«Evolving dilemmas: representative democracy in the »

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Guri Rosén1

Abstract

In European Union (EU) studies, there has been what some call a ‘representative turn’ (cf. Kröger and Friedrich 2013). The particularities of the EU as a multilevel polity have spawned studies aiming to conceptualise and evaluate representation. Other analyses have revolved around the role of Members of the (MEPs) and the extent to which their preferences and voting patterns are congruent with the EU electorate. Finally, there is work that seeks to appraise the responsiveness of EU parliamentarians, or the Union’s systemic responsiveness, by comparing public opinion to legislative output. The multilevel character of the EU presents distinct challenges to representation, however. We know for example that MEPs serve several principals, the party group they belong to at the EU-level, their national party (Hix 2002), their voters, perhaps even to the European integration project itself. What we know less about is how EU-parliamentarians adjudicate between these different commitments. Thus, the aim of this contribution is to analyse processes of representation within the EU, focusing on the interaction between the national and EU-levels. More specifically, it will gauge how MEPs’ representative roles are mediated by their national party, their EU-party group, their constituencies, as well as by their potential loyalty to the EU polity. It is argued that the European Parliament’s empowerment has made MEPs’ allegiances more unpredictable. As a result, representative practice becomes fragmented, putting further pressure on democracy both at the EU- and member state level.

1 Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet) and ARENA Centre for European Studies

1 Introduction The European Parliament is the directly elected parliament of the European Union (EU). Article 10 of Treaty on European Union states that “[t]he functioning of the Union shall be founded on representative democracy”. The European Parliament (EP) is an experiment in democracy and an experiment in representative politics. Is democracy at the EU level possible or desirable (Majone 2005, Føllesdal and Hix 2006, Moravcsik 2002), and what is the role of the EP in the multilevel configuration of representation in the EU (Crum and Fossum 2009, Mair and Thomassen 2010, Kröger and Friedrich 2013)? To the study of representation, the EP is also intriguing because it “offers a fascinating research site for the investigation of important issues in the study of political representation” (Farrell and Scully 2010: 36).

Much current research on representation within the EU has revolved around studying the role of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and their issue congruence with voters (e.g. Schmitt and Thomassen 1999, Arnold and Franklin 2012, Lefkofridi and Katsanidou 2014). While both groups of studies have provided ample evidence of the linkage between MEPs and EU citizens, they also provide a somewhat static image of the representative relationship between voters and MEPs. The study of representation in the context of the European Union is largely focused on elections, or what has been called the ‘product’, rather than the ‘process’ of representation (cf. Saward 2006). Rather than studying interaction between representatives and citizens, the primary goal has been to assess the results of elections by gauging the issue correspondence between MEPs and voters (de Wilde 2013: 282). Thus, the goal of this paper is to at the practice and process of representation. Rather than asking whether or how well MEPs are representing EU citizens – in some shape or form – the question is how they represent them.

In answering this question, the paper builds on what has been termed the ‘constructivist turn’ in the study of representation, where representatives are seen as active in creating preferences and trying to shape public opinion according to their own beliefs and positions (Mansbridge 2003, Pollak and Castiglione 2018, Urbinati and Warren 2008). This ‘turn’ has shifted the focus from a bottom-up portrayal of representation to top-down processes of communication (Disch 2011: 103), and the active “constitution of constituency” (Saward 2006: 299). A key concept in this

2 literature is the ‘representative claim’, which can be defined as actors make claims to represent particular interests, in an attempt to construct or shape the representative relationship (Saward 2006, 2010). The question is: Are Members of the European Parliament making representative claims, and whom do they claim to represent?

Following parts of the literature, one would not necessarily expect MEPs to be particularly active in attempting to shape the representative relationship with EU citizens. A prevalent view is that their link with voters is weak due to the way “EP elections (do not) work” (Hix et al. 2003: 194). Instead of responding to voter preferences, MEPs’ main principals are the national parties, who select the candidates in EP elections, and the supranational party groups, who control the internal affairs of the EP (Hix, 2002: 688).

