Toxic Representation

• In Event: Democracy and Representation

Abstract

Much has been written about the democratic potential, indeed the democratic necessity, of political representation in contemporary politics (e.g. Plotke, 1997; Urbinati 2000, 2011, Saward, 2008; Disch, 2012). According to this literature, representation is not the second best form of governance (ranked behind direct participation); rather, it positively contributes to democratic practices and institutions. The long list of its democratic virtues include mediation, fostering contestation, participation, and accountability. Notably, Michael Saward’s constructivist account of representation identifies two essential democratic activities to representation: the construction of political claims and the creation of political identities. For Saward, representatives are responsible for constructing constituencies, that is, influencing how citizens understand and feel about their political identities. To the extent that political identities influence the effective organization and mobilization of citizens, representatives play a key role in the democratic capabilities of the modern state. They determine the “how” and “about what” citizens engage.
This normative story about how representation supports democratic governance, though, downplays the role representatives can play in constructing obstacles to democratic governance by advancing false and misleading claims and political identities dependent on those claims. As a result, representatives play a crucial role. in fostering democratic backsliding. In other words, it downplays what I call toxic representation. Unfortunately, as will be seen, toxic representation can strongly resemble “normal” representative processes. For this reason, in order to understand how representation can undermine democratic institutions, it is imperative to be able to identify how representatives mislead, bullshit, and lie to them in order to call out toxic representation. In this paper, I identify two strategies employed by toxic representatives that pose threats to democratic representation: To that end, we identify two tactics adopted by bad representatives: self-contradiction and disdainful distraction. Both tactics promote an democratic obliviousness. By democratic obliviousness, I mean the inability of democratic citizens to identify and autonomously assess the
relevant democratic norms that underpin and justify the actions and beliefs of their representatives. Democratic obliviousness prohibits the ability of relevant parties to identify the democratic norms at stake and thereby obscures their ability to monitor and regulate democratic norm violations. By facilitating a political free-for-all, democratic obliviousness undermines the capacities of the represented to hold their representatives accountable and thereby the institutional mechanisms necessary for constraining abusive power and for promoting legitimate democratic institutions.

Author

• Suzanne Dovi, University of Arizona