Representation as Mobilization in Mass Democracy

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Discussion of Lisa Disch's book, "Making Constituencies: Representation as Mobilization in Mass Democracy" (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the idea of a divided United States has become commonplace. In the wake of the 2020 election and the assault on the Capitol of January 6th, 2021, some commentators warned that the American public was the most divided it has been since the Civil War. Political scientists and intellectuals have suggested that uninformed, misinformed, and disinformed voters are at the root of this division. Some are simply unwilling to accept facts or science, which makes them easy targets for elite manipulation.
Disch argues in her book that manipulation of voters is not as grave a threat to democracy in America as many scholars and pundits make it out to be. The greater threat comes from a picture that partisans use to rally their supporters: that of an America sorted into opposing camps so deeply rooted that they cannot be shaken loose and remade. Making Constituencies proposes a new theory of representation as mobilization to argue that divisions like these are not inherent in society, but created, and political representatives of all kinds forge and deploy them to cultivate constituencies.

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Chair

• Nadia Urbinati Columbia University

Discussants

• Jane Mansbridge Harvard Kennedy School

• Mark B. Brown California State University, Sacramento

• Andrew Sabl University of Toronto

Presenter

• Lisa J. Disch University of Michigan, Ann Arbor