New Publication: Critical Exchange on Michael Saward's The representative claim

Dr Andrew Shaap (University of Exeter), has just published the following article "Critical Exchange on Michael Saward's The representative claim" in Contemporary Political Theory (2012) 11, 109–127.

Abstract

In The Representative Claim (TRC), Michael Saward challenges what he calls the ‘presence’ view of representation, which treats representation as an institutional fact that results from elections. Within most accounts of representation, he argues, there is an unfortunate tendency to presume that the represented has a given, transparent and largely stable set of interests. Saward does not dismiss this aspect of representation entirely, but situates it within a broader account of political representation as a dynamic process of claim-making and reception of claims. Rather than presupposing a settled institutional context in which representation can be treated as a fact or thing, he develops an account of representation as ‘event’ or constitutive activity, ‘one that involves offering constructions or images of constituents to constituents and audiences’ (p. 14). This requires attending to the performative, aesthetic and cultural aspects of representation.

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