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Prepared for delivery at the 1998 Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association.
Boston Marriot Copley Place and Sheraton Boston Hotel and
Towers, September 3-6, 1988.
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Direct democracy has generally been seen as paradigmatic in democratic theory because it entails a full and direct participation of all of the citizens in the process of decision-making (1). The modern "discovery" of representation has left this paradigm unchallenged. Too often, representation has received a merely instrumental justification, and has been seen as an expedient necessary to cope with large territorial states. Not even warm supporters of representative government, like James Madison and John Stuart Mill, could avoid thinking of representation as good because unavoidable. Particularly since the debacle of the French Revolution, democracy has become, like Athens, the name of a state of perfection that the moderns could admire and long for all the while knowing it was unattainable. "Today, in politics, democracy is the name of what we cannot have --yet cannot cease to want" (Dunn 1993, 28).
Nostalgia may foster resignation, but it may also encourage a realistic disenchantment toward what is actual. This was the accomplishment of Hegel's task of ideological normalization: he situated the ancient republics at the height of an uncontaminated perfection to make them innocuous and their ideals powerless. Not very different was Constant's strategy, with the variant that his militant anti-Jacobean passion brought him to declare ancient democracy undesirable more than simply unattainable, old more than simply ideally eternal.
Whereas for Restoration thinkers like Hegel and Constant democracy was the name of something the moderns could no longer have, for radical democrats, "classical" democracy has become the name of a good society we can still have, provided we interpret it as a ceaseless process of political education in citizenship. Whereas the moderns have lost the possibility of running the state directly, nonetheless they can attempt to extend democratic control beyond the sphere of government so as to include in the democratic project civil society itself. This was the dream of the seventies, when radical democrats thought it possible to reconcile capitalist ownership with the workers' government of the factory, and applied to the sphere of economics the logic running the political sphere, in which all are entitled to a vote no matter their social status and property holding. Along this line of thought, the value of democracy has been deemed coincident with the educative function of participation, and the significance of politics with its mobilizing power more than its decision-making ability (Pateman [1970] 1997). Within this perspective, representation held little appeal, first because it justified a vertical relation among the citizens and the state, and second because it promoted citizens' passivity.
When not criticized in the name of direct democracy, representation has been ignored by the theorists of participatory democracy (2). Attempts to make it more consistent with the democratic principle of equality has been seen as not only useless, but moreover hypocritically despicable: useless, because in any case representation could not eliminate the gap between standing and acting citizenship; hypocritically despicable, because representation could actually turn out to be "a way of justifying government of the many by the few," of using minorities' representation as a means for legitimizing the majority's decisions (Pitkin 1967, 84). Proportional accuracy in representation, Hannah Pitkin has argued in a book that has stated the tone of the last thirty years' debate on representation, takes away with its left hand what it gives us with its right hand: it meticulously reflects the social topography but, at the same time, renders the assembly into a simply "talking rather than acting, deliberating rather than governing" institution. Representation --this was Pitkin's message -- cannot substitute for direct democracy. When it seems it can, like in the case of proportionality, it de facto prostrates participation even more ruinously than its first-past-the-post counterpart, which, at least, is able to guarantee stability and allow for effective decisions. In sum, there is no way of making representation be what it cannot, that is a valid substitute for direct democracy.
This scenario seems on the point of changing, and representation seems primed to acquire a more benign reputation. While until recently the defense of representative democracy has generally been endorsed by the neo-Schumpeterian theorists of electoral democracy in opposition to the proponents of a "participatory democracy," now the identification of "true" democracy with direct democracy is facing a broader range of dissatisfaction (3). For instance, George Kateb writes that the institution of representation is the source of the "moral distinctiveness" of modern democracy, and the sign of its superiority to direct democracy (Kateb 1992, 36-56). Even more explicitly, David Plotke states that in a representative democracy "the opposite of representation is not participation" but exclusion, while Iris Marion Young argues that "the elevation of direct democracy to the apex, as the only "real" democracy, "is mistaken;" in fact "political representation is both necessary and desirable" (Plotke 1997, 18; Young 1997, 352).
