“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 |
Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation
Publication Date: July 9, 2024 from Harvard University Press.
In the book, I provide a 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. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., informally represented Black Americans 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 a theory of informal political representation, which I provide in Part One:
In Chapter One, “Audience Conferral,” I provide a general analytical framework for understanding how IPRs come about: a party emerges as an IPR when and because they are treated by an audience to speak or act for another party in a context (audience conferral).
In Chapter Two, “Conscription and the Power to Influence,” I consider the power IPRs have to influence audiences before whom they speak or act and pro tanto duties that arise from this power.
In Chapter Three, “Group Authorization,” drawing on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I examine how IPRs are informally authorized by and thereby come to have discretionary and normative powers with respect to those they represent.
In Part Two, I examine several connected moral questions that arise for IPRs:
In Chapter Four, “The Duties of Informal Political Representatives,” I examine skeptical arguments against the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups. Skeptics caution that IPRs can imperil the represented by being unauthorized, unaccountable, inaccurate, elitist, homogenizing, overpowering, concessive, overcommitting, occlusive, inegalitarian, and oppressive. Many conclude that the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups is morally irremediable. 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 Five, “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 Six, “Descriptive and Nondescriptive Informal Political Representation,” I examine historical and contemporary arguments for (i) representation by people who share characteristics, experiences, or backgrounds in common with those they represent and (ii) representation by people who are members of the group they represent. I then consider whether there are ever compelling reasons to permit or prefer IPRs who are neither descriptively similar to nor themselves members of the represented group. I argue that there are.
In Chapter Seven, “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.
In the book, I provide a 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. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., informally represented Black Americans 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 a theory of informal political representation, which I provide in Part One:
In Chapter One, “Audience Conferral,” I provide a general analytical framework for understanding how IPRs come about: a party emerges as an IPR when and because they are treated by an audience to speak or act for another party in a context (audience conferral).
In Chapter Two, “Conscription and the Power to Influence,” I consider the power IPRs have to influence audiences before whom they speak or act and pro tanto duties that arise from this power.
In Chapter Three, “Group Authorization,” drawing on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I examine how IPRs are informally authorized by and thereby come to have discretionary and normative powers with respect to those they represent.
In Part Two, I examine several connected moral questions that arise for IPRs:
In Chapter Four, “The Duties of Informal Political Representatives,” I examine skeptical arguments against the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups. Skeptics caution that IPRs can imperil the represented by being unauthorized, unaccountable, inaccurate, elitist, homogenizing, overpowering, concessive, overcommitting, occlusive, inegalitarian, and oppressive. Many conclude that the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups is morally irremediable. 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 Five, “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 Six, “Descriptive and Nondescriptive Informal Political Representation,” I examine historical and contemporary arguments for (i) representation by people who share characteristics, experiences, or backgrounds in common with those they represent and (ii) representation by people who are members of the group they represent. I then consider whether there are ever compelling reasons to permit or prefer IPRs who are neither descriptively similar to nor themselves members of the represented group. I argue that there are.
In Chapter Seven, “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.