Sciences Po University Press Revue Française de Science Politique (English Edition)

MAKING REPRESENTATIVE CLAIMS THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF POLITICAL
REPRESENTATION
Author(s): Virginie Dutoya and Samuel Hayat
Source: Revue française de science politique (English Edition), Vol. 66, No. 1, MAKING
REPRESENTATIVE CLAIMS (2016), pp. 1-18
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MAKING REPRESENTATIVE
CLAIMS
THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
Virginie Dutoya and Samuel Hayat

Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations
The English version of this article is published thanks to the support of the CNRS
olitical representation, a key concept in the legitimation processes and discourses of
P liberal democracies as well as in the scholarly study of the latter, is currently in the
throes of a profound redefinition.1 Not only has belief in the representational power
of those governing been massively eroded, but these official representatives are now being
challenged by other spokespersons.2 The expanding framework of governance, among other
things, emphasizes the plurality of actors involved in governing a society (not just elected
officials, but also representatives of interest groups, non-governmental organizations, regional
and international authorities, and so forth).3 Instead of exhausting the political role of rep-
resentation, this pluralization has made it more diffuse. Democratic legitimacy is adopting
new forms, and yet knowing who political actors are speaking and acting for remains at the
heart of the distribution of roles and powers.4
Therefore, without resorting to a descriptive tautology that takes at face value the choices
made by established authorities – representatives are those who represent within institutions
– it is essential to consider the processes by which these actors are designated, and potentially
recognized as representatives. This is what is suggested by a recent theoretical framework
that fundamentally alters the conceptualization and empirical study of political representa-
tion, namely, the framework of representative claims proposed by Michael Saward in an
1. For an initial overview, see Nadia Urbinati and Mark E. Warren, “The concept of representation in contemporary
democratic theory”, Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 2008, 387-412, as well as the debate between Jane
Mansbridge and Andrew Rehfeld, over several years in the American Political Science Review: Jane Mansbridge,
“Rethinking representation”, American Political Science Review, 97(4), 2003, 515-28; Andrew Rehfeld, “Repre-
sentation rethought: on trustees, delegates, and gyroscopes in the study of political representation and democ-
racy”, American Political Science Review, 103(2), 2009, 214-30; Jane Mansbridge, “Clarifying the concept of
representation”, American Political Science Review, 105(3), 2011, 621-30; Andrew Rehfeld, “The concepts of
representation”, American Political Science Review, 105(3), 2011, 631-41.
2. Michael Saward, “Authorisation and authenticity: representation and the unelected”, Journal of Political Phi-
losophy, 17(1), 2008, 1-22; John S. Dryzek and Simon Niemeyer, “Discursive representation”, American Political
Science Review, 102(4), 2008, 481-93; Assia Boutaleb and Violaine Roussel, “Introduction au dossier ‘Malaise
dans la representation’”, Sociétés contemporaines, 74, 2009, 5-17; Laura Montanaro, “The democratic legiti-
macy of self-appointed representatives”, The Journal of Politics, 74(4), 2012, 1094-107.
3. Guy Hermet, “Un régime à pluralisme limité? À propos de la gouvernance démocratique”, Revue française de
science politique, 54(1), 2004, 159-79.
4. Pierre Rosanvallon, Democratic Legitimacy: Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2011).
❘ REVUE FRANÇAISE DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE ❘ ENGLISH ❘ VOL. 66 No 1 ❘ p. 1-18
2 ❘ Virginie Dutoya and Samuel Hayat
article and then a book by the same name. In its most general form, this involves saying
that representation is not a binary relationship between representative and represented that
exists prior to the act of representation, as in the principal-agent model, dominant in political
science since the publication of Hanna Pitkin’s classic work in 1967.1 Representation,
according to Michael Saward, is the result of an activity of claim-making, in which “A maker
of representations (M) puts forward a subject (S) which stands for an object (O) which is
related to a referent (R) and is offered to an audience (A).”2
This conceptualization of representation aims to provide a general formula that would enable
us to account for the most established forms of representation (for example, the activity of
elected representatives) and representative claims of a different order, such as those made by
social movements or interest groups, within the same framework. Furthermore, this approach
aims to direct attention towards the performative aspects of a representative claim: the claim-
making activity participates in the construction of represented groups and the representations
(in a symbolic sense) of these groups. In this regard, Michael Saward proposes a theoretical
framework that strongly echoes the constructivist program in the social sciences, to the point
that some today speak of a “constructivist turn” in theories of representation.3
The goal of this introduction is to give these proposals and the new questions they raise
serious consideration, without necessarily trying to reduce them to familiar concepts, and
at the same time not taking at face value claims for the radical novelty of this approach from
its proponents. We will thus try to test the validity of the idea of a constructivist turn by
situating it within broader historical and theoretical dynamics and examining the new pos-
sibilities it opens up for empirical studies of representation. In this way, although we will
not prove that some major theoretical revolution has taken place, we shall, more modestly
perhaps, shed light on some new tools permitting a better understanding of new forms of
political representation – and take a fresh look at its older and more established uses.
A constructivist turn in political theory?

ith regard to Anglo-American theories of political representation, the most imme-
W diately striking characteristic of the conceptualization of representation proposed

