Radicalising Democratic Representation

• In Event: Reimagining Democracy through Comparative Democratic Theory

Abstract

Ghanian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu develops an understanding of consensual democracy in which he argues that the major moral hazard of majoritarian democracy—that it does not sufficiently protect the ethical right of individuals to be substantively represented in all political decisions that affect them— requires a twin rectification. These are the eradication of political parties as we know them on one hand, and the fundamental radicalization of political representation on the other. Wiredu proposes a political schema of direct participation in what he calls various “non-party” associations by which each adult has a direct say on all political decisions that will affect them. Within the scholarly literature there have been two broad responses to Wiredu’s ideas. The first has been to divorce Wiredu’s normative arguments from his more practical ideas, roundly determining the serious workability of the latter to be implausible. The second response has tended to determine that while Wiredu’s practical scheme is, at least, theoretically feasible, this could only relate to the specific African historical geography by which Wiredu ideas are partially inspired. In this article, I argue that neither response constitutes an adequate treatment of Wiredu’s ideas. I argue that, in both cases, scholars have an incomplete normative account of Wiredu’s arguments that lead, further, to an incoherent understanding of their practical elements. Integrating historical and normative analysis, this article builds on Wiredu’s arguments by developing a model of what it calls radical democratic representation that both deepens normative understanding of Wiredu’s ideal of deliberative consensus as the ethical mechanism that substantive democratic freedom requires and outlines a model of consensual participatory politics and representation whose benefits are not only for the deeply heterogenous countries of Wiredu’s immediate example but, also, for those of morally legitimate democratic representation in general.

Author

• Ẹniọlá Ànúolúwapọ́ Ṣóyẹmí, University of Oxford