The ideal of representative democracy is that the people elect an individual to represent them as a governing body. This governing body is empowered to exercise in their own judgment, the interests of the people. This can be a tricky place to be, and herein lies the trick, the people ask for a person to represent their interests and yet the representative is also required to maintain use of their own judgment of the interests of the people as a community group and not be subject to the self-interest of the individual. Now to complicate the idealism of representative democracy; the divisions of the community through gendered interests, cultural interests and the interests of political subgroups are also fighting for recognition and equal representation. The representative needs to find the intersection of these interests, not let one’s group overshadow the needs of other groups, and most importantly; not let one groups rights/needs become oppressive over the another group’s rights/needs.
Laurel Weldon (2008) provides a critical examination of social theorist, Iris Young and her views on the evolution and impact of representative democracy through a feminist lens, particularly on group rights, race and ethnicity and social movements. Weldon describes Young, through her writing over two decades, as appearing to both create a focused lens on this impact through a theory of gender and yet provides a means to broaden the view of feminist theory to encompass a more comprehensive application across the multitude of social groups that exist globally, nationally, and locally. Young had proposed a theory to examine the impact of gender as a social structure and utilize gender theory to examine power relations. She described social structures as: “a constellation of social practices, norms, and institutional rules…comprised of practices and meanings that are embedded, reflected and/or expressed in material surroundings; and… experienced as “given” by individuals, although they are formed through the cumulation of individual actions” (Weldon, 2008).
Weldon (2008) writes that concepts of gender are really to be examined on social axis rather than just singular identities. This concept flows particularly well when progress is made in some areas yet then undermines other areas. If one only looks at singular structures rather than the relationship between such; as in the individual within the community, the community group within the larger region or district, the ethnic group or gendered group within the larger mass; one misses a large part of the equation between structures or groups. Managhan (2005) highlights in her essay on mothers and military politics and DiQuizio (2005) highlights this effect in her examination of the Million Man and Million Mom marches. Both seem to highlights the competition between the groups in their efforts to draw attention to their causes, how representatives take an issue and begin to advocate according their own particular perception and their own particular cultural or gender identified need. Bridgeman, et al (2009) makes the same conclusion in regards to representative democracy in rural locations and specifically to the 2008 presidential election. They compared the use of representation in the more populated and politically present areas versus the predominately rural areas that are not or not able to engage in national political discourse at the same level as the rest of the country. Their identification of the “phenomenon of localism” (p. 81) and the bias toward the familiar and local is in concert with DiQuizio’s examination of a similar effect on cultural discourse at national levels.
DiQuizio raises excellent questions for us to answer (p. 241) regarding civic engagement in our political culture. While she focuses on maternalistic civic engagement, her suggestion that “feminists activists and organizations should be working with the wide range of sophisticated feminist analysis of the mass media” are portable to other political interests such as: gender, race, culture, orientation, geography, and more. Tie this then to Dolan (2000) in which she identifies an additional barrier regarding the accountability of civil servants inherent to the application of policy on local and state levels. She writes that while “democratic theory demands that the public be able to reward or sanction government officials through regular elections. But the public cannot remove civil servants through popular elections…” (p. 3). Dolan goes on to highlight theories designed to keep checks and balances in place but of course, and emphasizes the ideal that our diversity will produce policy that is consistent with the public’s wants. However, in practice this only works if the representatives actually share the values and attitudes of the public and actually act in the best interests of the group at large. The ideals postulated in Dolan’s paper suggest that all marginalized groups get represented equally but in practice we know this to not be true. This truth is made more evident by the very existence of grass roots groups that emerge to identify themselves as advocating for the unheard cultures, genders, and ethnicities. Bridgeman et al small focus on just one election actually brings to focus the impact of a group that does not or cannot engage in political discourse at the national or global level nor has a representative that brings their interest to the forefront, they get ignored.
What is most interesting in these readings is that the idea of self-interest of the representative as a barrier to true community representation does not get brought up. These articles seem to assume that all diversions from the group’s interest are within small group competitions over prominence in the political agenda. While Dolan and the other authors in this review assume that the usual things that put us in groups: gender, gender expression, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, disability, health status, economic status, etc. are the things that shape decision making in policy; they do not consider outliers within the individual experience and the impact of that on self-interest in the political realm. Additionally, how people represent themselves on surveys and vocally in offices is not necessarily how they act or what they want to happen politically. Meaning, that when researchers like Dolan find a linear construct between the presence of a particular group in an office and therefore more attention to that group’s issues, are they accounting for the possibility that employees will verbalize the agency accepted culture statement and may be repressing their own? This may account for the disparity of findings by Dolan in regards to how female executives behave as representatives.
These readings also beg the question; does one group “own” a cause? Does the elected representative then need to maintain that ownership or allow the evolution of such ideals and causes to grow to become both more inclusive and therefore more representative of society without consulting back to the originators of the cause or idea? Certainly the discourse between the Million Man March and the Million Mom March has brought up this argument. A new movement called Hollaback may bring this up as well. While it was initiated by a group of women in Canada, a movement created through social argument only, with no policy agenda; it was picked up by an innovator in the US and organized specifically to allow splinter groups to take the name yet exist on their own. It is now global in its agenda to address street violence through both social discourse and to initiate policy. It will be interesting to see how this gets picked up in policy development from a free global movement to be developed as local policy through representative means. Are we really at the cusp of global politics and are groups like Hollaback fore-shadowing this?
References
Bridgeman, J., Lawson-Borders, G., and Zamudio, M. (2009). Representative democracy in rural america: Race, gender, and class through a localism lens. In Seattle Journal for Social Justice. Vol. 8 (pp. 81 – 95).
DiQuinzio. P. (2005). Love and reason in the public sphere: Maternalist civic engagement and the dilemma of difference. In Women and children first: Feminism, rhetoric, and public policy. (pp. 227–246). Albany, NY.: State University of New York Press.
Dolan J. (2000). The senior executive service: Gender, attitudes, and representative bureaucracy. In Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. Jul 2000; 10, 3: ABI/INFORM Global (pp. 513-529).
Managhan, T. (2005). (M)others, Biopolitics, and the Gulf War. In Women and children first: Feminism, rhetoric, and public policy. (pp. 205–225). Albany, NY.: State University of New York Press.
Weldon, S.L. (2008). Difference in and social structure: Iris young’s legacy of a critical social theory of gender. In Politics and Gender. 4 (2) 2008. (pp. 311- 317).
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