by Michael Saward is undoubtedly the idea that the activity of representation is
1. Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972 [1st edn
1967]). For a more recent approach to the principal-agent model, see Adam Przeworski, Susan Carol Stokes,
and Bernard Manin (eds), Democracy, Accountability and Representation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), and especially the attempt to breathe fresh life into this approach by Jane Mansbridge, “A ‘selec-
tion model’ of political representation”, Journal of Political Philosophy, 17(4), 2009, 369-98, which shifts the
focus from accountability to forms of selection. Note that in Pitkin there are already elements that escape the
conceptualization of principal-agent and indicate a more systematic analysis.
2. Michael Saward, “The representative claim”, Contemporary Political Theory, 5(3), 2006, 297-318. This con-
ceptualization is close to what Andrew Rehfeld proposed that same year in “Towards a general theory of political
representation”, Journal of Politics, 68(1), 2006, 1-21. In the testing of any representative claim, Rehfeld distin-
guishes the “function”, the “representative”, the “represented”, the “audience”, and three “rules of recognition”
that validate, or invalidate, a representative claim: membership in a “qualified set”, following a “decision rule”
used by a “selection agent” recognized by the audience (6-7). See also Michael Saward's book, The Represen-
tative Claim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
3. Lisa Disch, “Toward a mobilization conception of democratic representation”, American Political Science
Review, 105(1), 2011, 100-14, and “La représentation politique et les ‘effets de subjectivation’”, Raisons politiques,
56, 2014, 25-47. This was also the title of a panel at the ECPR conference in 2014, organized by Michael Saward
and Eline Severs.
❘ REVUE FRANÇAISE DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE ❘ ENGLISH ❘ VOL. 66 No 1
MAKING REPRESENTATIVE CLAIMS ❘ 3
what constitutes the represented group as such.1 It is this break with the dogma inherited
from Pitkin that is presented as justification for the existence of a supposed constructivist
turn.2 By naming the represented group, and more specifically by constructing as object of
representation an image of the referent, the one who claims there is representation – the
“claim-maker” – contributes to bringing this group into existence. For Michael Saward, in
a literal sense, a group cannot exist before it is represented. However, for all its potency, is
this idea really so new? There is room for doubt. It could be argued that it is almost as
ancient as the introduction of representation as the key concept in political philosophy. In
what follows, without seeking to present here a genealogy of the idea of representative claims,
we can use this analytical perspective to compare conceptualizations of representation that
are generally treated separately. Indeed, precisely because the idea is not new, it makes it
possible to construct ideal-types of representation, distinguishing the uses of this concept
according to their evaluation – both descriptive and normative – of the constructivist nature
of representative claims. From this point of view, we can point to three ideal-types of rep-
resentation: representation as imposition, where representative claims impose an identity on
the represented; representation as composition, where the represented exists prior to the
representative who is composed of elements of the represented; representation as proposi-
tion, where representative claims propose, to the represented, representations of itself, which
it can accept, modify, or contest.
Representation as imposition
Far from signaling a radical constructivist turn in the study of representation, the idea that
the representative constitutes the represented by her claim to representation directly meets
the conception of representation developed by Thomas Hobbes in the famous pages of
Leviathan that he dedicated to this notion. In the sixteenth chapter, which closes the first
part of the book, Hobbes defined the relation of representation as a relation in which the
acts of one person – the representative – are attributed to an author – the represented. But
while for Hobbes the sovereign results from a social pact, an authorization given by those
who are represented rendering them the authors of her acts, it should be added that it is
not a people that establishes this pact, but isolated individuals, a multitude. Thus, according
to the concept of representation developed by Hobbes, “[a] multitude of men, are made one
person, when they are by one man, or one person represented [...] For it is the unity of the
representer, not the unity of the represented, that maketh the person one”.3 Every individual
that makes up the multitude authorizes the representative to act in his/her name, but the
people, as a collective unified entity, does not exist prior to the representative. This is what
1. In political theory, this idea had up to then been particularly developed by the aesthetic theory of Franklin
Rudolf Ankersmit, Political Representation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002).
2. Note that this idea that it was new applied primarily to mainstream Anglo-American political theory. German
conceptual history, for example, has long emphasized this aspect of representation (Hasso Hofmann, Reprä-
sentation: Studien zur Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte von der Antike bis ins 19. Jahrhundert [Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 1973]), as has the history of representations in France (Roger Chartier, “Le sens de la représentation”,
La vie des idées, last modified 22 March 2013, <http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Le-sens-de-la-representation.html>,
last accessed 19 November 2016), and cultural studies (Stuart Hall, Jessica Evans, and Sean Nixon, Represen-
tation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997)). For an introduction to the
various traditions of studies of representation, see Yves Sintomer, “Les sens de la représentation politique:
usages et mésusages d'une notion”, Raisons politiques, 50, 2013, 13-34.
3. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946), 107.
justifies, for Hobbes, the absolute power of the sovereign: the people’s only rights are those
granted by the sovereign, because it does not exist before having been represented by the
sovereign. Instead of being the reflection of the people, for Hobbes the representative gives
the people its image; it shapes the people.1
As Quentin Skinner has shown, this conception of representation is then developed by
Hobbes for a specific political intention: to counter the claims made by the English members
of parliament to attribute a representative capacity to themselves, in the context of the first
English revolution.2 Carl Schmitt makes a similar use of representation against liberal par-
liamentarism.3 However, the idea that the representative creates the represented is not nec-
essarily used as a justification for absolutism. It could even be said that it was at the heart
of the founding gesture by the deputies of the Third Estate, deciding in 1789 to establish
themselves as a National Assembly,4 or of the stance taken by the writers of the United
States’ Constitution when they began their text with “We, the People of the United States”.5
In each case, persons speaking in the name of a people caused it to become a political entity,
and in so doing, authorized themselves to determine its primary characteristics. This rea-
soning can be extended to representative claims that do not concern a people, but a class,
a social group. Thus, the manifesto “For a Women’s Liberation Movement”, published in
1970, began by symbolically forming women into a collective subject (“We, from time imme-
morial, live like a people colonized within the people [...] We are the class that has been
oppressed for the longest time”), before calling for the formation of a “women’s liberation
movement” aiming to justify “a political takeover to represent, in our turn, our interest as
being the universal interest”.6 The activity of women’s representation by the Women’s Lib-
eration Movement, of which this is one of the founding documents, is caught up in an
explicit work of constructing this group as having a unique interest that can be made
universal.
It is clear that – whether the aim is to justify a coercive authority, to establish a new political
order, or to enable the action of an emancipatory collective subject – the idea that repre-
sentative claims participate in the constitution of the represented group (imposing upon it
an identity as a group) has existed for a long time. This conception of representation as
imposition is not just a theoretical or activist position: it had also inspired a range of studies
