Runciman On Representation
Runciman On Representation
93–114
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road,
Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
94 DAVID RUNCIMAN
3
Pitkin, Concept of Representation, p. 9.
4
Pitkin, ‘The paradox of representation’, p. 41.
THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 95
real as the physical kind (the purpose of representation is to enable those who
are literally absent nevertheless to make their presence genuinely felt).5 The
paradoxical character of the concept of representation derives from the
simultaneity of this requirement of presence and non-presence, enabling
contradictory conclusions to be drawn from any given use of the concept. In
politics, it allows for the idea of representation to be identified both with the view
that representatives should take decisions on behalf of their constituents (because
the constituents must be absent for there to be representation at all), and with
the view that voters should issue instructions to their representatives (because
genuine representation also requires their presence in some recognisable form).
This is the source of the ‘mandate/independence’ controversy that has bedevilled
the idea of representation throughout the history of modern politics, and the
paradoxical dualism contained in the term is for Pitkin the reason why this
controversy can never be definitively resolved.6
Nevertheless, in The Concept of Representation, Pitkin sets out one possible
accommodation with the paradoxical requirements of representation that can be
achieved within a broadly liberal democratic understanding of the concept. This
is the view that ‘the substance of the activity of representing seems to consist in
promoting the interests of the represented, in a context where the latter is
conceived as capable of action and judgment, but in such a way that he does not
object to what is done in his name’.7 In this way, Pitkin makes clear that although
the activity of representation is tied to the promotion of interests, it cannot simply
be identified with the representation of interests, because it also has to allow for
a kind of ‘presence’ on the part of those whose interests are represented. This
presence comes from the ability of individuals to object to what is done in their
name. Because this is essentially a negative account of what constitutes the
activity of representation – representation takes place when there is no objection
to what someone does on behalf of someone else – it can cope with the
contradiction implied by the requirement that individuals be both present and
absent when they are represented. The non-objection criterion allows a kind of
latent presence for the represented, such that their silence can be taken as a form
of assent. However, it also means that where that silence is broken, and explicit
objections are voiced, representation starts to break down. It is very hard to
5
The word ‘artificial’ can be ambiguous in this context, since it is capable of conveying both that
something is essentially unreal and also that it is merely a man-made form of reality. So an artificial
leg is not a real leg, but an artificial lake is a real lake. I take the artificial presence generated by the
act of representation to denote what is merely a man-made form of reality.
6
‘It may be, as the notion of paradox in the meaning of representation suggests, that the issue is
usually formulated in such a way that it cannot be answered and will not allow a consistent response’
(Pitkin, ‘The paradox of representation’, p. 42). In a later book, Pitkin uses the example of the
open-endedness in the meaning of the concept of representation to argue that paradoxes of this kind
are best understood as a feature of our use of language, and therefore as one of language’s resources,
rather than as logical flaws in the concepts themselves; see Hanna Pitkin, Wittgenstein and Justice:
The Significance of Ludwig Wittgenstein for Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1972).
7
Pitkin, Concept of Representation, p. 155.
96 DAVID RUNCIMAN
reconcile the overt presence of an individual who objects to the actions of their
representative with the implied absence of the represented on which the concept
of representation also depends.
There are a number of things to be said in favour of Pitkin’s response to the
paradox of presence through the non-objection criterion. It makes explicit that
there can be no straightforwardly substantive notion of representation (that is,
representation understood as acting in another’s best interests), because merely
acting in someone’s interests is not itself sufficient for something to count as
an act of representation.8 For example, a parent who feeds a child every day is
acting in that child’s best interests, but is not representing them in doing so.
Representation must entail some sense that the actions are being performed not
just on behalf of the represented (that is, to promote their best interests) but also
in the name of the represented (that is, giving them a stake in the action itself).
There are a variety of different ways in which it is possible to have a stake in the
actions of another person, not all of which count as instances of representation.
