties as membership organizations and the declining role of party
platforms – all typical traits of party democracy. Correspondingly, in what he calls audience
democracy, he identifies a multiplication of rapidly changing cleavages, a more volatile
electorate, a personalization of politics at the expense of platforms and a greater independence
of political leaders from party members. In the context of this paper I am particularly
interested in the consequences of these changes for the above-elaborated configurative
function of representation. As Manin states, one of the most important characteristics of
audience democracy has to be seen in the fact that voters decide more situationally and
reactively. In other words, they seem to respond to what is offered to them on the political
stage rather than expressing stable preferences or social and cultural identities. This gives
politicians and their campaign managers much more freedom than they used to have during
the times of party democracy to decide which among the numerous splits and conflicts in
society should be presented as political issues. The leading politicians and their professional
advisers must decide which among the potential issues will be more promising for gaining
public support and winning elections (Manin 1997: 222f.). An important aspect of these
decisions is the impact of potential issues on the image of the politician – and much less its
significance for a broader political cleavage. In audience democracy, so Bernard Manin,
elections are decided on the basis of images. These images are not free of political content,
but compared to political platforms, they are very vague and hazy (Manin 1997: 226).
Manin himself is, all in all, rather ambivalent towards this development in audience
democracy. On the one hand he notes that voters have less say about what representatives will
do than they have under party democracy (Manin 1997: 233); on the other hand, he states that
the increasing number of floating voters and other changes have strengthened the role of
public debate (Manin 1997: 232).
4.3 Why more inequality through issues and images?
In the context of my argument I have to clarify how focusing the political process on issues
and their impact on images changes the configurative function of representation and retroacts
on political equality.
a) Issue and image orientation as strategy of party elites
At first glance it seems plausible that a shift from platforms to issues and images will change
the configurative function of political representation. In audience democracy, party
competition is much less focused on transforming different societal interests into alternative
10
versions of the common good and much more centred on the creation of positive images and
ascribed competences and problem-solving skills. Instead of translating social contradictions
into reasonably consistent cleavages, parties try to compile attractive menus out of loosely
connected promises and policies (Blühdorn 2011). Such a weakening of the generalizing
function of party politics facilitates the intrusion of societal inequality into the political
sphere. We can typically observe such an intrusion in new and unstable democracies which
lack deep-seated political cleavages and the corresponding political grouping. As a
consequence, the traditionally leading families, notables or new oligarchs often dominate the
public and the political process. Something similar seems to happen in well-established liberal
democracies as well. The decline of established cleavages and political grouping opens the
door for the direct influence of prominence (as actor, athlete or member of a political
dynasty), money and other sources of social inequality on the political process.
Besides, there are good reasons to expect that the growing weight of strategically chosen
issues and images further minimises the opportunities for the specific interests of socially
disadvantaged groups. If we follow Manin, party competition has largely become a struggle
for positive media-images. Media-images however, cannot be constructed deliberately. They
have to build on dominating values and largely shared positive meanings. This I think
constitutes a problem for the representation of lower strata, their interests and perspectives in
present capitalist market societies. During the last few years, several social scientists have
tried to demonstrate that one of the most serious problems of socially disadvantaged groups
today has to be seen in their negative image as “losers”.15 Whereas during the 20th century the
industrial working-class was often politically romanticized and idealized as the bearer of
productive values and the embodiment of a brighter future, today, in a widely marketized and
individualized society, the classical proletariat has quasi disappeared, and the so-called
precariat, which in a way took its social position, is a widely non-respected and often
disdained social group. The people we categorize as precariat are far from being perceived as
part of a larger social class which stands for positive values and an alternative future, as it was
the case for many decades with unskilled labour and the working class in Europe. To put it
simply: in one case we think about these groups as regrettable losers in the process of
modernization; in the other case they were seen as part of the future ruling class. Even without
a specific socialist idealization of the lower strata in industrial society, the respective social
groups used to be positively addressed in the political platforms of Christian democratic and
conservative parties as well.
15
See, for example, Neckel 2008, Paugam 2009, Walter 2011. For a discussion, see Thaa/Linden 2014.