in the social sciences, especially in political science. In particular, Pierre Bourdieu’s research
on political representation, beginning in 1979 in Distinction and followed by several articles
at the beginning of the 1980s, certainly constituted one of the most complete attempts to
subject such a conception of representation to empirical analysis. By drawing primarily on
the study of relationships between the working class and its spokespersons, Pierre Bourdieu
brought out several characteristics of the relationship of representation. It is created and
1. Lucien Jaume, “La théorie de la ‘personne fictive’ dans le Léviathan de Hobbes”, Revue française de science
politique, 33(6) 1983, 1009-35.
2. Quentin Skinner, “Hobbes on representation”, European Journal of Philosophy, 13(2) 2005, 155-84.
3. Duncan Kelly, “Carl Schmitt's political theory of representation”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 65(1), 2004,
113-34.
4. Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence
of a Revolutionary Culture (1789-1790) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
5. Bruce A. Ackerman, We the People. 1: Foundations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1999).
6. Monique Wittig, Gille Wittig, Marcia Rothenburg, and Margaret Stephenson, “For a women's liberation move-
ment”, in Namascar Shaktini (ed.), On Monique Wittig: Theoretical, Political, and Literary Essays (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 2005), 21-22.
deployed in a political field – a competitive space structurally homolog to the social space
– where political enterprises or mechanisms struggle using various forms of political capital,
forcing social groups, especially the most destitute, to give themselves over to these enter-
prises for the defense of their interests.1 But the most interesting for our purposes is that,
according to Pierre Bourdieu, the relation of representation, usually seen as a delegation
process, is in reality a process whereby the represented is instituted or constituted. This is
clear in cases where a group depends on its representatives for its existence – Pierre Bourdieu
used the example of the Church (also used by Hobbes) to prove that certain inanimate
objects could be personified. However, the argument can be extended to the representation
of social groups, especially when it involves dominated groups: then, “the act of symboliza-
tion by which the spokesperson is constituted, the constitution of the ‘movement’, happens
at the same time as the constituting of the group [...] The signifier is not only that which
expresses and represents the signified group: it is that which signifies to it that it exists, that
which has the power to call it into visible existence, by mobilizing it.”2 This is what Pierre
Bourdieu calls the “mystery of ministry”, which enables the spokesperson to act for the
group, or the “oracle effect”, a kind of “ventriloquism” that causes the representative to
speak for the represented.3 It is not simply a matter of dispossession: the power held by the
representative to form the group goes along with the power to define what the group does,
and the social characteristics that constitute it as a group. Indeed, “the objects of the social
world [...] always include a certain indeterminacy and vagueness”,4 opening up the possibility
for a “symbolic struggle [...] for the monopoly of legitimate naming”5 of these objects, in
particular of social groups. Therefore, groups are always constructed by their representatives,
and the representations (in the symbolic sense) of these groups always depend on their
representation (in the institutional sense).6
Thus, in these very diverse works, both in their method and political aim, there is a shared
idea that representation is above all a relation of imposition, in which the representative
imposes onto the represented their characteristics and imposes herself as their spokesperson.
According to this first ideal-type of representation, representative claims play a primordial
role, in both senses of the word: it is both the first chronologically as well as the most
important for understanding what takes place in the activity of representation.
Representation as composition
Why then does Michael Saward’s text seem innovative and why has it led to real theoretical
and empirical renewal? The first reason is that the conception of representation as imposition
has for a long time been played down or even eliminated from political theory, especially
in the UK and the United States. This is certainly due to the success of Pitkin’s book, The
Concept of Representation, which appeared in 1967 and which provided a largely hegemonic
1. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 171-202.
2. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 207.
3. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 249, 211.
6. For an example of a classic study based on this perspective, see Luc Boltanski, The Making of a Class: Cadres
in French Society (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Note that while Pierre Bourdieu certainly
served as a driving force, at least in France, in promoting this constructivist conception of social life, it has also
been promoted well beyond Bourdieu's sociology. There is, for example, a remarkable convergence with the
approach to representation developed by Bruno Latour, “What if we talked politics a little?”, Contemporary
Political Theory, 2(2), 143-64.
theoretical framework for the study of political representation. In it, Pitkin refuted the Hob-
besian analysis of representation in terms of authorization, in which she justly noted an
attempt “to explain and justify political obligation”.1 More significantly, the entire book was
based on the idea that to represent meant “making present again”, or more specifically, the
“making present in some sense of something which is nevertheless not present literally or in
fact”.2 Yet, this “metaphysical concept of representation”3 implies that the represented exists
prior to the activity of representation – just as the conception that Pitkin then developed
concerning political representation as responsiveness presupposed that there was a repre-
sented that could express its desire independently from the representative. At most, Pitkin
recognized the possibility that the representative participated in the construction of the
represented in her chapter dedicated to symbolic representation, but she did so in order to
immediately disqualify this conception of representation as characteristic of fascism. For
Pitkin, thus, the whole question was to know what elements of the represented composed the
representative, how the latter defended the interests of the former and responded to its
wishes.
The idea that the represented exists prior to the activity of representation is of course not
Pitkin’s invention, even though it certainly was her book that contributed to its dominance
in political theory. It originated, at least in modern political philosophy, in liberalism, more
specifically in John Locke. Indeed, in the Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke took
the opposite view to Hobbes in attributing rights to individuals, from the state of nature,
rights that do not disappear with the social contract. Representation does not create the
people as political subject; on the contrary, by building a political society, people voluntarily
form a body politic, and since “[it is] the interest as well as intention of the people to have
a fair and equal representative”,4 “the people [...] [have] reserved to themselves the choice of
their representatives”.5 There is therefore a conception of representation opposed to Hobbes’s
and that can be qualified as liberal, according to which individuals bear rights in themselves,
rights that exist prior to their representation, and they thus choose their representatives
instead of being constituted by them. Here again, while not attempting to elucidate a history
of this conception, it can be used as a starting point to construct a second ideal-type of
representation, according to which representative claims are only valid on the condition that
they rest on a composition of elements present in the represented itself. Several theories can
then be included in this ideal-type: representation as composition can simultaneously justify
the idea, as in Edmund Burke, that representatives are independent of their constituents and
defend their interests without allowing themselves to be influenced by them, or, on the
contrary, go hand in hand with the preference for an imperative mandate or various forms
of control over the representative’s action.6 Representation in this sense could also be founded
on an abstract conception of the citizen, whose ideas alone are represented, or, on the
contrary, it could take into consideration the social characteristics of the represented, opening
1. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, 29.

2. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, 8-9.
3. Lisa Disch, “Representation ‘do's and don'ts’: Hanna Pitkin's The Concept of Representation”, paper presented
at the Département de sciences politiques, Université Paris VIII, Paris, 2005.
4. John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1980),
83.
5. Locke, Second Treatise, 112.
6. The second part of Pitkin's book is dedicated to the discussion of this question. See also Heinz Eulau and John
C. Wahlke, The Politics of Representation. Continuities in Theory and Research (London: Sage, 1978).
the way to forms of descriptive representation, group representation, or a politics of pres-

ence.1 However, aside from their very real differences, these theorizations of representation
all recognize that those who are represented exist prior to their representation, that they are
not the pure product of a representative claim, of a claim-making, but instead that all
claim-making is organized according to elements that are present in the represented.2 Rep-
resentation is thus shown to be a composition, which can mean that the body of represen-
tatives is composed based on the body of those who are represented (their ideas,
characteristics, etc.), or that the represented actively compose, for example through voting,
the body of representatives.3 Since the 1960s, studies in political theory as well as empirical
studies, especially in the English-speaking world, have thus primarily involved discussing,
categorizing, and measuring the ways in which representatives or the representative system
enter into a relationship of composition with the wishes, ideas, and characteristics of the
represented.
Representation as proposition
We can thus see how the supposed constructivist turn, embodied by Michael Saward in par-
ticular, appeared as a rupture: it opened a breach in the field of representation in which the
idea of representation as composition, closely tied to liberalism, had up to that point been
dominant. However, as a result, Saward’s efforts were primarily viewed as forming part of a
fairly specific oppositional stance to Anglo-American political theory. There are thus particular
issues surrounding his reception in France, especially since the conception of political repre-
sentation developed by Pierre Bourdieu makes Saward’s constructivism seem less polemical.
The challenge then becomes how to take account of what, in Michael Saward’s suggestion
concerning representative claims, goes beyond the mere repetition of the conception of rep-
resentation as imposition. Viewed from this perspective, two elements stand out in the con-
ceptualization proposed by Saward. On the one hand, for him, there is a separation between
the claim-maker and the subject of representation: it is not the representative alone who
institutes the represented, thereby giving rise to an indisputable imbalance, but also a relational
configuration in which the one who claims that there is representation is not necessarily the
one who claims to represent. On the other hand, the represented as such is far from merely
passive: if the object of the representation is indeed constructed by the claim-maker, this always
takes place before an audience and in relation to a referent, the social existence of which does
not depend on representation. Therefore, there is some leeway to judge, transform, and contest
representative claims – without necessarily needing to surrender oneself to other representa-
tives. For Saward, representation does not come about through imposition or composition, but
1. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990);
Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Melissa S. Williams, Voice, Trust, and
Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2000).
2. The seminal empirical article on this approach is older than Pitkin's book; it is Warren E. Miller's and Donald
E. Stokes's “Constituency influence in Congress”, American Political Science Review, 57(1), 1963, 45-56. For an
overview of the contributions of studies on the relationship of representation, see Mansbridge, “Rethinking
representation”.
3. The opposition between representation as imposition and as composition in part covers other dichotomies,
for example, between Repräsentation and Vertretung in Carl Schmitt (Olivier Beaud, “‘Repräsentation’ et ‘Stell-
vertretung’: sur une distinction de Carl Schmitt”, Droits: Revue française de théorie juridique, 6, 1987, 11-20), or
between synthetic and analytic representation (André Tosel, “La représentation de la souveraineté populaire:
apories des modèles et réalité des pratiques”, in Jean-Pierre Cotten, Robert Damien, and André Tosel (eds), La
représentation et ses crises (Besançon: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises, 2001), 281-300).
rather through a proposition: in front of an audience, the claim-maker proposes to establish a

