Democratic Incongruities: Representative Democracy in Britain

239 Pages·2014·0.849 MB·English

by  David Judge (auth.)

Democratic Incongruities
Representative Democracy in Britain
David Judge
Democratic Incongruities
Democratic Incongruities
Representative Democracy in Britain
David Judge
Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Strathclyde
© David Judge 2014
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Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements vi
1 Democratic Incongruities: Old Models and New Perspectives 1
2 The ‘Problem’ of the People 25
3 The ‘Problem’ of Representational Transmission of Power 47
4 The ‘Problem’ of Elected Representatives 77
5 The ‘Problem’ of Representative Government 107
6 The ‘Problem’ of Citizen Participation 135
7 The ‘Problem’ of ‘Post-’: Post-Representative,
Post-Parliamentary, Post-Democracy 172
References 195
Index 223
v
Preface and Acknowledgements
‘Know your audience’ should be the guiding dictum for all authors. In
the case of this book the audience is known and apparent: it is me. Or, to
avoid accusations of being self-indulgent, I should make it clear that the
audience is ‘people like me’ who want to understand how representative
democracy works in Britain. There are already a multitude of books and
articles that tell us how it works, most of which are intensely critical
of the ‘democratic deficit’ or the degree of ‘democratic drift’ observ-
able in Britain; and most of which point to a fundamental mismatch,
an incongruity, between democratic theory and political practice. In
essence, British democracy does not work as a standard account of rep-
resentative democracy stipulates that it should. Even in its own terms
there is a series of mismatches between the prescriptions of that account
and routine political practice: citizens would be expected, as the essence
of democratic engagement, to participate in elections, in contrast to
the actual propensity of significant numbers of the British citizenry not
to engage even in this minimal level of participation; political parties
would serve as representational transmitters of power from voters to
governors rather than the other way round; representative institutions
would represent the ‘shared experiences’ of the various peoples of the
political nation and internalise the values of political equality, instead
of institutionalising limited representativeness and sustaining represen-
tational inequalities; governments would be authorised by, and held
accountable to, elected representatives (and ultimately to the electorate)
rather than being enmeshed in governance networks insulated from
electoral representative processes.
If the starting point for understanding is thus taken to be a ‘stand-
ard model’ of representative democracy, then that model does not get
us very far, as there is a distinct lack of fit between such an account
and political practice in Britain. (The focus of attention in this book is
Britain and its constituent countries of England, Scotland, and Wales.
Given the differences and complexities of politics in Northern Ireland
the following analysis only mentions Northern Ireland when it is spe-
cifically appropriate to do so in the context of the United Kingdom state
(UK). In turn, the term UK is used, rather than Britain, when the legal
and constitutional entity of ‘the state’ is being referred to). Yet one of
the incongruities to be analysed in this book is why, in spite of evidence
vi
Preface and Acknowledgements vii
to the contrary, UK governments continue to propound such a standard
account as ‘the official model’ of representative democracy in Britain.
Clearly, alternative models have been available. For most of the
period since the acceptance of representative democracy as a viable
mode of government in Western Europe, political theorists have illu-
minated the democratic deficiencies of that state-form. However, in
recent years there have been significant developments of democratic
theory, with political theorists pursuing, vigorously and productively,
a ‘representative turn’ in the conceptualisation of democracy. In
particular, theories of legitimate representative democracy have been
developed out of a conceptual separation of democracy from repre-
sentation, and representation from election. The former separation
leads towards participatory and deliberative forms of citizen engage-
ment beyond formal representative institutions; the latter separation
points in the direction of non-electoral modes of representation
beyond electoral representation. In each direction new theories have
helped to locate complex ecologies of representation in the broader
ecosystem of democracy. Moreover, several of these theories have
inspired ‘democratic innovations’ designed as practical enhancements
of representative democracy. And, despite continuing to subscribe to
the ‘standard account’ of representative democracy, successive British
governments have sought to incorporate some of these innovations
into the practice of British governance. To what effect, and how
incongruously, will be examined in later chapters.
But if the target audience of this book is those political scientists,
political theorists, political practitioners, and students of politics more
generally, who want to know how representative democracy works in
Britain, then what is the ‘distinctive selling point’ of this book? There
are a host of empirical analyses that show that democracy in Britain
is deficient, there are a plethora of contending analytical models – of
network governance, multi-level governance, differentiated polity,
asymmetric power, post-parliamentary governance – that claim to
provide more compelling explanations of how it actually works, and
there are many elaborate theories – based on deliberative or participatory
premises – as to how it should work. So: why yet another book tramping
over familiar terrain?
My answer is short: there are a number of outstanding concerns left
untouched or unresolved in many existing analyses of British repre-
sentative democracy and which are worthy of attention. I use ‘concern’
here in two senses: first, as a matter of importance and interest, and
second as a matter of anxiety or unease.
viii Preface and Acknowledgements
In the first sense, my concern is with the conjunction of two discrete
concepts – ‘representation’ and ‘democracy’ – into ‘representative
democracy’. This is a matter of importance and interest, not least
because representative democracy is often treated as an oxymoron.
Whereas ‘democracy’ privileges popular participation and inclusion
in decision-making processes, ‘representation’ posits the absence
and exclusion of ‘the people’ from decision-making in conceiving of
re-presentation as ‘mak[ing] present again … in some sense something
which is nevertheless not present literally or in fact’ (Pitkin 1967:8–9
original emphasis). This inclusion–exclusion paradox is at the core of
representative democracy and has been of concern to me throughout
my academic career and has surfaced in some of my earlier books. More
importantly, it has also become of importance for new waves of demo-
cratic theorists in their ‘reconceptualisations’ of representation and
their recognition that political representation is, indeed, as much about
exclusion as inclusion, and that electoral representation simultaneously