If I simply bear the consequences of an action performed by someone else (for
example, if I am adversely affected by someone else’s mismanagement of a public
good), then I may have a stake in the action without necessarily being represented
by the person performing it.9 Representation implies that the represented do not
merely bear the consequences of another’s action, but have some presence in the
action itself by dint of this fact. In other words, they must be capable of asserting
their stake. The ways in which this stake can be asserted range from strong forms
of control (such as issuing binding instructions to the representatives), through to
somewhat weaker forms of identification (choosing representatives with whom
one shares features in common and therefore with whom one can identify) or
weaker forms of control (choosing the procedure by which representatives are
appointed), through to mere non-objection (having but not utilising the ability to
object). This last comes closest to capturing the way the concept of representation
has evolved in the politics of liberal democratic states. We do not on the whole
believe that political representation depends on individuals having a stake in the
actions of their representatives through having instructed them or being able to
identify with them. (In this sense, the mandate/independence controversy, though
8
Pitkin is often taken to have offered just such a straightforwardly substantive definition of
representation. See, for example, Adam Przeworski, Susan C. Stokes and Bernard Manin ed.
Democracy, Accountability and Representation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 2,
in which Pitkin is quoted saying: ‘This is what we mean by “representation”: acting in the best
interests of the public’. This definition is typical of the way Pitkin’s work has usually been employed
by contemporary political theorists and political scientists, and of the neglect of the role of the
paradox of presence in her account of representation. For a similar reading of Pitkin that neglects her
concern with the paradoxical character of representation, see David Lublin, The Paradox of
Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1997).
9
The contemporary use of the term ‘stakeholders’ to describe all those who may be impacted by
a collective project makes this point implicitly: ‘stakeholders’ include individuals who may otherwise
be neglected by focussing on familiar lines of representation (and may for example include individuals
whose relationship to a project is simply their physical proximity to it, as ‘neighbours’).
THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 97
it rumbles on, has come to favour the independence side of the argument).10
Equally, despite the fact that lip-service is often paid to the idea that citizens
should be able to alter the constitutional rules governing the procedure for
choosing representatives, the opportunities for doing this are in practice
extremely rare; and when it happens, it tends to be at the behest of the
representatives themselves. Yet we do feel that representatives whose actions
provoke explicit objections on the part of those they claim to represent must
eventually cease to be their representatives, even if they believe themselves to be
acting in their constituents’ best interests. Thus the most significant and decisive
forms of political control in modern democracies derive not from positive acts
of instruction or identification or procedural initiatives on the part of the
represented, but from the possibility of their objecting to what is being done on
their behalf.
However, Pitkin’s account suffers from an important limitation. Although the
non-objection criterion is a less exacting test of what is to count as representation
than the ‘mandate’ view, it is only less exacting so long as individuals do not
object to what is being done by their representatives. Where they do object, then
their objections are decisive. This means that a great deal of weight must be
placed on the meaningful possibility that individuals will object to, and therefore
disrupt, the actions of their political representatives. Indeed, as a test of political
representation the non-objection criterion is meaningless unless it is assumed that
individuals will sometimes object to what is being done on their behalf. So the
absence of objections cannot be taken as a form of assent if it is the result of
coercion: tyrannical or dictatorial regimes that bully or terrorise their subject
populations into not objecting to the way they are being governed are not
representative in any meaningful sense. But it also follows that representation
must cease whenever the person or thing being represented lacks the ability to
object because of some inherent incapacity of their own. For example, Pitkin does
not believe it makes sense to talk of representing a small child, regardless of the
kinds of actions undertaken on their behalf, so long as the child is incapable of
making its own views known: ‘If we think of him . . . as helpless and incapable
of action, as being taken care of, then we will not speak of representation’.11
Pitkin’s account also excludes the realistic possibility of representing what she
calls ‘abstractions’, all those entities that cannot act in their own right at all. ‘An
abstraction’, she writes, ‘does not have wishes and cannot suddenly rise up and
object to what a representative is doing in its name’.12 Of course, abstractions can
be represented in other ways – in works of art, in symbols and so on – but this
for Pitkin is precisely what distinguishes substantive political representation from
mere symbolism.
10
There are of course those who dissent from this view. See for example Anne Phillips, The Politics
of Presence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
11
Pitkin, Concept of Representation, p. 155.
12
Ibid.
98 DAVID RUNCIMAN
of legal action from the category of representation when it does occur. What
makes it a form of representation is the capacity of some party (in this case, the
court) to object to what is being done on behalf of the defendant (and if necessary
to remove the representative altogether, if they appear to be acting against the
defendant’s interests). Incapable persons and things can have a presence in the
actions of their representatives, so long as that presence is capable of being
asserted by someone. It does not have to be asserted by the person being
represented themselves.