relation of representation between a subject, object, and referent, and the success or failure of
this representative claim largely depends on the way in which those in whose name one is
speaking respond to this proposition.
It is then possible, based on the idea of representative claims, to bring together at least three
very distinct trends in the analysis of representation, which nonetheless share a similar way of
thinking about representation as a proposition. The first is the sociology of tests, concerning
which a recent publication indicates that it draws mainly from two sources: “the anthropology
of science and techniques developed by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour and the sociology of
action regimes put forward by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot”.1 While this publication
does not develop the matter of representation, we can nonetheless find in Bruno Latour and
Luc Boltanski two conceptions of representation that come together in the idea that represen-
tation is above all a proposition, where the representative does have a role in the formation
of the represented, but in which those who are represented acquire, in the representation, the
power to judge the representations proposed concerning them. In Bruno Latour, we find the
model of the “circle of representation”: the representative causes the represented to exist by
unifying it in political speech, but in a way that always betrays the multiplicity of the repre-
sented, which reappears in the various forms of obedience – that is, of interpretation and
representation – to those who are represented.2 For Luc Boltanski, it is certainly the idea of
the “hermeneutic contradiction” that best exemplifies the treatment of representation as prop-
osition: institutions, responsible for “stating the whatness of what is”, that is, for stabilizing
representations of the real world, especially of social groups, only exist through spokespersons.3
They do represent the institutions, but this ability to represent is always, at least potentially,
subject to criticism by those who are subject to the power of the institution, precisely because
equivalence between the institution and its spokespersons is never guaranteed – it is always a
representative claim. For Bruno Latour and Luc Boltanksi, representatives may always have
their representative claims tested by those who are represented.
A second tradition describes a form of representation as proposition, that of deconstructionist
feminism. This a school of thought which emerged in relation to the experiences of real feminist
social movements, drawing especially on the challenge to the unity of women as the subject of
feminism. At the beginning of the 1970s in the United States, the question was raised as to
whether white women could speak for black women, and heterosexuals for homosexuals, con-
testing both the movements’ representatives and the representations of the group whom they
claimed to represent.4 The inability of (white) feminism to represent black women (and then
Chicana women, post-colonial women, etc.) was at the heart of work done by black,5 Chicana,6
1. Yannick Barthe, Damien de Blic, Jean-Philippe Heurtin, Éric Lagneau, Cyril Lemieux, Dominique Linhardt, Cédric
Moreau de Bellaing, Catherine Rémy, and Danny Trom, “Sociologie pragmatique: mode d'emploi”, Politix 103,
2014, 175-204.
2. Latour, “What if we talked politics a little?”, 153.
3. Luc Boltanski, On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2011), 84-6.
4. bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1981). On post-
colonial feminism, see Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing
Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
5. Hazel V. Carby, “White woman listen! Black feminism and the boundaries of sisterhood”, in Centre for Con-
temporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham (ed.), The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s
Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 212-35.
6. Cherríe L. Moraga, “Preface”, in Cherríe L. Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (eds), This Bridge Called My Back:
Writings of Radical Women of Color (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1981), xiii-xi.
and post-colonial feminists,1 and reflection on the co-construction of the dominations of race,
gender, sexuality, class, etc., led to the emergence of the concept of intersectionality.2 Initially
proposed by jurist Kimberlé Crenshaw to examine the unequal treatment of white women and
women of color facing gender violence, this concept is today widely used to try to account for
the challenges involved in the representation of social groups, especially dominated ones. Criti-
cism of feminist universalism led to an intense examination of the subject of feminist politics.
Thus, Iris Marion Young precisely conceptualized the implications that this challenge to the
unity of the subject represented by feminism had for the theory of representation. Using the
concept of différance developed by Jacques Derrida, she proposed seeing the relation of repre-
sentation not as a relation of identity, but as “a differentiated relationship between constituents”.
The quality of this relationship depends on the ways in which representatives and those who
are represented are connected, forming “a cycle of anticipation and recollection between con-
stituents and representative, in which discourse and action at each moment ought to bear traces
of the others”.3 Any claim to represent an intrinsically diverse group is thus continuously shaped
by the connections opened up by that diversity, and conceptualizing this in terms of the rep-
resentative claim is certainly one approach to consider in order to avoid the fixation on rep-
resented identities, especially in a context where descriptive representation, through the use of
quotas, is often presented as the solution to the weak representation of certain social groups.4
Finally, the idea of representation as proposition is at the heart of certain attempts at refor-
mulating the Marxist project in order to adapt it to situations where the subject of eman-
cipation is no longer obviously the unified proletariat. Subaltern studies have certainly played
a primary role in calling the Marxist narrative into question by denouncing the ethnocen-
trism of the claim of the Western industrial proletariat to represent workers; by showing the
internal divisions in colonized worlds, hidden behind the claim by the elites of these worlds
to represent the colonized; and finally by showing, on the basis of the linguistic turn initiated
by Gayatri Spivak, that any discourse in the name of the subaltern, or even any discourse
on the subaltern, contributes to rendering them invisible.5 At the same time, other authors,
heavily influenced by post-structuralism, have attempted to think about ways to recompose
a subject of emancipation, taking into account the discursive nature of this subject – and
therefore the relative contingency of its representation. In this vein, the studies by Chantal
Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau in their book, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, developed a
conception of representation that can be linked to the idea of representation as proposition.
The general idea is that the constitution of an emancipatory political subject involves the
construction, by representatives, of a chain of equivalences between oppressions that can be
affirmed as hegemonic in the representations of the social world. After a fashion,
1. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses”, Boundary 2,
12(3), 1984, 333-58.
2. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of
color”, Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1991, 1241-99. For a recent summary in French of the works and debates
on intersectionality, see Alexandre Jaunait and Sébastien Chauvin, “Représenter l'intersection: les théories de
l'intersectionnalité à l'épreuve des sciences sociales”, Revue française de science politique, 62(1), 2012, 5-20.
3. Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For a discussion on the
works by Young on group representation, see Judith Squires, “Representing groups, deconstructing identities”,
Feminist Theory, 2(1), 2001, 7-27.
4. Phillips, The Politics of Presence; Jane Mansbridge, “Should blacks represent blacks and women represent
women? A contingent ‘yes’”, The Journal of Politics, 61(3) 1999, 628-57.
5. Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1997); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the subaltern speak?” in Cary Nelson (ed.), Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-313.
“political-hegemonic articulations retroactively create the interests they claim to represent”,1