I find the 'rediscovery' of representation both interesting and compelling. When not interpreted as simply a technical device for regulating the electoral process and arriving at political decisions, representation can be seen as an impulse to political participation, and a means for extending the meaning of politics beyond state institutions and the decisional moment. As I will argue in the first part of the paper, it is precisely the quality of indirectness belonging to representation that makes room for deliberation, both inside and outside the assembly. This implies that, contrary to Pitkin's message, the distinction between "deliberating" and "governing" --"talking" and "acting"-- is crucial and much needed, while her elevation of governing over deliberating is misguided.
The renaissance of deliberative democracy makes such a re-evaluation not only reasonable, but moreover praiseworthy. As I shall claim in the first and second parts of the paper, a deliberative conception of democratic politics presumes both representation and the notion of the assembly as an agora. Given these premises, proportional representation comes to be seen as desirable, because it is more consistent with a notion of democracy that does not reduce the "right of representation" to the "right of decision" (Sterne, 1871, 50). Whereas the majority retains the latter, the whole population should not be deprived of the former. Proportional representation, one of its contemporary critics acknowledge, would better fit the deliberative character of democracy, in so far as it "would enforce a broad scope for public debate and would encourage the development of judgmental competence among the electorate" (Beitz 1989, 137). Along this line of thought, in the second part of the paper I will also maintain that proportional representation fulfills the democratic principles of political equality and popular control better than a majoritarian system can do. However, proportionality needs to be referred to political ideas and claims, not to the description of social segmentations. On the other end, it needs to be disassociated from a rationalist interpretation of democratic deliberation. As I will argue in the last part of the paper, for the assembly to perform as an agora, proportionality can be conceived neither as a descriptive "mirror" nor as a supplement of information for achieving an impartial truth. Proportionality may only serve the cause of democratic deliberation if it is acknowledged that the discursive dimension of politics entails a notion of representation as advocacy, where partisan standing and deliberative projection meet. To develop these three arguments I will refer to John Stuart Mill and his attempt to define a direct link between representative democracy, the agonistic character of the assembly and proportional representation. Mill's ideas are remarkably similar to those which constitute the contemporary theory of deliberative democracy while anticipating several of the theoretical arguments that contemporary theorists employ to defend the plea of proportional representation.
1. Direct and Indirect Democracy
Since democracy has acquired its value from, and generally goes along with, direct participation, we need first of all to understand how "directness" is to be interpreted, and what citizens need to perform directly in order to enjoy democratic status. To answer these questions I need briefly to refer to the ancient republics and the way the moderns have judged them, because only in the ancient polis was political autonomy fulfilled through a direct and physical presence of the citizens in the places where public decisions were to be made: the ekklesia and the dikasteries.
Following Robert Dahl, Iris Young has maintained that even "in assemblies of a few hundred people, most people will be passive participants who listen to a few people to speak for a few positions, then think and vote" (Young 1997, 352-53) (4). Indeed, the "direct" political presence of the citizens did not impede the Athenian ekklesia from being an assembly in which the large majority remained silent, while very few spoke. Post-Periclean reforms were intended to stimulate a physical presence, not an active presence. Thus, Athenian adult male citizens were paid for attending, not for speaking in, the assembly. It is true that the basic principle of Athenian democracy was isegoria, the individual right to speak in the assembly. Nonetheless, the Prytanies instituted the pay to discourage absence, not silence. "There was no law requiring anybody to appear in the role of ho boulomenos [any one who wanted to speak], and the orators found no fault with the fact that many Athenians never addressed their fellow citizens" (Hansen 1993, 267, 150; Aristotle, 1986, 41.3).