11
Today, however, it does not seem advisable for parties and political actors to create the
impression of close affinity to the poor, the unemployed and other socially weak groups. The
interests of the losers in the process of modernization and of other marginalized groups are
not very promising as political issues; rather they threaten to damage the image of politicians
who get too closely associated with them. If these observations are correct, we may conclude
that party politics based on general, ideologically influenced programs offers better conditions
for the public articulation and realization of so-called weak interests than does issue-oriented
politics.
The picture may further clarify if we take a brief look at the classic debate on the disparities
of interests in pluralist democracies during the 1960s. This debate was structured by the
principal distinction between two levels of politics: between “pressure politics” and “party
politics” (Schattschneider 1960: 20) or between the “corporate channel” and the “electoral
channel” (Rokkan 261f.).16 One of the most prominent arguments in this debate was that
elections and party politics, because they are based on the majority principle and political
equality, could at least partly counterbalance the disparities as they are produced by the
unequal capabilities of different groups to organize their interest and to exercise pressure by
refusing systemically important social functions.17 The simple idea behind this defence of
pluralism was that even unorganized groups without great societal power resources were still
able to exert political influence on the democratically elected and accountable representatives.
With the described shift from party to audience democracy and the growing issue-orientation
of politics, this may no longer be true, since party politics and the electoral channel are now
dominated by the marketization of issues as attractive as possible. Political preferences of the
voters based on socio-economic cleavages and political alternatives are replaced by the short
termed mobilization of affective assent and mass loyalty.
b) Expanding Participation - Issue orientation from below?
Manin’s description of audience democracy seems to correctly mirror the most significant
changes in the role of the political elites and the character of electoral campaigns. However,
the metaphor of the audience does not really apply to the growing activities of civil society in
all western democracies. One could argue that the loosened ties between parties and socioeconomic cleavages as well as the decline of political ideologies not only widened the scope
for political elites to strategically choose political issues but also created new possibilities for
all kinds of groups to put their specific matter of concern on the political agenda. And indeed,
16
17
For a short overview on this debate, see Thaa/Linden 2014 and more detailed Linden 2014.
This was the crucial argument of Kurt Sontheimer’s defence of pluralism against the criticism of Claus
Offe. See Sontheimer 1973 and Offe 1969.
12
many political scientists have identified the expansion of political participation as an
outstanding characteristic of the more recent development of representative democracy.18 A
great number of different activities, informal as well as institutionalized, seem to more than
compensate for the declining role of the traditional institutions of representative democracy
like parties and parliaments.
Some authors understand these expanding participatory activities as a progressive
transformation of representative democracy. Whereas Pierre Rosanvallon still acknowledges
the ambivalent character of a development which strengthens the negative power of citizens to
control and prevent governmental action but which at the same time produces fragmentation,
a crisis of generality and the loss of a common world (Rosanvallon 2008), John Keane praises
what he calls monitory democracy not only as a historically new form of democracy that
follows assembly-based and representative democracy, but also as “the deepest and widest
system of democracy ever known” (Keane 2009: 698).
One may roughly distinguish between two forms of participatory activities: Institutionalized
ones like participatory budgets or “Bürgerhaushalte”, citizen panels or deliberative forums, on
the one hand, and self-authorized groups which focus on the unfolding of negative power, on
the other hand.19 Irrespective of important differences between these activities, they have two
things in common: the percentage of citizens actively involved in these activities is typically
very low20, and, additionally, it highly depends on citizens’ resources of time, education and
income. The social selectivity of alternative forms of participation as compared to general
elections
has
been
frequently
confirmed
by
empirical
studies.21
For
example,
Dalton/Scarrow/Cain report that among those interviewees in a Eurobarometer study
classified in the “high education” category, nearly three times as many had participated in
citizen action groups than did those in the “low education” category (Dalton/Scarrow/Caine
2004: 134). Irrespective of this highly unequal social grouping of actors in more demanding
participatory activities, one may still argue that both, institutionalized as well as selfauthorized activities, may be able to influence the political agenda and to function as
advocacy for public interests or even for specific weak interests. Urbinati/Warren name a long
list with a variety of goods for which self-authorized groups may stand, reaching from human
18
19
20
21
See, for example, Warren 2002, Dalton 2008, Rosanvallon 2008, Keane 2009.
