Democratic representation remains elusive

For long, political theorists stayed away from political parties. There was too large a gap between normative expectations of representation and empirical reality. Parties, once seen as the primary mode of representing citizens in elected legislatures, had become power-hungry election machines. As early as the 1950s, the ‘crisis of representation’ thesis began to do the rounds. Parties had begun to look like each other. Inter-party contestation looked suspiciously like shadowboxing.

The problem with party politics became clearer after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. East Europeans had realised that political parties simply did not possess the political will to represent the people. Turning their back on the State, East Europeans opted for civil society as the domain of associational life. In this space, people who had been stripped of their basic rights by Stalinist states could participate in the formation of a public will.

A number of theorists in India had begun to speak of the value of a non-party political process. This was the only alternative to a moribund party system. Political parties, led by and peopled by power-hungry elites, were irrelevant to democratic life. Political parties asked for votes, social associations gave to the people voice. The question of who was to represent the people in the State went unanswered, even unasked.

By the beginning of the 21st century, civil society enthusiasts realised their mistake, for across the world, right-wing populists presented themselves as an alternative to a decrepit party system that was corrupt, corrupting, faction-ridden, unrepresentative and undemocratic. They saw themselves as the embodiment of popular sovereignty. They appealed to a nebulous category called ‘the people’ above the heads of democratic and representative institutions. Populists told us that they were the answer to dynastic leaders and political institutions that had failed to perform their allotted role. In a short period of time, institutions withered away, civil society fell into disuse and social activism was frowned upon. These incarnations of popular sovereignty were nothing more than dictators!

Normative political theorists, who had concerned themselves with abstract notions of justice, equality and freedom, realised that they had to address the actually existing democracies, political institutions, and above all the political party. The party system had provided, since the inception of representative democracy, a link between the people and the State. But parties relegated to the Opposition refused to tailor their agendas to the needs of the time. And populists continued to mount a major threat to their existence, and to their capacity to participate in politics.

Opposition parties could only counter the threat to democratic life if they reinvented themselves. Politics had entered a new phase, a phase controlled by demagogues who employed distinctively apolitical vocabularies to pursue their own agendas. Notably, vocabularies of governance and development are not political. The political is always contested. Who contests development and governance? But Opposition parties that were neither respected, nor even recognised as essential for democracy, refused to re-invent themselves, and their language, their politics, and their organisation. Politics continued to wend its way as usual.

And we continue to watch ignoble battles for personalised power. Factionalists disdain to think about new modes of politics, a new political language, or new ways of doing politics. They would rather attack each other, using language that sadly lacks propriety and civility. They prove to their constituents that they are not an answer to the manifold problems that confront people in their quotidian lives. They are a part of the problem. They do not uphold democracy, they pursue privilege.

It is time that these so-called rebels begin to think of what they owe the people, rather than what they owe an existing leader, or someone who has been propped up to be a leader. It is time they embrace an alternative form of politics that we call representation, which is after all their chief legitimacy claim, and their primary function.

Theorists dispute about what constitutes representation. Does a representative ‘stand in’ for constituents; or does she act as a proxy? There is more to the concept. Irish statesman, orator, writer and parliamentarian Edmund Burke (1729-1797) had suggested that ‘it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents’. Yet there was no such thing as unmediated representation, for in the process of representing multiple opinions, the representative has to use his judgement. We must learn this lesson. Representatives must be men and women of judgement and probity. Otherwise, they will spend their time fighting tiresome battles only for their own disturbingly egoistical selves. If this is so, should not the constituents have a say in who will represent them and for what reason? Candidates must prove their competence before they ask for votes. The representatives must show their constituents that they have the ability and the desire to represent the needs and the aspirations of the people as honestly and sincerely as they can in public forums. This calls for the institutionalisation of primaries. Bringing people into the process of choosing a candidate will lessen the role of party bosses and increase the role of the constituents. Representation forms the crux of democracy. The right to select the representatives should be that of the constituents. What else can democratic representation be?