Andrew Rehfeld: Representation and Democracy

WPES: October 30, 2009

Hello Political Theory Community.  Before I begin writing on Andrew Rehfeld's paper, there are a few housekeeping matters to take care of regarding this blog:

First, if you wrote a comment on the last post regarding Professor Rubenstein's paper on Oxfam and representation, Professor Rubenstein has taken the time to post lengthy and worthwhile responses to all of your questions and arguments.  I hope you'll all get a chance to take a look at what she wrote.

Second, I apologize for those of you who wanted to comment on Rehfeld's paper but were unable to do so on account of the lag in posting this response.  In the future, I'll write up a short teaser post that will be up the day of the workshop, so you can comment immediately following the session, before I've gotten a chance to write my summary of the workshop discussion.

Finally, we've got a lot of high quality photographs this week thanks to a good friend of mine, Jake Laperruque, donating his time and camera.  Click any of the images in this post to see a much larger and higher resolution photo.

With that, let's move to the workshop of Professor Rehfeld's paper.

Professor Andrew Rehfeld

This past Friday, October 30, WPES had the special pleasure of welcoming back the workshop's founder, Andrew Rehfeld, to the head of the table.  Rehfeld presented a paper that will eventually be the introductory chapter in his forthcoming book on Representation in Politics.  The book expands upon Rehfeld's recently published article in the American Political Science Review.

From left to right: WPES director Frank Lovett, presenter 
Andrew Rehfeld, respondent Chad Flanders

The paper Rehfeld introduced this past Friday outlines the core features of his theory on representation.  It's worth noting that while the examples he is interested in are generally political ones, his argument's scope is not limited to the political sphere.

Rehfeld's formal, quadratic definition of representation is as follows:

1) some entity, X, who/that

stands in for

2) some other entity, Y

in order to

3) perform a particular Function/Activity, F

corresponding in some way to

4) some feature of Y

The first thing to notice is that Rehfeld makes no attempt to confine the concept of representation within any normative dimension.  This stands in stark contradiction of virtually all of the writing on political representation.  What Rehfeld terms the "standard account" (best shown in Pitkin, 1967) would argue that a congressman who rigged his election could not possibly represent his home district because political representation only occurs in cases where democratic norms are upheld.  Thus, even if Congress officially accepts this corrupt individual as the representative for that constituency, in truth he is not.

Rehfeld counters this account by positing that "representation is an instrumental good; one does not have representation for its own sake."  In other words, the central failing of the standard account is that it conflates normative and positive representation such that it order to represent at all, one has to represent justly.  Rehfeld's contribution, therefore, is that his account separates what it means to represent from what it means to represent well.  A corrupt Congressman may have rigged the election that led to his being recognized as the representative of his district , but this injustice does not change the fact that, for the purpose of national legislating and with the audience of the federal government, he is that district's representative.  His corruption makes him a bad representative.  It is only his impeachment or death that could make him a non-representative.

Friday's discussant was professor Chad Flanders of Saint Louis University's School of Law.  

Chad Flanders

Flanders and Rehfeld actually have an interesting history together.  The two both spent the first half of this decade at the University of Chicago and even took a class together in which they studied Rawls.  Not surprisingly, then, Flanders had a lot of nice things to say about Rehfeld's paper (and rightly so!)

 

Old friends

Flanders' main critique of the paper was that Rehfeld's quadratic equation lacks the crucial stipulation of the role of the audience.  Though Rehfeld repeatedly states in the paper that audience recognition is essential for representation, the analytic structure of the quadratic equation leaves this out.  Rehfeld responded that who the relevant audience is and how they go about recognizing a representative is subsumed within the function category, F. 

For example, when dealing with the purpose of making national legislation, the relevant audience is Congress, and the process of their recognition is explicitly laid out in the same rules that guide legislating.  This may indeed be a sufficient response, but I'm still left agreeing with Flanders that the role of the audience was a point of confusion (in an otherwise astoundingly clear paper).

Professor Flanders provided an excellent summary 

and response of Professor Rehfeld's paper.

Flanders also took issue with the role of correspondence between the representative and the represented in Rehfeld's account.  Rehfeld's paper states that "there is always some sense of correspondence, minimally arising from the standing in relationship of the two entities."  Flanders found this quote problematic: if in some cases correspondence is merely this relationship, "doesn't it follows that [in a minimalist account of representation] correspondence is a superfluous notion?"  Rehfeld agreed he needed to reconsider the issue.

 Workshop attendees have a variety of different

academic backgrounds and perspectives

The general discussion of Rehfeld's paper was particularly lively.  Right off the bat, Professor Gerald Izenberg of WUSTL History challenged the core argument of Rehfeld's paper, that representation implies a positive dimension apart from its normative one.  Izenberg argued that legitimacy in appointing a representative is built into the representative relationship such that normativity is a necessary part of the account.  Rehfeld deftly responded that "legitimacy" was subject to the exact same criticism as representation in that it has a sociological dimension (who do we think has the power to select a representative?) and a normative dimension (who do we think ought to have the power to select a representative?)

Professor Randall Calvert of WUSTL Political Science offered Rehfeld some helpful advice for structuring the presentation of the argument.  Since Rehfeld's account of representation applies to politics but is not limited to it, Calvert suggested that Rehfeld consider opening the paper by describing a series of questionable instances of representation and thereafter demonstrating how the new account both clarifies and resolves the confusion.  

Piggy-backing off Calvert's comments, Anne Newman of WUSTL Education suggested that Rehfeld distinguish that his paper presents a general theory of representation (which applies to art and literature just as easily as politics).  As such, Newman recommended that Rehfeld change his topic name from "political representation," which does seem to hint at arguments and issues closer to those of Pitkin, to "representation in politics," which better expresses that Rehfeld's theory is a general one applied to a particular topic.  Rehfeld enthusiastically agreed.

Congratulations all around for another productive workshop

  All in all, it was an enjoyable and interesting discussion from one of the luminaries of the WPES community.  If you'd like to continue the conversation, please use the comments section below.

-Greg Allen