Urbinati and Warren distinguish in a similar way between “nonelectoral democratic representation“ and
“self-authorized representation“ (see Urbinati/Warren 2008). I hesitate to use the concept of representation
in such a general way, not only because I am skeptical about overstretching the concept of representation,
but also, because some of these groups would explicitly refuse to represent anything or anybody.
In Germany, the organizers of participatory budgets, the so-called “Bürgerhaushalte“, consider it as success
if around three percent of the citizens participate (Lieb 2013).
See, for example, Dalton/Scarrow/Cain 2004; Bödeker 2011; Böhnke 2011; Schäfer/Schoen 2013.
13
rights and security to education, rainforests and spirituality (Urbinati/Warren 2008: 403).
There is little reason to doubt that many different participatory activities are able to identify
and successfully launch new and otherwise neglected political issues. If we look at the
development of the political agenda of the last few decades in western democracies, we will
easily see that some of the most important issues, namely in the field of public interest, have
not been brought up by parties and their elective competition, but by protest, participatory
activities and public debate. And even more than that: some of the most remarkable
advancements of formerly discriminated groups – like ethnic or sexual minorities – were
achieved only thanks to activists who were able to establish new issues and to unfold public
pressure.
And still we witness increasing social inequality and widespread complaints about the
“growing impotence of egalitarian causes” (Crouch 2004: 6) or even about the
depoliticization of democratic politics (Mouffe 2005; Selk 2011). One answer for the riddle of
the parallel existence of rich participatory activities with the permanent creation of new
political issues, on the one hand, and growing social and political inequalities, on the other
hand, may be found in the decline of the configurative function of representation as described
above. We may call the different activists self-authorized representatives or citizen
representatives as do Urbinati and Warren (Urbinati/Warren 2008). However, these
representatives do not configurate the plurality of perspectives, interests and opinions into
more general political options which can be judged and decided by a voting public. Although
the success of single-issue movements and of many participatory activities depends on the
mobilization of public support, they are not necessarily forced to integrate their own matter of
concern into a broader political perspective and to subject it to the decision of a community of
political equals. In many cases it will be much more promising to create an attractive image
for the cause in question. In order to influence governments and office-holders it may be more
effective for cause groups and citizen initiatives to engage in professional public relations
than in a political exchange with other groups and their dissenting positions.
The levelling of the distinction between the social and the political may be understood as
progress with regard to making subjects public which were previously excluded as private.
However, without linkage to the political stage of elective democracy, the multiple
participatory activities may resemble a market-like struggle for influence and power rather
than a political conflict among equals. The great achievement of democracy, the principle of
majority rule, ignores all qualitative differences in status, wealth or education. To the extent
this principle gets marginalized, the political sphere will lose its distinctiveness and dignity
14
and adjust to the competitive market society. John Keane – unwillingly – points to this danger
when he affirmatively identifies a “world where the old rule of ‘one person, one vote, one
representative’ is replaced with the new principle of monitory democracy: ‘one person, many
interests, many voices, multiple votes, multiple representatives’” (Keane 2009: 691). Such a
world, I am afraid, will no longer be characterized by political equality.
5. Conclusions
This paper has argued that the egalitarian achievements of modern representative democracy
result not only from majority rule with its “one person, one vote principle”, but also from the
emergence and reproduction of a distinct political sphere which allows for political action
among equals. It furthermore holds that democratic political representation, and in particular
its configurating function of transforming a plurality of perspectives, interests and opinions
into political alternatives, plays a central role in producing and reproducing such a sphere of
equality. Based on this argument, I have not only identified three general threats to political
equality. More specifically, I argue that the increasing importance of relatively isolated issues
and media images for party competition, on the one hand, as well as the growing weight of
issue-oriented, non-electoral participatory activities, on the other hand, undermine the
political real as a distinct sphere of equals and threaten to adapt it to society and its
inequalities.
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