Does Being « Politically » Represented Necessarily Means Being Represented by Actors Who Directly Have a Position in the Institutional Realm?

Extract

[...] Lobbying is a slow process which runs through inception phase, legislative phase and transposition phase. NGOs do not situate their advocacy work outside institutionnal debates and policy-making, but they act as influencers and have to translate issues in, for example, the langage of the EU. Parties situate themselves as representatives of the people and politicians as well. In the European Parliament, elected members and their staffers are involved in highly tense debates when they negotiate. They use social media and the press in order to gain public opinion, but in no way they overcross the setting of the negotiation - an influence struggle, a power relation which is core to democracy. [...]

[...] Technocracy, based on the study of public opinions and trends, would equate political representation outside representative democracy map. Rather than answering to the question wither elections remain necessary in a society which allows such an extended array of political representation, we may leave our reader with a question : what kind of tools would people use to prevent an abuse of power that would be the end of democracy, if elections disappear, political representation happens through any real and virtual community, and the polity takes claims of interests of these representatives through social science, social media reviews, and all sort of public-opinion-metrics ? [...]

[...] We have showned that the relation between political representation and representative democracy, which functions through elections, becomes tense whenever we consider political representation to extend party politics and election timings. In order to take this tension to its extreme, we have decided to question conspiracy theories community as a kind of political representation, taking our understanding of political representation beyond both accountability and participation in policy-making and decision-making. NGO are not accountable, but they participate the decision and policy-making process by overtly lobbying. [...]

[...] Alongside with projects trying to increase citizen's democratic participation, from municipalities organized consultations and public discussions to conversation cafés sponsored by the New Road Map Foundation, conspiracy communities are thus developing. Yet, the difference between an NGO, a party, a politician and a citizen or group of citizens developping conspiracy theories is that the first three aim at participating the policy-making and decision-making process. NGOs lobby and organize campaigns, propose laws and research informations on the topics they claim to represent. As presented by our OXFAM guest lecturer, NGO not only advocates for general interests, but follows a technical timeline which correspond to institution's agenda. [...]

[...] Technocratic democracy, pushed to its extreme, may result in elections being unnecessary because experts know people's interests and do the job best. Pluralistic democracy, then is based on the intense and active participation of citizens in the policy making process. It is closed to deliberative democracy, which models democracy as an on-going deliberation and negotiation process, rather than a succession of mandates where elected governments rule as trustees. In all these accounts of democracy, the question remains wither political representation translates into an institutionalized contract which includes accountability. Accountability is where representation and democracy merge into one another. [...]