Winner of the Apostolos P. Stefanopoulos Book Prize
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Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation
Harvard University Press
July 9, 2024
Table of Contents
Book Overview
In Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation (Harvard University Press, 2024), I provide a novel systematic conceptual and normative theory of informal political representatives (IPRs), who speak or act for others despite having been neither elected nor selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure. IPRs are everywhere. Some are internationally recognized leaders of social movements. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., informally represented Black Montgomerians during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Black Americans generally throughout the civil rights movement. Me Too Movement leader Tarana Burke informally represents sexual assault, abuse, and harassment survivors. Greta Thunberg informally represents Generation Z or, as she has put it, “we who have to live with the consequences” of climate change. Others are just our neighbors and friends. But when they go to the city council meeting to give voice to our neighborhood’s shared interests, they become our representatives, too. Despite IPRs’ ubiquity and significance to our political lives, their role is conceptually puzzling, morally troubling, and markedly undertheorized. The central ethical challenge faced by informal political representation is this: IPRs can provide valuable political goods to those they represent. However, IPRs are neither institutionally nor procedurally constrained in the ways formal political representatives like legislators are. Moreover, IPRs are often the only political actors working to advance the interests of oppressed and marginalized groups, meaning these groups rely on their IPRs. As a result, relationships between represented groups and their IPRs can be inegalitarian and oppressive. How may IPRs permissibly undertake activities central to their roles without thereby wronging those they represent? This is the question that drives my book.
To answer this question, we first need to answer more basic questions about informal political representation: What is an IPR, and how does someone become one? In what senses do IPRs represent us? What kinds of power do IPRs have and how do they come to have those powers? In Part I, I tackle these foundational conceptual questions. I provide a general theory of informal political representation that both introduces different features of the phenomenon and explains how those features fit together. In Chapter 1, “Audience Conferral,” I provide a general analytical framework for understanding what IPRs are and how they come about. Informal political representation is a species of a more general phenomenon, informal representation. An individual or group emerges as an informal representative when and because they are treated by an audience as speaking or acting for another individual or group in a context—call this audience conferral. Characterizing the phenomenon of informal representation this way shows just how easy it is for a party to end up informally representing a group. While, in Chapter 1, I focus on how IPRs emerge, in Chapters 2 and 3, I turn my attention to their powers. In Chapter 2, “Conscription and the Power to Influence,” I consider the power that audiences have to conscript parties unwittingly or unwillingly into the position of IPR; the power that IPRs, whether voluntary or conscripted, have to influence audiences before which they speak or act; and pro tanto duties that arise from each of these powers. In Chapter 3, “Group Authorization,” drawing on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I examine how IPRs can be informally authorized by and thereby come to have discretionary and normative powers with respect to those they represent.
In Part II, building on the theoretical framework developed in the first half of the book, I examine several closely connected moral questions that arise for IPRs: In Chapter 4, “The Duties of Informal Political Representatives,” I narrow the scope of consideration to some of the most common, most important, and most precarious cases of informal political representation: the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups. The dangers of informal political representation, particularly to oppressed and marginalized groups that rely on it, are considerable. Skeptics caution that IPRs can imperil the represented by being unauthorized, unaccountable, inaccurate, elitist, homogenizing, overpowering, concessive, overcommitting, occlusive, inegalitarian, and oppressive. Such dangers lead many to conclude that the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups is morally irremediable. In response to these skeptical challenges, I argue that, to represent permissibly, IPRs of oppressed or marginalized groups must satisfy two sets of sometimes conflicting duties: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative’s actions advance the aims of the representation. In Chapter 5, “The Legitimate Complaints of the Represented,” I provide a schema for thinking about one of the most important features of the ongoing deliberative relationship between IPRs and those they represent: the represented’s legitimate complaints. In Chapter 6, “Descriptive and Nondescriptive Informal Political Representation,” I consider whether—and if so, why—IPRs must be descriptively similar to or members of the groups they represent. I approach this question in two ways. First, I examine a variety of historical and contemporary arguments that have been advanced in favor of representation by people who share characteristics, experiences, or backgrounds in common with those they represent (descriptive representation) and representation by people who are members of the group they represent (member representation). Second, approaching the question from a different angle, I consider whether there are ever compelling reasons to allow for or even to prefer IPRs who are neither descriptively similar to nor themselves members of the groups they represent (nondescriptive representatives). I argue that there are. In Chapter 7, “Expertise and Representative Deference,” I consider whether, when, and why IPRs ought to defer to those they represent concerning matters about which the IPRs are themselves expert.