but they are always composed of demands that actually exist and that have been made
equivalent, based on a contingent arrangement whose success depends largely on the rep-
resented themselves. A picture thus emerges of an agonistic democracy in which the popular
subject is continuously reconstructed by representative claims that seek to mobilize it.
Thus, even though Michael Saward’s theorization was primarily received in the Anglo-
American world as breaking with the liberal conception of representation developed by
Pitkin, it does not entirely adopt the forms of the constructivist idea of a representative
monopolizing the power to institute the representative. As an alternative to representation
as composition and imposition, Saward develops a reading of representation as proposition,
in which a plurality of actors involved participate in the success or failure of representative
claims – thus linking the sociology of tests, deconstructionist feminism, and certain forms
of heterodox Marxism, approaches that share a certain sense of representation as proposition.
It is in this regard, more than in terms of a supposed break with other conceptualizations
of representation, that the “representative claims” approach proves interesting, both from a
theoretical standpoint and as a way of enriching the empirical analysis of representation.
The empirical study of representative claims

hile Michael Saward’s work has been amply discussed on the theoretical level,2
W attempts to apply it empirically are still relatively uncommon3 and tend to simply
apply Saward’s concept instead of discussing it critically. The goal, then, of this
special issue is not only to illustrate the notion of representative claim or, in our terms, of
representation as proposition. Indeed, the power of this model is that it makes possible to
unify the analysis of representation by proposing a common framework to examine phe-
nomena at three levels which are usually kept separate: the representative electoral system,
interest groups, and social movements.4 Thus, in spite of the diversity of methods (from
ethnography to historical sociology), purposes, and scales, the articles collected in this special
issue are united in their attention to the processes, by nature unstable and incomplete, that
1. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics
(London: Verso, 2001).
2. See, among others, Eline Severs, “Representation as claims-making: quid responsiveness?”, Representation,
46(4), 2010, 411-23; Eline Severs, “Substantive representation through a claims-making lens: a strategy for the
identification and analysis of substantive claims”, Representation, 48(2), 2012, 169-81; Thomas Decreus, “Beyond
representation? A critique of the concept of the referent”, Representation, 49(1), 2013, 33-43; Pieter de Wilde,
“Representative claims analysis: theory meets method”, Journal of European Public Policy, 20(2), 2013, 278-94;
Karen Celis, Sarah Childs, Johanna Kantola, and Mona Lena Krook, “Constituting women's interests through
representative claims”, Politics & Gender, 10(2), 2014, 149-74.
3. See, for example, Sophie Stoffel, “Rethinking political representation: the case of institutionalised feminist
organisations in Chile”, Representation, 44(2), 2008, 141-54; Sarah Childs, Paul Webb, and Sally Marthaler,
“Constituting and substantively representing women: applying new approaches to a UK case study”, Politics &
Gender, 6(2), 2010, 199-223; Christopher Lord and Johannes Pollak, “The EU's many representative modes:
colliding? cohering?”, Journal of European Public Policy, 17(1), 2010, 117-36; Pieter de Wilde, “The plural repre-
sentative space: how mass media and national parliaments stimulate pluralism through competition”, in Sandra
Kröger and Dawid Friedrich (eds), The Challenge of Democratic Representation in the European Union (Basing-
stoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 117-34.
4. Note that bringing together forms of representation in this way is increasingly common in the literature; see,
for example, Alice Mazeaud, Pratiques de la représentation politique (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes,
2014). However, it is often simply a matter of juxtaposing studies on phenomena seen to be of a different order,
without seeking to group them within a common framework.
constitute the proposal of representation. These case studies, along with the work done on
mobilizations and interest groups in the wake of Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology, there-
fore make it possible to discuss, develop, and at times correct the theoretical framework
proposed by Michael Saward.
Representation as performance
The question of the representative’s activities is at the core of substantive representation as
defined by Pitkin, according to whom representing means above all acting in the interests
of those who are represented. However, various studies on the profession or role of elected
officials have revealed practices that allow these officials to “perform” their role as repre-
sentative, practices that cannot be reduced to actions in the interest of the represented.1 In
this regard, there is an entire series of activities that the traditional approach to representation
as composition is unable to grasp, even when there is a focus on elected officials. At first
glance, the constructivist approach to representation may also seem inadequate, in that it
seems to emphasize the discursive and symbolic aspect of the work of representation. How-
ever, representative claims are much more than simply discursive; they involve a range of
practices, as clearly shown in the articles in this special issue by Julien Talpin concerning
community organizing in Los Angeles, and by Marie-Hélène Sa Vilas Boas on women’s
municipal conferences in Recife. This is particularly clear in the distinction Saward makes
between the author of the representative claim and its subject, that is, the representative.
Schematically, while the former “declares” the representation, it often falls to the latter to
“perform” it. Obviously, the author and subject are not always clearly defined and separate
entities, but the distinction is nonetheless useful at the analytical and empirical levels. The
activity of the subject of representation can then be viewed as a performance, that is, a
“stylized repetition of acts”,2 which is thus never fully established or complete. From this
perspective, the idea of “representation tests” proposed by Julien Talpin in this special issue
provides a way of understanding the need of actors to constantly reiterate and validate their
representation proposals, by implementing a series of activities and discourses intended to
demonstrate their representativity.
It is impossible to draw up an exhaustive list of the activities that constitute a representative
claim. Indeed, representation is a process indexed to a specific context and cannot be reduced
to a series of pre-defined activities. However, the articles included in this special issue, as
well as the existing literature on interest groups or social movements, show that there are
tests of representation that recur from one context to the next. In particular, it seems that
when representation does not depend on election, it is essential that representatives pass the
“test of numbers”, that is, that they visibly assemble those whom they represent. This is seen
in collective mobilizations, in which it is a matter both of attesting to the existence of the
group (we will return to this aspect) and its grouping behind its representative who can then
legitimately speak for those who are represented. Thus, studies done on the mobilizations
1. Jean-Louis Briquet, “Communiquer en actes: prescriptions de rôle et exercice quotidien du métier politique”,
Politix, 28, 1994, 16-26; Jacques Lagroye, “Être du métier”, Politix, 28, 1994, 5-15; Donald Searing, Westminster's
World: Understanding Political Roles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
2. On the subject of gender performativity, Judith Butler writes: “[G]ender is an identity tenuously constituted
in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced
through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily
gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.” Judith
Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (New York: Routledge, 1999), 179.
of those who are in some way deprived (for example, the unemployed or the inadequately
housed) have shown how important it is for the various collectives to have the people they
say they are defending participate in the various protests, such that their presence affects the
aid that the collectives are prepared to provide to them.1 In this issue, the test of numbers
is closely analyzed in the articles by Marie-Hélène Sa Vilas Boas and Julien Talpin. Whether
in the context of women’s conferences in Recife or community organizing in Los Angeles,
a good representative is someone who can get a maximum number of people to participate
in events. In this regard, the test of numbers sometimes seems to resemble elections, for
example, when community organizing leaders are evaluated according to the “applause
meter”. Thus, even though community organizing and women’s conferences are not part of
the electoral system, and collectives of the unemployed or the inadequately housed, such as
the AC [the French “Act together against unemployment” association] or the DAL [the
French “Right to housing” association] explicitly reject this model, the aggregation of indi-
viduals remains at the heart of their representation work. Paradoxically, this question seems
less crucial when representatives are more formally tied to the institutional representative
system. Thus, in her article on the International Labor Organization (ILO), Marieke Louis
emphasizes that while the number of members and votes in national union elections matter
in designating worker representatives to the ILO, this criterion of numbers can be completely
trumped by other elements of representativity. Similarly, when it is a matter of determining
the methods of designating women representatives in the legislative assemblies of colonial
India, the subject of Virginie Dutoya’s article in this issue, elections are not always viewed
as the most appropriate procedure.
However, the test of numbers is not merely a substitute for voting. As Marie-Hélène Sa Vilas
Boas shows, it can also be seen as a way for female representatives to provide proof of their
social anchoring in the group they claim to represent. Indeed, belonging to the group rep-
resented is an essential element for representatives, whether it involves regional anchoring,
for example, for a local elected official,2 or belonging to a social group. It is of course possible
to affirm that a representative belongs to the group, but this belonging must also be per-
formed. Thus, in her article, Virginie Dutoya indicates that Pakistani or Indian elected offi-
cials (or female activists for women’s rights) are often reproached for being unrepresentative
of “real Indian women” or “real Pakistani women”, with their class habitus (materialized
especially in their self-presentation, language, etc.) then being put forward as proof of their
lack of representativity. In the case of community organizing, Julien Talpin shows that organ-
izations are not only seeking leaders who have “good” traits, but that they are also aware of
the performance of these representatives: their habitus, their style of dress, and the emotions
they express and evoke. In this regard, the representative is not limited to embodying the
socio-demographic traits of the group, but must also embody its aspirations and emotions.3
Furthermore, Marie-Hélène Sa Vilas Boas points to a tension that exists for women’s delegates
1. This is most notably brought out by Cécile Péchu, who studies the case of a collective for the inadequately
housed, which gives priority to helping people who come to the demonstrations: Cécile Pechu, “Quand les ‘exclus’
passent à l'action: la mobilisation des mal-logés”, Politix, 34, 1996, 114-33. See also Sophie Maurer and Emmanuel
Pierru, “Le mouvement des chômeurs de l'hiver 1997-1998: retour sur un ‘miracle social’”, Revue française de
2. Anne-Cécile Douillet, “Les élus ruraux face à la territorialisation de l'action publique”, Revue française de
3. Amélie Blom and Nicolas Jaoul, “Introduction: the moral and affectual dimension of collective action in South
Asia”, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 2, 2008, online at <http://samaj.revues.org/1912>, last
accessed 24 January 2017.
between the principles of identification and distinction. Depending on the context, these
delegates will either present themselves as ordinary inhabitants of the neighborhood, or
showcase their own abilities, such as engaging local elected officials, speaking the language
of the administration, etc. This interplay between identification and distinction is also found
in more traditional spheres of identification, in which representatives tend to modify their
representative claims depending on the audience and representation contexts.1 Thus, studies
on the representation of farmers have shown how national leaders of the main agricultural
union have to adapt their representation work, so as to appear “as farmers among farmers”
or “spokespersons for a ‘profession of the future’ to other social milieux”, while at the same
time joining the ranks of top-level management.2
Finally, the goal of the representative’s performance is not only to establish his/her repre-
sentativity, but also to establish what Michael Saward calls the object of representation. Thus,
again with regard to agricultural representatives, Alexandre Hobeika analyzes the operation
of a departmental branch of the Fédération nationale des syndicats d’exploitants agricoles.3 He
shows how important it is for local leaders to avoid standing out during union meetings,
either by what they wear or their cultural practices; more generally, they need to perform a
certain local sociability. What is important for these local leaders is being accepted as legit-
imate representatives, and – in a context of strong divisions within the federation – of
creating consensus by reinforcing a farmer “group style” through their performance. In this
regard, a representative claim always has two sides: it is both about the representativity of
the subject of representation and the characteristics of the object of representation.
From instituted representation to instituting representation