The question of what is to count as a genuine instance of representation is
evidently a legal and semantic problem as much as it is a political one. There is,
however, a particular political difficulty with Pitkin’s argument. Her
non-objection criterion explicitly confines representation to the representation of
individuals. She identifies ‘the substance of the activity of representation’ with the
representation of the individual who ‘does not object to what is done is his [sic]
name’. A similar presupposition also underlies Pitkin’s contention that ‘normally
a man’s wishes and what is good for him will coincide. Thus if a representative
in fact succeeds in doing what is good for his constituents, normally he should
not then find himself in conflict with their wishes’.15 This line of argument
reinforces Pitkin’s contention that the practice of representation does not need
to become bogged down in the independence/mandate controversy: genuine
representation is possible in the absence of explicit instructions from the voters,
so long as it also coincides with the absence of explicit objections from the voters.
However, the argument depends on seeing the voters as a series of individuals,
capable of expressing their wishes for themselves. What remains unclear is
whether the objections of individuals can be equated with the objections of a
group of constituents as a whole. If not, then it needs to be asked how the
representatives of groups can continue to act in the face of objections of
individual members, that is, in the face of those who are capable of objecting for
themselves.
15
Pitkin, Concept of Representation, p. 156.
100 DAVID RUNCIMAN
possibility that groups can be represented in their own right. If it is accepted that
groups can act through the wishes of the majority of their members, then it would
follow that the outvoted minority are still being represented as members of the
group, despite their objections to what is being done in their name. On the other
hand, if it is insisted that groups cannot act for themselves, and are merely made
up of the separate actions of their individual members, then representation can
never be determined by majority decision, and must stand or fall on an individual
by individual basis. This seems implausible, both conceptually and politically.
Take, for example, the case of the recent Iraq war, in which elected governments
went to war despite the vociferous objections of large numbers of individuals. In
one respect, those individuals who took part in demonstrations against the war
(compare the full version of Pitkin’s non-objection criterion, which is to ‘rise up
and object’) were making it clear that they no longer believed themselves to be
represented by the actions of their governments. One of the slogans of the
anti-war movement – ‘Not in My Name’ – made this point explicitly: individuals
were seeking to sever the ties of representation by asserting their non-presence in
the actions of their representatives. However, the governments that went to war
could contend that this claim does not sever the ties of representation. That is
because they did not act ‘in the name’ of any specified individuals. Rather, they
acted in the name of a group of individuals – ‘the people’ – or even, in the British
case, a kind of abstraction – ‘the state’ (or more technically, but also somewhat
absurdly, ‘the Crown’).16 The capacity to act in the name of a group presupposes
the ability to represent the group despite the objections of some and perhaps
many individuals to the way their interests are being promoted. This is something
that representative governments have always claimed to be able to do.
If representation is determined by the ability of individuals to object to what
is being done in their name, then it is hard to see how any claim to representation
that overrides the objections of individuals in the name of the group can stand up;
in other words, it is hard to see how the objectors can continue to be represented.
Yet this conclusion need not follow if one of the premises on which Pitkin’s
account depends is abandoned. This is the insistence that representation can only
apply to entities capable of objecting in their own right. If representation is taken
to include the possibility of representing abstractions, on whose behalf others can
rise up and object, then it is possible to understand the representation of the
people as something genuine – or at least as genuine as any other form of
representation. Even if the people itself cannot object to what is being done in its
name, individuals can object on its behalf; moreover, if sufficient numbers of
individuals object on its behalf, then it becomes impossible for a government to
continue to claim to represent the people. If nothing else, such an account of
representation is able to make sense of what is otherwise a deeply puzzling
16
On the juristic and philosophical history of this absurdity, see F. W. Maitland, ‘Corporation sole’
and ‘Crown as Corporation’, Maitland: State, Trust and Corporation, ed. David Runciman and
Magnus Ryan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
102 DAVID RUNCIMAN
17
Pitkin, Concept of Representation, p. 224.
THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 103
people of a nation are present in the actions of its government in complex ways’.18
This has led some critics to point to the fundamental ‘incoherence’ in Pitkin’s
account of representation: as Adam Przeworski has argued, there is apparently no
way of reconciling the freedom for manoeuvre representatives need to act in the
public interest with the presumption that they should not act against the wishes
of their individual constituents.19
However, the conclusion Przeworski goes on to draw from this gap in Pitkin’s
account is too strong. He suggests that in consequence representation itself
should be seen as an inescapably incoherent idea, and that there is no way to
make sense of the idea of representatives acting in the interests of the people
within the confines of democratic theory (since once interests are separated out
from opinions, representatives cannot act in the public interest without being
undemocratic, and they cannot be consistently democratic without going against
the public interest). Przeworski concludes that the best we can hope for is a
minimal defence of democracy, as the best system for ensuring non-violent
transfers of power.20 Anything more – anything more ‘representative’ – is just an
illusion. But this is to assume that all the alternatives to Pitkin’s attempted
resolution of the paradox of presence through her strongly individualistic
non-objection criterion are equally unpalatable. It is true that many of the
alternatives are unpalatable. For example, one way out of the paradox would be
to discount the objections of individuals to what their representatives are doing
in the name of the public, on the grounds that the public has a mind of its own,
separate from the minds of its individual members. Pitkin herself accepts that an
abstraction might be capable of being represented in its own right, even on her
non-objection criterion, so long as it is conceived as capable of action in its
own right: ‘If we think of the abstraction as acting through its representative,
present in his activity, animating and directing what he does, then we will
speak of representation’.21 But she also assumes that there is no coherent way
of explaining how an abstraction can be present in the activities of its
representatives in this way without ceasing to be an abstraction. If it is to remain
an abstraction, then it hard to know how it can object to what is being done in
its name. One way out of this difficulty might be to argue that groups are not
abstractions precisely because they act through majority decisions, and that the
group can object for itself through the voice of the majority. But this simply
restates the problem rather than resolving it. If a group can only act through a
majority of its members because it is assumed that the majority can be said to
18
Ibid, p. 235. Pitkin concedes that there must necessarily be a gap between this vague goal and
‘some fairly concrete, practical and historically traditional institutions intended to serve such an
outcome’.
19
Adam Przeworski, ‘Minimalist conceptions of democracy’, Democracy’s value, ed. Ian Shapiro
and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 23–50 at pp. 31–3.
20
For a recent summary of some of the implications of this position, see Adam Przeworski,
‘Institutions matter?’, Government and Opposition, 4 (2004), 527–40.
21
Pitkin, Concept of Representation, p. 155.
104 DAVID RUNCIMAN
represent the group as a whole, then this is the beginning of a regress, since the
ability of the majority to represent must depend on the possibility of individuals
objecting to that representation. On the other hand, if the majority does not
merely represent the group but in some sense constitutes it, then it is hard to see
what weight individual objections have at all. The same difficulty arises in
relation to decisions about the procedure for objecting to the actions of
representatives. If a group decides to adopt a procedure that makes the voice of
the majority decisive, then that procedural decision will either have to be the
unanimous choice of all members, giving everyone a veto, or it will be taken on
behalf of the group by a majority of its members, which begs the question of how
to treat the group’s relationship to those individuals who object to the procedural
decision.22 Groups that act in their own right, over and above the objections of
their individual members, must be assumed to have a mind of their own. The
problem is how to conceive this apparently metaphysical category in a way which
is consistent with the assumptions of the non-objection criterion.
This does not mean, however, that there is no alternative between an
incoherently individualistic theory of group representation and an unacceptably
illiberal one. The solution is to find a way of establishing a separate identity for
group ‘persons’ without attributing metaphysical qualities to them. There is more
than one way in which this can be done. For example, groups can acquire an
identity in their own right by the process of ‘collectivising reason’, an approach
that has been suggested by Philip Pettit as a solution to the problem of giving
groups their own personality without attributing to them a separate Geist-like
quality.23 This form of group identity is achieved by the expedient of adopting a
premise-based approach to collective decision-making, such that decisions follow
from majority approval of separate premises, rather than the majority preferences
of separate individuals. The result is that a group may legitimately reach a
decision that is not the preference of a majority of its members, even though
the decision remains consequent upon member preferences, tabulated on a
premise-by-premise basis. For Pettit, this is sufficient to afford such groups their
own personality (albeit ‘of a crude, bounded and bloodless variety’)24 and to
require of them the same standards of reasoning that we expect of other types of
persons, above all some consistency in their judgments across time. The problem
with such a solution for the purpose of making sense of political representation,
22
It is clear that individuals in modern states do often object to the procedure of majority-decision
making, so that it is not possible to assume unanimity on this score. Indeed, this is often the point at
issue in the objections of minorities to the actions of governments that discriminate against them: they
object not merely to the discrimination itself but to the fact that only the objections of the majority
could have forestalled it, which sets the bar for many minorities at an unacceptably high level. A
recent example of this is the objections of many fox-hunters to the ban imposed on their sport by the
British Labour government in 2004, which rested not merely on the fact that they objected to the ban
but also on the fact that they objected to the majoritarian presuppositions that lay behind it.
