A New Agenda for Democratic Representation?

In: Politics & gender, Band 8, Heft 4, S. 518-523

Abstract

Modern democracy is often considered to be tantamount to representative
democracy. In her most recent statement on representation, Hanna Pitkin
admits that when writing The Concept of
Representation (1967), she took the relationship between
representation and democracy to be unproblematic: "… like most people even
today, I more or less equated democracy with representation, or at least
with representative government. It seemed axiomatic that under modern
conditions only representation can make democracy possible" (2004, 336).
Almost forty years later, Pitkin's view is that "representation has
supplanted democracy instead of serving it" (2004, 339). She concludes her
analysis asking whether democracy can be saved from the increasing turn (or
return) of political representation to more elitist forms of government and
dominion.