Praise
“A very impressive achievement. Salkin has opened up exciting new territory for investigation and will have to be cited in all future work about informal political representation.”―Elizabeth Anderson
“When we seek justice, freedom, or equality, we rely on others to speak for us. This original study is about the benefits, dangers, and ethics of informal political representation. The combination of conceptual analysis with cross-disciplinary insight, and the ethical prescriptions it provides, makes it a must-read for political theorists as well as everyone represented by others and representing others.”―Derrick Darby
“A thorough and carefully crafted investigation of an original and intriguing topic. Salkin identifies a consequential yet undertheorized social role, the informal political representative, that is ripe for more philosophical attention, and she works out many of the central conceptual and normative questions that it raises. Her analysis deserves to be influential, and I expect that it will be.”―David Estlund
“Original and compelling. Speaking for Others is likely to have a profound impact in a range of theoretical, as well as real-world contexts. I strongly recommend it to philosophers, legal theorists, and political scientists.”―Michele Moody-Adams
“Wendy Salkin gets it. Informal political representation occurs every day in all of our lives but has never been dissected this carefully or understood this deeply. What are our obligations to those whom we informally represent? Can we have such obligations even when we do not even realize that we are representing others (we're 'unwitting') or have never asked to be a representative and do not want to be one (we're 'unwilling')? What are the obligations of the audiences that confer the status of informal political representative? Salkin’s brilliant analysis of these questions and their implications will guide our thinking about them for a long time.”―Jane Mansbridge
Reviews
Fabio Wolkenstein, "Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation, by Wendy Salkin" (Mind, 2025)
Interviews and Media Coverage
Stefanopoulous Philosophical Society Book Award Announcement, December 1, 2024
Elsa Kugelberg, "Vem representerar Greta Thunberg?," Dagens Nyheter, October 9, 2024
"Speaking for Others," New Books in Philosophy, podcast, September 1, 2024
"Philosopher Wendy Salkin tackles the ethics of speaking for others," Stanford Report, August 27, 2024
“Who Speaks for You?,” Philosophy Talk, radio show, July 21, 2024
“How Should We Think About Informal Political Representation?,” Ethics Untangled, podcast, July 15, 2024
Events
September 4, 2024
Temple University Department of Philosophy and Public Policy Lab
Discussant: Brian Hutler
September 6, 2024
American Political Science Association Annual Meeting
Philadelphia, PA
Author Meets Critics Panel
Panelists: Desmond Jagmohan, Jane Mansbridge, Eduardo J. Martinez
September 14, 2024
Clio's Books
Oakland, CA
Discussant: Adrian Daub
September 25, 2024
Green Apple Books
San Francisco, CA
Discussant: Hakeem Jefferson
Watch online here.
November 15, 2024
PPE Society Annual Meeting
New Orleans, LA
Author Meets Critics Panel
Panelists: Suzanne Dovi, Lidal Dror, Connor K. Kianpour (moderator)
November 21, 2024
Epistemology, Ethics & Politics of Diversity Seminar
University of Cincinnati Department of Philosophy
January 8, 2025
America Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting
New York, NY
Invited Book Symposium
Panelists: David Estlund, Anne Iavarone-Turcotte, Alexander Steers-McCrum (chair)
January 28, 2025
Colloquium
Department of Philosophy
Johns Hopkins University
February 7, 2025
Colloquium
Department of Philosophy
New York University
February 10, 2025
Colloquium
Department of Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh
February 18, 2025
Nuffield Workshop in Political Theory
Nuffield College, University of Oxford
February 20, 2025
LSE Political Philosophy Seminar
London School of Economics
March 10, 2025
Ethics in Your World
Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics
Harvard University
March 24, 2025
Stefanopoulos Book Prize Lecture
Marist University
March 27, 2025
Keynote Address
Participation, Informality, and Representation Workshop
Université de Montréal
April 29, 2025
The Ministers' Forum
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston
May 8, 2025
Colloquium
Department of Philosophy
UC Santa Cruz
May 24, 2025
Race, Politics, and Ethics Workshop
Arizona State University
September 2025
Faculty Lunch Workshop
Stanford Law School
- Introduction
- Audience Conferral
- Conscription and the Power to Influence
- Group Authorization
- The Duties of Informal Political Representatives
- The Legitimate Complaints of the Represented
- Descriptive and Nondescriptive Informal Political Representation
- Expertise and Representative Deference
- Conclusion
Book Overview
In Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation (Harvard University Press, 2024), I provide a novel systematic conceptual and normative theory of informal political representatives (IPRs), who speak or act for others despite having been neither elected nor selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure. IPRs are everywhere. Some are internationally recognized leaders of social movements. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., informally represented Black Montgomerians during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Black Americans generally throughout the civil rights movement. Me Too Movement leader Tarana Burke informally represents sexual assault, abuse, and harassment survivors. Greta Thunberg informally represents Generation Z or, as she has put it, “we who have to live with the consequences” of climate change. Others are just our neighbors and friends. But when they go to the city council meeting to give voice to our neighborhood’s shared interests, they become our representatives, too. Despite IPRs’ ubiquity and significance to our political lives, their role is conceptually puzzling, morally troubling, and markedly undertheorized. The central ethical challenge faced by informal political representation is this: IPRs can provide valuable political goods to those they represent. However, IPRs are neither institutionally nor procedurally constrained in the ways formal political representatives like legislators are. Moreover, IPRs are often the only political actors working to advance the interests of oppressed and marginalized groups, meaning these groups rely on their IPRs. As a result, relationships between represented groups and their IPRs can be inegalitarian and oppressive. How may IPRs permissibly undertake activities central to their roles without thereby wronging those they represent? This is the question that drives my book.
To answer this question, we first need to answer more basic questions about informal political representation: What is an IPR, and how does someone become one? In what senses do IPRs represent us? What kinds of power do IPRs have and how do they come to have those powers? In Part I, I tackle these foundational conceptual questions. I provide a general theory of informal political representation that both introduces different features of the phenomenon and explains how those features fit together. In Chapter 1, “Audience Conferral,” I provide a general analytical framework for understanding what IPRs are and how they come about. Informal political representation is a species of a more general phenomenon, informal representation. An individual or group emerges as an informal representative when and because they are treated by an audience as speaking or acting for another individual or group in a context—call this audience conferral. Characterizing the phenomenon of informal representation this way shows just how easy it is for a party to end up informally representing a group. While, in Chapter 1, I focus on how IPRs emerge, in Chapters 2 and 3, I turn my attention to their powers. In Chapter 2, “Conscription and the Power to Influence,” I consider the power that audiences have to conscript parties unwittingly or unwillingly into the position of IPR; the power that IPRs, whether voluntary or conscripted, have to influence audiences before which they speak or act; and pro tanto duties that arise from each of these powers. In Chapter 3, “Group Authorization,” drawing on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I examine how IPRs can be informally authorized by and thereby come to have discretionary and normative powers with respect to those they represent.
In Part II, building on the theoretical framework developed in the first half of the book, I examine several closely connected moral questions that arise for IPRs: In Chapter 4, “The Duties of Informal Political Representatives,” I narrow the scope of consideration to some of the most common, most important, and most precarious cases of informal political representation: the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups. The dangers of informal political representation, particularly to oppressed and marginalized groups that rely on it, are considerable. Skeptics caution that IPRs can imperil the represented by being unauthorized, unaccountable, inaccurate, elitist, homogenizing, overpowering, concessive, overcommitting, occlusive, inegalitarian, and oppressive. Such dangers lead many to conclude that the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups is morally irremediable. In response to these skeptical challenges, I argue that, to represent permissibly, IPRs of oppressed or marginalized groups must satisfy two sets of sometimes conflicting duties: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative’s actions advance the aims of the representation. In Chapter 5, “The Legitimate Complaints of the Represented,” I provide a schema for thinking about one of the most important features of the ongoing deliberative relationship between IPRs and those they represent: the represented’s legitimate complaints. In Chapter 6, “Descriptive and Nondescriptive Informal Political Representation,” I consider whether—and if so, why—IPRs must be descriptively similar to or members of the groups they represent. I approach this question in two ways. First, I examine a variety of historical and contemporary arguments that have been advanced in favor of representation by people who share characteristics, experiences, or backgrounds in common with those they represent (descriptive representation) and representation by people who are members of the group they represent (member representation). Second, approaching the question from a different angle, I consider whether there are ever compelling reasons to allow for or even to prefer IPRs who are neither descriptively similar to nor themselves members of the groups they represent (nondescriptive representatives). I argue that there are. In Chapter 7, “Expertise and Representative Deference,” I consider whether, when, and why IPRs ought to defer to those they represent concerning matters about which the IPRs are themselves expert.