23
Philip Pettit, ‘Groups with minds of their own’, Socializing Metaphysics, ed. F. Schmitt (New
York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 167–93.
24
Ibid, p. 188.
THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 105
however, is that this form of reasoning is not available to all groups, and Pettit
attaches some stringent conditions to the groups to which it does apply. He
argues that individuals ought still to be in a position to exercise some power of
veto over collectivised decisions, whether by exercising some right of exit from
the group, or by asserting their own right to refuse to act in the name of group
decisions. ‘Natural persons have an inescapable priority’, Pettit says, and
therefore ‘it will be up to the natural person to decide whether or not to cede
place to the institutional’. It must always be left up to individuals to decide
‘whether to act in their own name or in the name of the collective’.25
These conditions make it difficult to see how such a standard of collectivised
reason could hold for groups on the scale of modern states. States do not allow
a comparable right of veto to their individual members. Equally, as Pettit
recognises, the publics of such states do not exhibit the kind of consistency in
their decision-making over time that is a necessary condition of collectivised
reason. Public opinion is notoriously fickle, and in the absence of the institutional
mechanisms needed to collectivise its views on a premise-by-premise basis, the
public must remain ‘a non-person in the relevant sense’.26 But this does not mean
that the public cannot be conceived as a person at all. What it does suggest is that
in order to acquire an identity in their own right, states and their publics must
rely on the institution of representation, rather than collectivised reason. In
this sense, Pettit’s account of group reason does not offer an explanation of
representative politics, but an alternative to it, applicable to the kinds of
enterprises that can operate on the smaller scale and within the constraints
that collectivised reason requires. Pettit’s terminology is not the language of
representation, but of co-operative action. In fact, individual citizens only act ‘in
the name of the collective’ (that is, the state) when they perform certain specified
roles on its behalf (as soldiers, civil servants, diplomats and so on); otherwise, the
state acts for them. In this sense, modern states are not co-operative enterprises,
and their decision-making processes are not collective ones. Pettit, in his account
of collectivised reason, accepts that there may be circumstances in which even
small, co-operative groups need certain officials to direct the action of the
collective in order to help it reason in a premise-based way. He speaks of the
need for ‘plenipotentiaries [to] resist various irrationalities’.27 But these
plenipotentiaries, whatever their powers, operate as facilitators for the
collectivisation of group preferences into a rational form. The ultimate decisions
remain those of the group. By contrast, the plenipotentiaries of modern
representative democracies are not simply facilitators for collective
decision-making. Their decisions are taken in the name of the collective, and on
its behalf.
25
Ibid, p. 190.
26
Ibid, p. 186.
27
Ibid, p. 189.
106 DAVID RUNCIMAN
30
Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003),
p. 58.
31
Ibid.
32
On the importance of ‘informational access’ for the viability of representative politics, see John
Dunn, ‘Situating political accountability’, Democracy, Accountability and Representation, ed.
Przeworski et al., pp. 340–2.
THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 109
33
See David Runciman, ‘Is the state a corporation?’, Government and Opposition, 35 (2000),
90–104.
34
David Miller, ‘Holding nations responsible’, Ethics, 114 (2004), 240–68 at p. 249. Miller himself
is primarily interested in the responsibilities of nations rather than those of states, because he believes
that state responsibility may allow individuals to escape their personal responsibilities: ‘So why do we
need to consider national responsibility at all? One reason is that if we divorce state responsibility
from national responsibility, then it becomes difficult to show how individual people can share in the
responsibility to compensate those whom the state they belong to has harmed, whereas if we treat
states as acting on behalf of nations, such collective responsibility will be easier to establish’.
