Toxic Representation: An Ecological Approach?

• In Event: Political Parties and American Democracy Mini-Conference III: Beyond the Principal-Agent Binary: New Approaches to Democratic Representation

Abstract

Much has been written about the democratic potential, indeed the democratic necessity, of political representation in contemporary politics. While historically representation has been conceived as primarily a principal-agent relation, and deliberation has been extolled for mediating political conflict, these democratic “givens” often contribute to political hostilities in contemporary democratic politics. Elite representation contributes to anti-egalitarian populism and public political disagreements foster affective polarization. For this reason, modern politics requires a much more dynamic and complex understanding of representation as well as a more nuanced way to identify toxic ecologies.
In particular, it will need to consider how certain patterns of inclusion and absences can undermine the legitimacy and desirability of representative processes (Dovi 2009, 2020). Inclusion alone should not be considered democratic. Nor should absences be treated as necessarily undemocratic. Rather it is imperative to acknowledge how the iterative nature of inclusion and absence facilitates democratic responsiveness and accountability. The benefits of such iterations though will depend on how representation produces and maintains citizens’ affective attachments to each other and to their political system.
Although representation produces these affective attachments, I consider how some emotional attachments, lethal partisanship, can threaten the very legitimacy and desirability of the entire system. Put bluntly, what citizens desire and the particular content of their identity attachments can foster democratic backsliding, contribute to political paralysis, and ultimately, undermine citizens’ political agency. Drawing on recent empirical research on affective polarization, I want to consider how partisan attachments can create perverse incentives and introduce toxic ecologies – that is, modes of representation and deliberation that destabilize and undermine democratic governance.

Author

• Suzanne Dovi, University of Arizona