Claims of Representation: Between Representation and Democratic Innovations

Abstract

This article seeks to build a bridge between the empirical scholarship rooted in the traditional theory of political representation and constructivist theory on representation by focusing on the authorization of claims. It seeks to answer how claims can be authorized beyond elections - selecting three democratic innovations and tracing claims through the claim-making process. Different participatory democratic innovations are selected - providing various claims and taking place in different institutional contexts, i.e., (elected) members of the Council of Foreigners Frankfurt; individual citizens in participatory budgeting procedures in Münster; and citizen’s associations elected politicians in the referendum campaign in Hamburg. We first analyze the claims raised by the different claim-makers to identify their claimed constituency eligible to authorize claims. In the second step, we focus on the authorization by the claimed constituency and the relevant decision-making authority. The article finds that claim-making in democratic innovations is fractured and incomplete. Nevertheless, this is not the reason to dismiss democratic innovations as possible loci of representation; on the contrary, seen through the prism of claim-making, all representation – electoral and nonelectoral – is partial. Focusing on the authorization of claims in democratic innovations provides novel inferences about the potential and limits of democratic innovations for broadening democratic representation

Do birds of a feather flock together? Patterns of ethnolinguistic group representation in the Brussels Capital Region

“…By focusing on representative claims, representation is no longer reduced to elections and activities of elected representatives (i.e., formalistic representation). In this sense, constructivist democratic theorists explicitly focus on the plurality of claim‐makers, claims, and the conditions under which claim‐making takes place (Guasti & Geissel, 2021; Saward, 2006, 2010). More specifically, representative claim‐making refers to instances where “a maker of representations (M) puts forward a subject (S) which stands for an object (O) that is related to a referent (R) and is offered to an audience (A)” (Saward, 2010, p. 36).…”

Beyond Advising: The Representative Role of Advisory Councils (The Case of Polish Cities)

“…Since the 1990s ACs have been developing due to 1) the decentralization of public services (ACs are expected to improve the effi ciency of services delivered locally) and 2) the erosion of the foundations of liberal democracy (questioning its representativeness, particularly with regard to disenfranchised groups) (Urbinati and Warren 2008). Additionally, ACs served as the way to make selected social groups (youth, senior citizens, people with disabilities, immigrants) more active and visible (Arunkumar et al 2019;Guasti and Geissel 2021;Kersting 2018;Moulaert and Garon 2016;Petersson and Nizam 2001;Pudar 2013;Richards-Schuster and Checkoway 2009;Schulte 1999;Walker 1999). Currently, ACs are more popular than interest from researchers would generally appear to indicate.…”

“…Nevertheless, in the literature on ACs, representation theory is rarely used to analyze the problem of representation. Th e study of Guasti and Geissel (2021) is a unique example of work that is embedded in this theory and relates to ACs. Pitkin (1967, 241) analyzes "representation" from several perspectives, starting from its meaning in Latin as making "present or manifest or to present again".…”

Do Denizens Represent Denizens? A Case of Foreigners’ Council in Frankfurt

“… 4. A demand or request can include more than one claim (for the discussion of conceptual and methodological question, see Guasti and Geissel, 2019, 2021). Two members of the research team coded all claims separately, using pre-agreed categories.…”