However, he does not explain in any detail what he means by ‘states acting on behalf of nations’,
which is the point at issue in my discussion here. I consider some of these questions in more detail in
David Runciman, ‘Moral responsibility and the problem of representing the state’, Can Institutions
Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations, ed. Toni Erskine
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 41–51.
110 DAVID RUNCIMAN
for actions undertaken in the name of the state. First, individual objections to the
actions of political representatives are not sufficient to enable the individuals
concerned to escape responsibility for those actions. ‘Not in my name’ does not,
as we have seen, provide a get-out. Second, because actions are not undertaken
in the name of individuals but of the state, the relationship between individual
citizens and political representatives does not determine the distribution of
responsibilities for collective actions. Rather, the burden of responsibility is
determined by the relationship between individual citizens and the impersonal
entity of the state. This relationship is one of membership rather than
representation: individual citizens don’t represent the state and the state doesn’t
represent individual citizens; instead, the individuals are members of the state,
and as such the burdens that they share as individuals are determined by the
conditions of their membership (for example, when political representatives raise
taxes in the name of the state, individual citizens are bound to pay those taxes by
the terms of their membership of the state, not because they were individually
represented, and therefore implicated, in the decision to raise taxes). What this
means is that there is a triangular relationship at the heart of modern politics:
individuals pass judgments on politicians; politicians act in the name of the
impersonal state; membership of the state determines the personal responsibilities
of individuals.
Each of these separate relationships is significant in its own right. But what is
most significant for the question of collective responsibility is that none of the
relationships predetermines the content of any of the others. The objections or
non-objections of individuals to the actions of government neither exculpate nor
implicate the individuals concerned. Certainly it does not follow from the fact
individuals cannot abdicate their responsibility for collective actions by their
personal objections, that they must all share equally in any collective
responsibility. For example, the antithesis of the view that ‘Not in My Name’
exculpates individuals from collective responsibility for the Iraq war is the view
that individual citizens are legitimate targets for terrorist reprisals for the war, on
the grounds that in a democracy all individuals are equally implicated in
government actions by their failure to prevent those actions by changing the
government.35 This very strong interpretation of the implications of the
non-objection criterion is in no way endorsed by the argument I have put forward
here. It is true that on my account the responsibility for any failure to object to
what government does in the name of the state belongs to individual citizens. But
that responsibility remains distinct from any responsibility for the actions
35
This is essentially Osama Bin Laden’s position, as set out in his ‘Letter to the American
People’ of November 24, 2002; available at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/
library/report/2002/021120-ubl.htm (accessed 10 July 2006). The possibility of making sense of
this very strong notion of democratic accountability within the terms of the Western
political tradition has been highlighted by Richard Tuck, ‘Democracy and Terrorism’ (mimeo.,
Cambridge 2003).
THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 111
themselves, which attaches to the state. How the responsibility that attaches to
the state is then distributed among individual citizens cannot be read off the
relationship between individuals and their political representatives. There is no
chain of responsibility that follows the chain of representation. Instead, the chain
of responsibility that runs from the impersonal state to the individual citizen
provides the basis on which individuals ultimately pass judgment on acts of
political representation. These judgments do not predetermine the distribution
of collective responsibilities. What they do determine is the outcome of the
competition between rival claimants to be the representatives of the people, and
the outcome of that competition ultimately determines the extent of the personal
burdens that individual citizens will have to bear. In other words, political
representation does not in itself guarantee that the burdens will be either heavy
or light. How heavy they are is a function of the terms of individual citizenship
in the state in question. Political representation guarantees that there exists the
means to object to the burdens imposed, by objecting in the name of the state to
what its political representatives are doing in its name. The objections of
individual citizens to what is being done in their own names do not carry the
same weight, and in some circumstances they do not carry any weight at all.36
This open-ended, indeterminate account of collective political responsibility
accords with the open-ended, indeterminate understanding of collective political
responsibility that runs through the history of modern states. There are no fixed
answers. How burdens are distributed depends upon the interplay of three
relationships: between public opinion and government action; between
government action and the state in whose name it is undertaken; and between the
state that bears the responsibility and the individual citizens among whom the
burdens of responsibility are allocated. Each of these relationships is potentially
complex, and their interrelationship is potentially more complex still. However,
this suggests a second line of objection to the account of political representation
I have offered: that it is a very state-centric account, and ignores others forms of
political representation which provide clearer and more immediate chains of
accountability. I have explained why I think strong models of collective
responsibility do not fit the workings of the state, though they may fit other
groups with more specific goals or operating on a smaller scale than the state.
