Representation in Open Democracy. Some Conceptual Tensions

MATÍAS PARMIGIANI

Santa Rosa (La Pampa)

Simposio; Academic Virtual Symposium: In Defense of an Open Democracy for the XXI Century; 2021

Universidad Nacional de La Pampa

In OD, H. Landemore takes distance from a common understanding of ?representation?. Usually known as the ?standard account?, such an understanding, mainly inspired by H. Pitkin?s work on political philosophy, conceives political representation ?as an inherently normative concept?, for whose assessment it would be necessary to appeal to considerations of legitimacy, democracy, and even justice. Although this is not a major topic in Landemore?s text, nor does it affect at all what she says regarding democracy in general, and open democracy in particular, I take it to be important enough to deserve a few words. Following A. Rehfeld, Landemore believes ?we are better off using the concept of representation in a robust nonnormative descriptive sense whereby representation refers to facts about the political world without necessarily appealing to normative standards of legitimacy or justice?. However, in this presentation I would like to raise some doubts concerning this proposal. In particular, I will argue that Rehfeld?s descriptive concept has some relativistic implications that we, as political theorists, may want to avoid from the start. In order to see why, it will be necessary to illuminate an aspect of political representation that it seems to share with other kinds of representation, which is something probably hidden in Rehfeld?s work.