Attendance and speech are the structural forms of democratic participation. They are prior to, and the precondition for, any democratic decision. They entail both passivity and activity, while denoting the plastic dimension of dialogue which actually presumes both speaking and listening, outward expressiveness and inward reflection, words and the solitude of the mind. I would not hesitate to view these as the universal forms of human communication, peculiar to our relations to others as well as to ourselves. Socratic dialogues and Petrarca's lyrics are among the most exquisite examples of this phenomenology of the discursive life as an act of reciprocation, of giving and taking words. Speech intercourse among citizens follows the same path. Like that belonging to the dimension of intimacy and friendship, it too shares the unique characteristic of keeping individuals in contact without depriving them of their judgmental solitude. If ever, speech makes them aware of the remarkable difference between isolation and solitude, both in private and political life. This clarification shall disclose its full relevance once I explain the way Rousseau interpreted directness in political action, and the reason why he thought that a good republic must avoid public deliberation (5).
In any event, directness does not mean that all speak. A "direct" presence does not entail a vociferous presence. This was even more so in Sparta (which until the end of the eighteenth century was taken as the model of direct government), where the physical presence of the citizens in the assembly meant essentially a passive standing and listening, and a final resolving without any direct articulation of either consent or dissent. Contemporary historians believe that the rule that "anyone who wished" could address the ekklesia remained only an ideal in Athens too: "a minority came to dominate the field of politics and the majority of citizens never trod the speakers' platform" (Hansen 1993, 267).
Concerning Athenian democracy, Mogen H. Hansen has listed three kinds of citizens: "the passive ones" who did not go to the assembly; the "standing participants" who limited themselves to listening and voting but "did not raise their voice in discussion;" and finally the "wholly active citizens," a "small group of initiative-takers, who spoke and proposed motions" (Hansen 1993, 268 italics added). Now, if we compare Pericles' Athens with contemporary democracy, we may say that our right to vote corresponds to the ancient standing participation, while representation corresponds to a wholly active citizenship. The former involves all, the latter involves only some. This was actually the comparison that Mill had in mind when he claimed that the vote is a duty, not a right to be performed at pleasure, and when he advanced proposals to make the ballot uncostly and easy to be performed by all (Mill [1861] 1991, chapter 10). As Pericles paid day-salaries to Athenians in order to discourage passivity, Mill wanted to lift all the burdens from the act of voting. The former tried to make standing participation convenient, while the latter wanted to make it not inconvenient.
However, the most interesting aspect to be considered in order to grasp what democratic directness meant in Athens is that pertaining to the role played by the wholly active citizens. Did the absence of representation make Athenian citizens speak their mind directly? There are two models of directness that ancient history has bequeathed us: that of Sparta and that of Athens. Rousseau, who praised autonomous-isolated reasoning and silent voting, regarded the former, not the latter, as the best republic. On the contrary, Mill, who praised public discussion and deliberative trials, judged Athens superior. Rousseau thought that in a well-ordered republic each citizen should make up his mind literally by himself, without entering into a dialogue with his fellow citizens. He interpreted solitude as isolation and, more or less like Plato, saw Reason (the general will) as a force able to speak equally to all provided it did not suffer interference from passions and opinions. Rousseau had so little confidence in individual disinterestedness that he was unwilling to leave the individual citizen at the mercy of either his own impulses or those of others. His admiration for the virtues of the ancients was as deep as his awareness of the weakness of the moderns. But instead of choosing the constitutional stratagem of a mechanical balance of opposite forces, he adopted a obstructive strategy: he disassociated the citizens from one another in order both to keep them safe from the risk of partiality and to avoid imposing the general will upon them by coercion. Hence, he rejected delegation because it entailed citizens' deriving their opinions from external sources and relaying upon others' judgment and misjudgment (6).
In sum, for Rousseau directness referred to reasoning and the will. He interpreted reasoning as an isolated act because he thought that the individual mind needed to divorce itself from the mind of others in order to be able to follow Reason's traces without fault. Because reasoning had to avoid collective deliberation, direct political action to Rousseau meant properly and only voting, not debating. What is truly striking in his Social Contract is that he stresses the communal moment of participation without allowing public speech. In fact, according to Rousseau, the deadly risk to political autonomy came from citizens' interaction with one another more than it did from their passivity: thus, in his republic, while all were standing participants, none was a wholly active participant. It should come as no surprise, then, that he dismissed both Athenian democracy and representative democracy. In his mind, the most negative element of representation rested on the fact that in making public deliberation necessary it violated the basic principle of judgmental individual autonomy. Athens suffered from the same vice in his eyes. Indeed, even if its citizens did not delegate their sovereign power, they nonetheless practiced some form of mediated participation in so far as the assembly was actually run by the orators.
