Mechanisms of Constructive Representation

• In Event: Men as They Might Be? Democratic Theory Meets Political Psychology

Abstract

A significant strand of recent scholarship on political representation challenges the traditional emphasis on representation as responsiveness to public interests or preferences, arguing instead for a constructive understanding of political representation in which representatives play an active role in constructing the public attitudes and demands to which they are expected to be responsive. But while there is a strong case to be made for adopting a constructive understanding of political representation in general, little progress has been made toward developing an integrated model of the psychological mechanisms underlying this constructive process. In this article I provide such a model of constructive representation by drawing on and synthesizing a range of literatures including scholarship on symbolic politics, attitude formation, and social identity theory. The central idea of this model is that we can understand constructive representation as a communicative process in which political symbols are used to integrate four elements: (1) a description of the world in terms of group activity, (2) identification with at least one of the groups in that description, (3) positive affect toward the in-group(s) or negative affect toward the out-group(s), and (4) a more or less specific idea of the primary interests of the in-group and the actions necessary to promote those interests. Such a model is a necessary step toward the goal of developing a clearer understanding of the relationship between patterns of constructive representation and the institutions of representative government from which they emerge.

Author

• Charles de la Cruz