Praise
“A very impressive achievement. Salkin has opened up exciting new territory for investigation and will have to be cited in all future work about informal political representation.”―Elizabeth Anderson
“When we seek justice, freedom, or equality, we rely on others to speak for us. This original study is about the benefits, dangers, and ethics of informal political representation. The combination of conceptual analysis with cross-disciplinary insight, and the ethical prescriptions it provides, makes it a must-read for political theorists as well as everyone represented by others and representing others.”―Derrick Darby
“A thorough and carefully crafted investigation of an original and intriguing topic. Salkin identifies a consequential yet undertheorized social role, the informal political representative, that is ripe for more philosophical attention, and she works out many of the central conceptual and normative questions that it raises. Her analysis deserves to be influential, and I expect that it will be.”―David Estlund
“Original and compelling. Speaking for Others is likely to have a profound impact in a range of theoretical, as well as real-world contexts. I strongly recommend it to philosophers, legal theorists, and political scientists.”―Michele Moody-Adams
“Wendy Salkin gets it. Informal political representation occurs every day in all of our lives but has never been dissected this carefully or understood this deeply. What are our obligations to those whom we informally represent? Can we have such obligations even when we do not even realize that we are representing others (we're 'unwitting') or have never asked to be a representative and do not want to be one (we're 'unwilling')? What are the obligations of the audiences that confer the status of informal political representative? Salkin’s brilliant analysis of these questions and their implications will guide our thinking about them for a long time.”―Jane Mansbridge
Reviews
Fabio Wolkenstein, "Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation, by Wendy Salkin" (Mind, 2025)
Interviews and Media Coverage
Stefanopoulous Philosophical Society Book Award Announcement, December 1, 2024
Elsa Kugelberg, "Vem representerar Greta Thunberg?," Dagens Nyheter, October 9, 2024
"Speaking for Others," New Books in Philosophy, podcast, September 1, 2024
"Philosopher Wendy Salkin tackles the ethics of speaking for others," Stanford Report, August 27, 2024
“Who Speaks for You?,” Philosophy Talk, radio show, July 21, 2024
“How Should We Think About Informal Political Representation?,” Ethics Untangled, podcast, July 15, 2024
Events
September 4, 2024
Temple University Department of Philosophy and Public Policy Lab
Discussant: Brian Hutler
September 6, 2024
American Political Science Association Annual Meeting
Philadelphia, PA
Author Meets Critics Panel
Panelists: Desmond Jagmohan, Jane Mansbridge, Eduardo J. Martinez
September 14, 2024
Clio's Books
Oakland, CA
Discussant: Adrian Daub
September 25, 2024
Green Apple Books
San Francisco, CA
Discussant: Hakeem Jefferson
Watch online here.
November 15, 2024
PPE Society Annual Meeting
New Orleans, LA
Author Meets Critics Panel
Panelists: Suzanne Dovi, Lidal Dror, Connor K. Kianpour (moderator)
November 21, 2024
Epistemology, Ethics & Politics of Diversity Seminar
University of Cincinnati Department of Philosophy
January 8, 2025
America Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting
New York, NY
Invited Book Symposium
Panelists: David Estlund, Anne Iavarone-Turcotte, Alexander Steers-McCrum (chair)
January 28, 2025
Colloquium
Department of Philosophy
Johns Hopkins University
February 7, 2025
Colloquium
Department of Philosophy
New York University
February 10, 2025
Colloquium
Department of Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh
February 18, 2025
Nuffield Workshop in Political Theory
Nuffield College, University of Oxford
February 20, 2025
LSE Political Philosophy Seminar
London School of Economics
March 10, 2025
Ethics in Your World
Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics
Harvard University
March 24, 2025
Stefanopoulos Book Prize Lecture
Marist University
March 27, 2025
Keynote Address
Participation, Informality, and Representation Workshop
Université de Montréal
April 29, 2025
The Ministers' Forum
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston
May 8, 2025
Colloquium
Department of Philosophy
UC Santa Cruz
May 24, 2025
Race, Politics, and Ethics Workshop
Arizona State University
September 2025
Faculty Lunch Workshop
Stanford Law School