Rousseau's perception was far from inaccurate. In the Athenian ekklesia the speakers did not speak on behalf, or for or in the place of someone who was not physically present, and in this sense they were neither trustees nor delegates. However, one should not be too quick to conclude that the orators absolutely did not represent anybody or anything. In spite of the contemporary myth of the polis as the place of a disinterested and dialogic exercise of public reason, private and class interests did not in fact remain outside the ekklesia. Moses I. Finley has deemed a "commonplace" the idea that "men who voted in elections or assemblies" divorced "personalities from issues," participation from interests. For the Athenians too "politics were instrumental" (Finley 1985, 97-8). Although they did not have "structurated political parties," they had corporate and antagonistic interests (p. 75). Aristotle depicted Athenian political life as a theater of an endless struggle between the oligarchs (who never disappeared) and the demos.
Given these premises, it is not entirely correct to say that the orators spoke their own minds. They spoke their mind to promote some interests, and in this sense they spoke for someone and something, even if nobody gave them any mandate. Moreover, we know that the great orators used to deliver their speeches only on important or exceptional occasions. In ordinary times, and on questions pertaining to ordinary policy, they used "to speak" through "their identifiable expert-lieutenants," who 'represented' their opinions and interests and acted in their place (Finley 1985, 79). In Athens, direct democracy produced an élite in spite of the fact that it did not elect representatives. And even if in the ekklesia anyone who wished could "make a denunciation," a petition and a law proposal, nonetheless the political leaders --the orators-- shaped citizens' opinion at their pleasure.
It is understandable then why Rousseau excluded both Athenian democracy and representative democracy from his model. In spite of their manifest differences, indirectness was common to both: public discussion was the kind of mediated politics that Rousseau attributed, correctly, to each of them and the reason for his rejecting both of them. He keenly perceived that the presence of deliberation in the assembly entails and promotes a dissension that goes well beyond opinions. Speech both evokes and promotes the fragmentation of the general will and, in this sense, makes it impossible for the citizens to escape the interference of passions and interests (7). Eloquence and sectorial interests recall one another, while deliberation is synonymous with an indirect presence, whether by speech or representation, or both.
Rousseau's perception was correct. Indeed public deliberation, not simply voting, belongs to democracy, which in fact does not regard the sovereign body as a homogeneous and undivided collective unity, but acknowledges first, that the plurality of opinions makes speech the main instrument for reaching decisions, and second, that political decisions cannot entirely avoid partiality because it cannot avoid the majority/minority divide. If we take Rousseau seriously, we may say that representative democracy is a living confutation of a rationalist vision of politics. Its assembly, Mill understood, aims at a consensus which is always provisional. What makes modern democracy secure and lasting is the sense of endlessness that the debating character of its consented politics transmits to citizens, the voters as well as the representatives. Disagreement (and thus the pluralism of political opinions) and free speech were the two elements that made Athens so different from Sparta, and that, in Rousseau's view, also characterize representative democracy. It is not by chance that in spite of the fact that Athens did not have representation, theorists of representative democracy like Mill have elected it as their model. What makes the two forms of democracy similar is that both of them practice an indirect form of political action. This form is speech. Speech is a mediating means that belongs to all citizens, at once linking and separating them.
Hence it is not indirectness per se which distinguishes direct from representative democracy. Rather, what makes the latter truly different from the former is the character and broadness of its mediated politics. Representative democracy lacks simultaneity in the process of political deliberation and decision-making. To recall Hansen's abovementioned partition, one may say that the "standing participants" and the "wholly active citizens" do not share the same time and space dimensions. A simultaneity of standing, deliberating and deciding is attained only by the representatives, so that in a representative democracy, the assembly is actually the only place where the kind of political indirectness belonging to the ancient agora can be revived. But contrary to direct democracy, in a representative democracy the attendance of the "standing participant" citizens is wholly mediated, because the mediating factor is not simply and only speech, but also time and space. The peculiarity of modern democracy rests in the lack of coextensiveness and in the elapsing of the time between the speaking/hearing moment and the rectifying/voting moment.