As we have seen, Michael Saward partially coincides with Pierre Bourdieu in his constructivist
and instituting approach to representation, especially with the distinction he makes between
the object of representative claims and their referent. This distinction is rarely taken up in
Anglo-American studies on representative claims and yet is very heuristic, especially in the
perspective of works on the construction of social groups. For Saward, the object of a rep-
resentative claim is a symbolic construction that has a referent in the real world, but which
does not emanate directly from this referent, and for which the definition of relevant traits
constitutes one of the main challenges of the claim-making activity. In this regard, Saward’s
approach reflects Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the work of spokespersons, who participate
in instituting groups in whose name they speak by claiming to represent them. The work of
both men encourages close study of the actual construction processes of social groups. For
Saward, and more generally in approaches that consider representation as a proposition,
particular importance is given to the dialogic nature of the construction of social groups,
which involves numerous actors (not necessarily equally), and cannot be reduced to the
relationship of the representative with those whom s/he represents.
A distinction can be made, especially on the basis of the articles included in this special
issue, between three linked processes in the construction of objects of representation: the
1. Michael Saward, “Shape-shifting representation”, American Political Science Review, 108(4), 2014, 723-36.
2. Ivan Bruneau, “L'érosion d'un pouvoir de représentation: l'espace des expressions agricoles en France depuis
les années 1960”, Politix, 103, 2013, 9-29. See also the pioneering work of Sylvain Maresca, Les Dirigeants
Paysans (Paris: Minuit, 1983).
3. Alexandre Hobeika, “La collégialité à l'épreuve: la production de l'unité au sein de la FNSEA”, Politix, 103, 2013,
53-76.
affirmation of the existence of the object, the affirmation of its political legitimacy, and
finally the affirmation of its unity. In certain cases, the existence of the object of represen-
tation seems to be fairly obvious, especially because it has a stable referent in the real world.
This is, for example, the case of women who, in spite of studies showing the constructed
nature of sex and gender, are always considered as a self-evident and natural category by
the majority of political actors. As Virginie Dutoya demonstrates in her article, the existence
of “women” as a social group is not a subject of debate in India or Pakistan; rather, it is the
political legitimacy of the category as well as its unity that pose a problem. However, other
social groups have less clearly defined profiles: this is especially the case of the groups that
community organizing movements claim to represent, analyzed by Julien Talpin. The issue
also arises when it comes to representing those who are “without” (papers, employment,
housing), or those who are “excluded”.1 In this regard, Sophie Maurer and Emmanuel Pierru
have highlighted the importance for collectives attempting to mobilize the unemployed of
“imposing the representation – in both senses of the word – of what they say, that is, the
existence of the reference group as mobilized group”.2 However, as the two authors empha-
size, this construction is more than simply discursive and its “performative power assumes
at a minimum that it is connected to the ‘reality’ it states: actually mobilizing the unem-
ployed”.3 In the same way, Julien Talpin emphasizes in this issue that community organizing
can only be called representative of the “community” if it actually succeeds in assembling
this community through mass events which affirm its unity.
The task of unifying the object of representation is in fact crucially important. The social
groups presented in the articles of this special issue – women, workers, or the “community”
that community organizing organizations seek to mobilize – are far from homogeneous.
This special issue reveals two strategies for unification: one strategy involves the negation or
at least the political disqualification of divisions, and the other involves the group’s inter-
sectional representation. In her article on the ILO, Marieke Louis reveals the significant effort
expended by workers’ and employers’ representatives to present a united front and minimize
national divisions. In India, the question of the unity of women as a political category is at
the center of the debates over quotas for women, analyzed by Virginia Dutoya. In that
country, the legitimacy of women’s demands for just representation in the political sphere
is uncontested, but opponents of the quotas demand that this category be subdivided in
order to account for caste and religion. Nonetheless, the major governing parties and
women’s organizations argue for the indivisibility of women as a social group. By contrast,
Julien Talpin’s article provides an example of the construction of an object of intersectional
representation, in which community organizing organizations seek to represent unity while
also taking account of racial, social, and religious differences within the community they are
claiming to organize. This entails conscious institutional practices (paying attention to the
social and racial identity of employees, the choice of sites for events, the selection of leaders
who represent this diversity), as well as a discourse that seeks to showcase unity while also
recognizing situated perspectives.
1. Daniel Mouchard, “Les mobilisations des ‘sans’ dans la France contemporaine: l'émergence d'un ‘radicalisme
autolimité’?”, Revue française de science politique 52(4) 2002, 425-47, and Être représenté. Mobilisations
d'exclus dans la France des années 1990 (Paris: Economica, 2009).
2. Maurer and Pierru, “Le mouvement des chômeurs”, 374.
In light of this last example, it seems that an analysis that simply underscores the violence
of representation’s “symbolic takeover by force”1 would necessarily be limited. There is no
doubt that very often the work of representation involves the imposition of social and polit-
ical identities, which contributes to the fact that some persons are rendered invisible. Thus,
in the case of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual) politics in India, various authors
have denounced the imposition of categories modeled on European history. For them, it is
not only an issue of whether these categories are relevant in the Indian context, but also of
their impact on the attribution of international funding, most notably in the context of the
fight against HIV/AIDS.2 But at the same time, the debate has focused on the modalities of
representation of sexual practices and identities and the risks of a queer or LGBT politics;3
no one is fighting for a political invisibility strategy. As emphasized by Stuart Hall, access to
representation, no matter how imperfect, can be liberating for those who do not have it,
whether it is a matter of cultural or political representation.4 Thus, in the case of the unem-
ployed movement at the end of the 1990s, Sophie Maurer and Emmanuel Pierru show that
the work to construct the “unemployed” as a social group was primarily carried out by
activists who did not define themselves as unemployed, and sometimes were not unem-
ployed, and that those most concerned hardly identified themselves as such. And yet, the
movement had positive effects for the unemployed who participated, first in terms of objec-
tive rights obtained, and then in terms of its socializing and empowering aspects.5
Furthermore, as each article in this special issue points out, representation is a malleable
process, one that is never fully closed or the result of one person’s action. In her article,
Virginie Dutoya shows that while the state plays a leading role in the construction of women
as a political category, it does so most often together with feminist organizations. In this
regard, it could be said that the state proposes a political representation of women, which
is then negotiated and transformed by multiple actors. In the same way, Marieke Louis
reveals the transformations that the conception of representation has undergone at the ILO,
to answer the complaint made by different organizations decrying the fact that some workers
(those in the informal sector), and even some regions of the world, are being rendered
invisible. In political systems based on the notion of representation, being recognized as
“representative” grants access to resources, both material and symbolic. Furthermore, this
legitimizing function of representation does not end with the subjects of representation, but
also extends to the authors of representative claims, whose legitimacy is strengthened by
their capacity to arbitrate the representativity of individuals, organizations, and movements.
Representation, power, legitimation