But I have simply assumed that the workings of the state are central to an
understanding of the concept of political representation. It is clear that the
concept of political representation has been shaped by its integral role in the
36
For example, a personal objection to continuing to service the national debt on the grounds that
the individual citizen concerned did not want to borrow the money in the first place is an empty
gesture, since public debt does not attach to any named individuals, but to the state as a whole. The
only meaningful objection is to the representatives who undertook the debt; whether replacing them
with different representatives will release individual citizens from the burden of servicing the debt
does not depend on who objected, but on what actions the new representatives undertake in the name
of the state (above all, on whether or not they repudiate the debt itself).
112 DAVID RUNCIMAN
emergence and development of the modern nation state.37 What is less clear is
that nation states will remain the primary focus of political life, now and in the
future. States are increasingly subject to the demands of international law, which
imposes various constraints on the actions their governments can undertake in
their name. Meanwhile, non-state associations are coming to play an ever greater
role in political life, notably at the level of international governance. Both of these
developments have implications for the concept of political representation. I
do not have the space to go into the question of what an enhanced role for
international law might do to our understanding of the concept of representation,
except to say it is unlikely to diminish the need for it to be able to accommodate
complexity. But one thing that is clear is that many of the constraints imposed on
states by international law depend upon establishing a distinct identity for the
state itself, over and above the identities of its individual members and corporate
agents.38 This highlights one of the difficulties of holding groups responsible for
their actions: the more distinct the identity of the group, the greater the possibility
of separating out the group’s responsibilities from those of the individuals who
make it up. In the case of states, this means that although the freedom of action
of governments may be constrained by international law, the central importance
of establishing a separate identity for the state will remain. The model of political
representation that I have offered here can deal with this outcome, because it is
effectively a model of corporate responsibility. What remains to be seen is what
impact the internationalisation of law may have on the role of domestic public
opinion in voicing decisive objections to the actions of political representatives.
It is possible that such a role may be increasingly assumed by international courts
instead.
It is the other potential threat to the continuing centrality of the state that I
want to consider here. An alternative to the account I have offered here is one
that argues for a variety of sites of political representation other than the state,
corresponding to the range of non-state bodies that have the potential to
represent an individual’s interests. A version of this argument has recently been
put forward by Andrew Kuper, in which he draws explicitly on Pitkin’s account
to provide a conception of what he calls ‘representation as responsiveness’ that
fits the institutional arrangements of the 21st century.39 Kuper accepts Pitkin’s
version of the non-objection criterion, such that representation must be assessed
according to whether or not an individual objects to what is being done in his or
her name: ‘responsiveness’ is the requirement that these objections be taken
seriously. But Kuper bypasses the difficulties of applying such a strongly
37
See Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997).
38
See James Crawford, The International Law Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility.
Introduction, Text and Commentaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. ch. 2,
‘Attribution of conduct to a State’.
39
Andrew Kuper, Democracy Beyond Borders. Justice and Representation in Global Institutions
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 113
40
On the details and fate of this movement, see David Runciman, Pluralism and the Personality of
the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
114 DAVID RUNCIMAN
may know in any given case what makes a claim to represent a bogus one. The
question is whether it possible to find a single location in which bogus claims to
representation can be exposed without eliminating the variety on which the
concept of representation also depends. Political representation at the level of the
state does this by allowing claims to represent the people as a whole to be subject
to definitive forms of objection which trump the objections of individuals to the
ways they are represented in other capacities. Kuper, and other cosmopolitan
theorists, are right to point out that the representation of the people should not
be excessively constrained by the contingent historical circumstances of national
politics in which such claims were first put to the test. But it would be wrong to
imagine that the basic structure of popular representation in electoral politics can
be either replaced or even merely supplemented by functional representation
without losing much of its clarity of purpose. There is no reason to think that
such clarity can only be achieved at the level of national politics. But there is also
no reason to suppose that any form of political representation can get by without
the kind of coherence that comes from enabling the state to be represented in its
own right. In the end, coherence of this kind can only be achieved by an
accommodation with the paradox of presence.