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Representative Democracy as TautologyAnkersmit and Lefort on RepresentationStockholm University, Sweden, sofia.nasstrom{at}statsvet.su.se Representative democracy is often assessed from the standpoint of direct democracy. Recently, however, many theorists have come to argue that representation forms a democratic model in its own right. The most powerful claim in this direction is to be found within two quite different strands of thinking: the aesthetic theory of Frank Ankersmit and the savage theory of Claude Lefort. In this article, I show that while Ankersmit and Lefort converge in their critique of direct rule, they provide us with two distinct models of democracy. Aesthetic democracy, I argue, in the end falls short as a democratic recuperation of representation. It reduces representation to delegation. Savage democracy proves more fruitful in this respect. It offers a representative view of politics without committing itself to the premises associated with political delegation
Key Words: action • aesthetics • Ankersmit • conflict • delegation • democracy • election • Lefort • representation • totalitarianism
European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 5, No. 3,
321-342 (2006) This article has been cited by other articles:
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