One problem with the constructivist approach to representation as imposition or proposition
is the tendency to situate all claims to representation on the same level. Yet all claims do
1. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 213.

2. Paola Bacchetta, “Rescaling transnational ‘queerdom’: lesbian and ‘lesbian’ identitary-positionalities in Delhi
in the 1980s”, in Nivedita Menon (ed.), Sexualities (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2007), 103-27; Ashley Tellis,
“Disrupting the dinner table: re-thinking the ‘queer movement’ in contemporary India”, Jindal Global Law Review,
4(1), 2012, 142-56.
3. On this question, see Naisargi Dave, Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2012).
4. Stuart Hall, “The local and the global: globalization and ethnicity”, in Anthony D. King (ed.), Culture, Globali-
zation and the World-System (London: Macmillan, 1991), 19-40.
not get the same sort of recognition, whether that be from the groups that are said to be
represented, the media, or even political authorities that may validate or invalidate certain
demands. In this respect, while it is useful to understand representation in a decompart-
mentalized way, by accepting, for example, all representative claims made in the name of
women by feminist organizations, elected officials, political parties, or administrations,1 it is
worth noting that all claims do not have the same chance of being accepted and that it is
not possible to establish equivalencies between them. Indeed, representative claims are located
within a sphere of power and thus participate in the constitution, transformation, and con-
testation of power relations.
This is especially important in situations in which different actors say, or are told, that they
are representative of the same social group. While there may be moments of cooperation
between these actors, they are very often in competition, especially when representativity
conditions access to resources. Thus, the representation of workers is at the heart of major
national2 or international disputes, as Marieke Louis’s article in this issue demonstrates. The
notion of representative claims is then especially heuristic in order to understand the com-
petition between social actors for access to the system of representation. This struggle takes
place at different levels. Actors are in competition for the recognition of subjects of repre-
sentation (or even of referents), recognition that can be expressed as votes during union
representative elections, as a response to a call to demonstrate, or even as membership in
an association. Very often, however, claim makers also seek institutional recognition – to
the point sometimes that it supplants other requirements of representation such as numerical
weight, as Pierre Rosanvallon shows concerning French unions.3 Thus, when Yvan Bruneau
analyzes the erosion of the FNSEA’s power of representation, he focuses especially on the
acceptance of union pluralism by the public authorities (in this case, the ministry of agri-
culture).4 In the same way, in the articles by Viginie Dutoya and Marieke Louis, competition
for the recognition of the status of representative for women, workers, or employers occurs
essentially at an institutional level, since the “real” women, workers, and employers are only
very marginally involved. However, in these various examples, the institutional authorities
recognizing (or not) the representative claims made by a particular actor (a union of female
informal workers, a political party demanding quotas for women, etc.) are not outsiders to
the process that led to the constitution of those claims. Thus, by finally accepting the request
to join by the Self Employed Women’s Association, an Indian trade union, the ILO called
into question the claim of “traditional” unions to represent all workers. But at the same
time, it reinforced the institution’s overall legitimacy by affirming its ability to decide who
can be said to be representative of workers.
This situation allows us to understand again the distinction made by Michael Saward between
the authors and subjects of representative claims. Indeed, this distinction is essential, as in
the Bourdieusian perspective the focus is more on the “representative” (the subject of
1. Celis et al., “Constituting women's interests”. See also the study by Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal on the rep-
resentation of women in India and Nepal, which, without using the notion of “representative claim”, seeks to
understand the aesthetic, political, and social issues concerning the political representation of women in those
countries in a broad sense by underscoring the links between these various dimensions: Stéphanie Tawa Lama-
Rewal, Femmes et Politique en Inde et au Népal: Image et présence (Paris: Karthala, 2004).
2. Sophie Béroud, Jean-Pierre Le Crom, and Karel Yon, “Représentativités syndicales, représentativités patron-
ales: règles juridiques et pratiques sociales: introduction”, Travail et Emploi 131(3), 2013, 5-22.
3. Pierre Rosanvallon, La question syndicale: Histoire et avenir d'une forme sociale (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1987).
4. Bruneau, “L'érosion d'un pouvoir de représentation”.
representation according to Michael Saward), not recognizing that this is not always the one
who claims to be representative. The articles in this special issue analyze situations in which
it proves useful to distinguish between the authors and subjects of representation, those who
say there is representation, and those who are constructed as representatives. Indeed, whether
we are considering Pakistani and Indian deputies, community organizing leaders, or even
union delegates at the ILO, all participate in one (or several) representative claim(s) that
exceed(s) them. Behind community organizing leaders is the matter of the representativity
of their organization, behind a Pakistani deputy, there is the national representation of the
parliament, etc. For example, Virginie Dutoya shows that the requirement for the political
representation of women on the Indian subcontinent was generally led by colonial author-
ities. Prior to the appearance of a representative system, British authorities claimed to rep-
resent women. Then with the appearance of a representative system and women’s
organizations after World War I, they positioned themselves as guarantors of women’s rep-
resentation, and thus able to decide how women were to be represented – becoming no
longer subjects, but authors of women’s representation. It then became a matter of ensuring
the legitimacy of the colonial political system as the only system able to protect women (and
by extension the most vulnerable) and to include them in decision-making processes.
In this regard, to truly understand the “symbolic takeover by force” of representation, Bour-
dieu’s ventriloquist metaphor has to be more fully developed in order to focus on the one
who “says” representation rather than the one who performs it. However, this would min-
imize the contribution of an approach to representation as proposition, which invites us
instead to envision representation as a dialogic process. Indeed, the relationship between
community organizing leaders and their organizations reveals, as does the relationship
between unions and the ILO, that representative claims formulated in the name of the system
and its subparts are closely interwoven and recursive, and the roles of authors and subjects
are consistently interdependent, crossed, and even exchanged. Thus, in Julien Talpin’s article,
when a community organization appoints a leader, they say s/he is the “representative” of
the community or a specific group, but when s/he speaks in the name of that organization,
the leader says that the organization is representative of his/her community. In this regard,
while the leaders depend on the organization and can be replaced, they are not simply
puppets, and the members of the community, the “represented”, have real power in the
selection or marginalization process of the leaders, by not coming to meetings, by not
applauding, or by expressing their discontent. The notion of the representative claim thus
enables us to understand both the reality of the power relations and the disparity of power
between the actors, while still allowing for the possibility that dominated actors can intervene
in this process.
*
* *
It thus appears that the theoretical framework proposed by Michael Saward allows for an
analysis of the construction processes of political representation. This reveals the activity of
several different actors in these processes, well beyond the face-to-face analysis offered by
most approaches in terms of imposition or composition. By looking at representation as a
proposition, we are able to place at the center of the analysis the dialogue – often unequal,
conflictual, and limited – between representatives and represented, a dialogue which also,
and sometimes mostly, involves the makers of representative claims and various audiences.
The articles comprising this special issue, despite the diversity of the fields covered and the
methods used, all take seriously the idea that representative claims are at the heart of the
processes of constructing, negotiating, or invalidating relations of representation. This
encounter between an approach from Anglo-American political theory and empirical studies
for the most part stemming from Francophone political sociology proves, if proof were
necessary, the need for a theoretical, methodological, and geographical decompartmentali-
zation of political studies. Our hope is that the necessarily imperfect and incomplete nature
of this essay will make it that much more stimulating for future encounters.1
Virginie Dutoya and Samuel Hayat
Virginie Dutoya is a research fellow in political science at the CNRS at the Centre Émile Durkheim.
Her current research focuses on spaces for the women’s movement in India and Pakistan and political
representation from a comparative perspective. On the subject of women’s political representation in
South Asia, she recently published La représentation des femmes dans les Parlements de l’Inde et du
Pakistan (Paris: Dalloz, 2014) and “From women’s quota to ‘women’s politics’: the impact of gender
quotas on political representations and practices in the Pakistani National Parliament”, Politica Femina,
22(2), 2013, 17-34 (Centre Émile Durkheim, Sciences Po Bordeaux, 11 allée Ausone, 33607 Pessac
cedex, <virginiedutoya@gmail.com>).
Samuel Hayat is a CNRS research fellow at the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Administratives,
Politiques et Sociales (CERAPS). At the intersection of the social history of ideas, historical sociology,
and political theory, he works primarily on political representation and on nineteenth-century revolu-
tions and worker movements. He recently published Quand la république était révolutionnaire. Citoyen-
neté et représentation en 1848 (Paris: Seuil, 2014) (CERAPS, Université de Lille II, 1 place Déliot,
59024 Lille cedex, <samuel.hayat@univ-lille2.fr>).
1. This special issue was initiated by Virginie Dutoya and Samuel Hayat, as well as by Charles Girard, who greatly
contributed to its theoretical framing, and to whom we extend our sincere thanks. It resulted from a one-day
conference organized by Charles Girard and Samuel Hayat on 12 July 2013 at the Institut d'Études Politiques
in Paris, entitled “Expériences de porte-parole”. The field was then narrowed in order to prepare this special
issue. It also falls within the framework of studies done by the Association Française de Science Politique (AFSP)
project group on “La représentation politique: histoire, théories, mutations contemporaines” (GRePo), led by
Virginie Dutoya, Émilie Frenkiel, Samuel Hayat, Yves Sintomer, and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal, from 2012 to
2015. Finally, it is part of the launch in 2016 of a French-German project ANR-DFG, led on the French side by
Yves Sintomer and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal, and on the German side by Brigitte Geissel and Thomas
Heberer, entitled “(New) Political Representative Claims. A Global View (France, Germany, Brazil, China, India)”.

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MAKING REPRESENTATIVE CLAIMS THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF POLITICAL

Virginie Dutoya and Samuel Hayat

olitical representation, a key concept in the legitimation processes and discourses of

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A constructivist turn in political theory?

W diately striking characteristic of the conceptualization of representation proposed

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1. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation, 29.

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the way to forms of descriptive representation, group representation, or a politics of pres-

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rather through a proposition: in front of an audience, the claim-maker proposes to establish a

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“political-hegemonic articulations retroactively create the interests they claim to represent”,1

The empirical study of representative claims

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From instituted representation to instituting representation

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Representation, power, legitimation

1. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 213.

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Virginie Dutoya and Samuel Hayat

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