Pitkin's Fifth View

• In Event: Innovations in Democratic Theory

Abstract

The Concept of Representation, Hanna Pitkin’s magnum opus, is the most important book on political representation in the last century. However, dominant readings of Pitkin’s text overlook two central aspects of her argument. First, readers often reduce her view of political representation to a special case of what Pitkin calls “substantive” representation. Substantive representation is one of four different views Pitkin articulates in the text. I argue that Pitkin’s political view is a distinct fifth view irreducible to any of the other four. Second, even theorists sensitive to the uniqueness of Pitkin’s political view misinterpret her position and goals. Current theorists focus heavily on Pitkin’s analysis of the role of communication in representative systems. This focus, however, overlooks Pitkin’s main theoretical assumption: representation, Pitkin says, means the ascription of representatives’ actions to represented persons – representees really do act through their representatives. Her political view is therefore about political (especially democratic) agency. It is meant to explain how, as Pitkin writes, the people really do act through their government. In this paper, I address this interpretive gap by reconstructing Pitkin’s fifth, political view to clarify her argument. I conclude that while Pitkin doesn’t achieve the goals she set for herself, we should adopt her central insights – chief of all, that representation preserves representees’ agency.

Author

• Loren Reinoso, Yale University