Self-Authorized Representatives Self-authorized representatives are not new. Individuals and groups have always petitioned government and made representative claims on behalf of interests and values they believe should have an impact. Interest group liberalism and pluralism assume that this kind of representation does much, if not most, of the work of conveying substance (Dahl 1971; Held 1996, ch. 6). Moreover, history is replete with unelected leaders and groups making representative claims in the name of groups, peoples, or nations precisely because they are not formally represented. The constitutional revolutions of the seventeenth century were induced by groups such as the Levellers. In the French Revolution, Sieyes declared the existence of a “third class” that was the nation, and they proposed themselves as the speakers or representatives of this class, and thus for the nation.