separates and links representatives from the represented. Yet, even if
direct popular inclusion is episodic, and confined to the moment of
election, the intervals between elections nonetheless provide political
spaces which allow for exclusion to be mitigated in continuing processes
of mediated representation. In this sense, political representation can
be conceived as systemic, encompassing not only electoral processes
and institutions but also non-electoral processes, and ‘informal’ or ‘self-
authorised representation’. At the point of intersection between mediated
and unmediated participatory processes, and between electoral and
non-electoral representation, the fundamental question is posed of the
compatibility – both ideationally and practically – of representation
with democracy.
This question provides an organising thread throughout the book. It is
commonplace to treat this question rhetorically and to answer affirma-
tively that unmediated participation and non-electoral representation
are simple complements and supplements for the mediated participation
and electoral representation of representative democracy. In the analysis
that follows in this book, however, a more sceptical approach is taken in
the discussion of the democratic enhancement of representative democ-
racy. What particularly concerns me (in terms of interest and impor-
tance) is how notions of, and schemes for, the democratic enhancement
of representation serve to alter the legitimating frame provided by
elections in representative democracy, and do so by inhering discordant
legitimation claims into a reconceived conjunction of representation
and democracy. In this process, electoral claims come to be destabilised
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
while non-electoral participatory claims are simultaneously defused.
A mismatch, an incongruity, is thus to be found at the theoretical core
of reconceptualisations of representative democracy.
My other concern, in the second sense of unease, is that these theoretical
incongruities come to find reflection in the mismatched practice of
‘democratic innovations’. This concern links to an extensive audience
that has already been assembled to voice anxiety about citizens’ distrust,
disconnect, disengagement, and disappointment with the processes and
institutions of representative democracy in Britain. While these anxieties
are not exclusive to Britain, they are more pronounced and more stri-
dently expressed in reflecting the deeper levels of disenchantment with
formal politics in Britain than in many other European representative
democracies. One powerful explanation of this negativity is that it
arises from a profound sense of popular frustration with, and disem-
powerment within, the existing system of representative democracy. In
seeking to redress the perceived deficiencies of representative democracy,
a number of ‘democratic innovations’ – rooted in deliberative democ-
racy, or direct democracy, or increasingly e-democracy – have been
implemented by successive British governments. The concern examined
within this book is that the democratic potential of these innovations
becomes transmuted in their accommodation within a legitimating
frame provided by electoral representation. Theories of unmediated
citizen engagement become entangled in mediated processes and insti-
tutions of representative democracy. My concern is with the assumption
that ‘democratic innovations’ simply complement and supplement, and
so enhance, representative democracy. However, the interaction between
mediated and unmediated forms of citizen engagement also holds the
alternative negative potential that, in the process of enhancement,
both participation and representation may be altered and diminished
in incongruous ways.
Before reaching this end-point in the analysis, however, other more
immediately pressing concerns need to be investigated. As noted above,
there are many observable mismatches and incompatibilities between
theory and practice. In part, this ‘jarring effect’ reflects incongruities
within a standard account of representative democracy itself. Whereas
the standard model is predicated upon a simple principal–agent relation-
ship between individual representatives and individual citizens; such an
unmediated relationship comes to depend upon mediated relationships
for its institutional realisation – through ‘constituencies’ designed to
organise individual voters into collectivities (based upon territory, or
social class, or gender, or ethnicity), and political organisations formed
x Preface and Acknowledgements
around those collectivities (political parties, organised groups, and
social movements). How those constituencies are constituted and how
they are mediated becomes of prime concern both in terms of inter-
est and of unease. Equally, a standard account, while adhering to the
value of political equality, in the notion of equally weighted votes in
elections, has no intrinsic requirement of representational equality for
all citizens. Yet the search for greater representational equality, through
strategies to promote descriptive representation and to link substantive
representation to the outcomes of those strategies, brings with it further
incongruities.
No book on representative democracy in Britain could avoid raising
concerns about the ‘Westminster model’. This is a model that has
come to provide a short-hand descriptor for a distinctive institutional
structure which captures the representative and responsible elements
of representative democracy yet transmutes those elements into a
particular ‘power-concentrating’ form of government. In itself this
transmutation is of concern. Yet a further concern has attracted the
attention of a broad and critical audience of political scientists, consti-
tutional lawyers, and political practitioners – who are all keen to point
out the extent of divergence between the ideational foundations of the
Westminster model and the practice of modern British governance. The
point of intersection between this orthodox and longstanding concern
and the specific concerns of this book is to be found, however, in the
incongruous proposition that a model of transmuted democratic repre-
sentation that no longer fits political practice nonetheless still provides
a legitimating frame for state decision-makers. This stacking of incon-
gruity upon incongruity is sufficient to attract concern, in terms of both
interest and unease, but it is the stacking of a further incongruity onto
this already teetering analytical construction that elevates ‘concern’
to academic ‘disorientation’: the legitimating framework deployed by
decision makers to authorise their actions is derived from the ‘standard’
account – the pre-mutated version – of democratic representation rather
than the mutated version in the Westminster model that contemporary
governments seek to defend. When critics of the Westminster model
call upon governments to provide a new narrative or theory of govern-
ment beyond the existing legitimating frame they are, therefore, asking
either for an alternative to representative democracy, as conceived in
the standard model, or for the acceptance of ‘reconceptualisations’ of
democracy which still, in their various representative forms, presume a
frame of electoral representation. Incongruous solutions thus come to
be posited for incongruous ‘problems’.