THE NEW CONCEPTUAL DOMAINS OF DEMOCRATIC THEORY
Until recently, democratic theorists were not well positioned to respond to these developments,having divided their labors between those who work within the standard account of representation and those concerned with participation and inclusion. The division of labor followed the channels dug by Rousseau well over two centuries ago, which identified res publica with direct self-government and representative government with an aristocratic form of power. The English people, Rousseau famously claimed, are free only in the moment of their vote, after which they return to “slavery,” to be governed by the will of another. “Sovereignty,” Rousseau wrote,“cannot be represented for the same reason that it cannot be alienated. It consists essentially in the general will, and the will cannot be represented. The will is either itself or something else; no middle ground is possible. The deputies of the people, therefore, neither are nor can be its representatives; they are nothing else but its commissaries. They cannot conclude conclude anything definitively” (Rousseau 1978[1762] p. 198). Rousseau thus confined representation to the terms of principal-agent delegation while stripping the delegate of any role in forming the political will of the people.In legal usage, Rousseau understood political representation in terms of “imperative mandate”:the delegate operates under a fiduciary contract that allows the principal (the citizens) to temporarily grant an agent their power to take specified actions but does not delegate the will to make decisions, which is retained by the principal.
THE NEW CONCEPTUAL DOMAINS OF DEMOCRATIC THEORY
Until recently, democratic theorists were not well positioned to respond to these developments,having divided their labors between those who work within the standard account of representation and those concerned with participation and inclusion. The division of labor followed the channels dug by Rousseau well over two centuries ago, which identified res publica with direct self-government and representative government with an aristocratic form of power. The English people, Rousseau famously claimed, are free only in the moment of their vote, after which they return to “slavery,” to be governed by the will of another. “Sovereignty,” Rousseau wrote,“cannot be represented for the same reason that it cannot be alienated. It consists essentially in the general will, and the will cannot be represented. The will is either itself or something else; no middle ground is possible. The deputies of the people, therefore, neither are nor can be its representatives; they are nothing else but its commissaries. They cannot conclude conclude anything definitively” (Rousseau 1978[1762] p. 198). Rousseau thus confined representation to the terms of principal-agent delegation while stripping the delegate of any role in forming the political will of the people.In legal usage, Rousseau understood political representation in terms of “imperative mandate”:the delegate operates under a fiduciary contract that allows the principal (the citizens) to temporarily grant an agent their power to take specified actions but does not delegate the will to make decisions, which is retained by the principal.
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