Thus, quite appropriately, representative democracy has been described as a deferred democracy (Young 1997, 355-57). Here, petitions and legislative proposals are not to be discussed and rectified one by one by the standing citizens in the actual moment they are brought to their attention. The vote of standing citizens is now split into two moments, one of which is future-oriented (the package of promises and proposals made by the candidates), while the other is retrospective (the actual outcome achieved by the representatives) (8). Like in Athens, in modern democracy the "standing participants" limit themselves to listening and voting. But unlike in Athens, now the moment of judgment and the moment of resolution belong to two separate temporal perspectives.
Thus, the difference between direct and indirect democracy does not lie in the fact that the former presumes a wholly active participation on the part of all citizens, but, more importantly, it lies in the way the "standing" form of participation --which is common to both-- is performed. Only in a representative democracy does popular voting have the character of a credit. Only here is politics projected into a future dimension and, for this reason, is a relevant role assigned to trust. Trust, control and accountability are more or less effective and meaningful in proportion as the citizens retain the chance to be like the "standing participants" in the Athenian agora (9).
I would say then that the difference between direct and representative democracy pertains to the form indirectness is attained: synchronism in the one case and dyachronism in the other. This difference is evident once we consider the way citizens perform as "standing participants." Indeed, whereas in Athens the citizens' visibility was immediate and did not require any particular effort on their part, save that of going to the assembly, in a representative democracy the standing itself is symbolic and needs to be constructed and artificially nurtured. Hence, speech acquires a more pregnant and broad significance in so far as it is a kind of medium that in order to do its work of mediating has to give a body and a configuration to the "standing participants." In a representative democracy, words literally give life, because citizens (with their variety of claims and opinions) need to make themselves heard if they want to communicate with the wholly active citizens sitting in the assembly.
Thus, more than speech in itself, it is speech occurring within a deferring dimension that makes necessary, and actually stimulates the development of, an articulated public sphere capable of creating a symbolic or artificial simultaneity, to make the citizens feel as if they were simultaneously in the agora. Accordingly, Mill maintained that freedom of speech is a not only a negative right of the individual, but the very precondition for representative government to perform legitimately (Mill [1861] 1991, 241-42, 247-48). "Popular sovereignty is meaningless without rules organizing and protecting public debate" (Holmes 1988, 233) (10). In Mill's mind, what is truly peculiar to modern democracy is the intermediary network of communication that can fill the gap between the speaking/hearing moment and the rectifying/voting moment (11). In this way the actual agora (parliament) and the symbolic agora (voters) can be reunited, and representative democracy can enjoy what made for the peculiarity of Athenian democracy, that is the simultaneity of "standing" and "acting" (12).
The above conceptualization is extremely important, because it allows us to attempt a reading of representation as a mechanism that is not simply instrumental. Now, one of most frequent criticisms of ancient philosophers and historians has been that in Athens citizens attending to the assembly were at the mercy of the orators. The destiny of the city was literally in the hands of skillful rhetoricians, the impact of whose character was even more important than the decision-making power of the people. As Thucydides wrote of Pericles' Athens, "The democracy existed in the name, but in fact the first citizen ruled" (Thucydides 1972, 2.65.11-13). Public discourse, it has recently been observed, easily turned the orator into a demagogue, while the people had practically no chance to shield themselves from the power of speech (Yunis 1996, 43-46).
Representation allows citizens to shield themselves from speech. It gives them the chance to reflect by themselves, to step back from factual immediacy and putting a healthy distance between being (as both facts and words) and their judgment. Representation creates a distance between the moment of speech and that of decision, and in this sense it enables a critical scrutiny while shielding the citizens from the harassment of words and passions. This is what gives to representation a "moral distinctiveness" of its own, what makes it not simply prudentially necessary but also valuable in itself (Kateb 1992, 36-56) (13). The absence of an actual simultaneity is not only that which distinguishes representative from direct democracy; it is also that which makes it superior.