To study whether and how MEPs make representative claims, this paper analyses the engagement of MEPs in the debate about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the United States. Recent trade negotiations in the EU have provoked unprecedented levels of controversy (Young 2019). TTIP became particularly divisive, and is now put on ice. TTIP became a difficult issue for the EP. Political groups were internally divided, contestation become unexpectedly high, and public pressure grew throughout the talks. As elected representatives, MEPs should pay heed to the concerns of their voters, but at the same time the majority of members in the EP wanted to see the talks succeed and has encouraged member states to make a better effort at selling it to their respective citizens (European Parliament 2015). TTIP provides a good example of how MEPs have to navigate their roles as representatives between different interests.

Trade policy also provides an interesting case to study EU-level representative behaviour, because it is an area where the EP has recently been empowered quite significantly (Rosén 2017). International trade is an issue where MEPs can claim ownership. Compared national parliamentarians, MEPs were in a favourable position both to monitor and impact the negotiations. Consequently, TTIP should be a good occasion for MEPs to demonstrate their importance. Lord (2018: 514) has claimed that what causes problems to the electoral link between MEPs and EU citizens is not one of institutional design, but of political community. This paper studies trade to see if an empowered policy area stimulates MEPs to attempt to establish that community,

3 through making representative claims. Applying this type of approach can be argued to be particularly important in party-centred systems because politicians also have to adhere to the party line (cf. Öhberg and Naurin 2016), and even more so in a multilevel polity such as the EU where MEPs have to adjudicate between their commitments to voters, national party as well as to their EP party group.

Approaching representation in an EU context In EU-studies, there has been what some call a ‘representative turn’ (cf. Kröger and Friedrich 2013). The particularities of the EU as a multilevel polity have spawned studies aiming to conceptualise and evaluate representation beyond the nation state. The EU representative infrastructure has been termed a ‘multilevel parliamentary field’, where two channels of parliamentary representation are interlinked across levels, both which can claim to represent ‘the people’ in EU decision-making (Crum and Fossum 2009: 249). Some argue that the EU’s division of party representation and party government holds democratic potential (Mair and Thomassen 2010), while others have called the EP a working parliament without a public (Lord 2018).

While the EP is directly elected since 1979, elections are widely held to be ‘second- order’ due to low turnout, campaigns being fought over national rather than European issues, and voters using the elections to punish the incumbent governments (Reif and Schmitt 1980, Schmitt 2005). This leads to the impression that EP-elections do not serve an apparent purpose (Franklin 2014). The ‘second-order’-hypothesis of European Parliament elections has dominated the literature on representation in the EU. With low turnout and national parties controlling the chances of re-election, Members of the European Parliament become less concerned with proving their worth to voters, and more with keeping their party colleagues reassured. Hix et al. (2007: 28) have argued that because MEPs lack the external motivation of re-election, “political behaviour in the European Parliament is primarily driven by considerations internal to the institution and the EU policy process”. The upshot is a lack of an electoral connection between the representatives in the EP and the electorate (Blondel, Sinnott and Svenson 1998, Eijk and Franklin 1996, Hix et al. 2007).

A weak(er) electoral connection between MEPs and EU citizens does not exhaust the description of the representative relationship between them. Elections are not the only reason why parliamentarians represent. At the basis of the selection model of political

4 representation is the assumption that representatives and voters share interests, and that the former therefore are “self-motivated agents” (Mansbridge 2009). In the words of Lord (2019: 519): “ The very fact that national parties continue to structure voter choice in European elections enables voters to choose MEPs one the basis of the known views of national parties”. One subset of the research on representation has concentrated on how well the representatives mirror their constituents. Thus, there is a large literature that looks at to what extent legislators match their electorate in terms of demographics (Young 2000, Bratton and Ray 2002), as well as more substantively by comparing opinion congruence (e.g. Mattila and Raunio 2006, Spoon and Klüver 2014). If voters and elected representatives are aligned, this is assumed to reflect the extent to which legislators can be expected to take heed of their voters’ concerns once in the parliamentary chamber.

At the centre of this debate is the question of how (and if) the EP can help remedy the Union’s democratic deficit and the challenges posed by the EU as a multilevel polity. To what extent do MEPs stand for – or act according to – the interests or preferences of the EU’s citizens (Føllesdal and Hix 2006). Using survey data, Schmitt and Thomassen (1999) showed that MEPs are more positive towards European integration, but that there is nevertheless a considerable overlap between their views and those held by their voters. In a subsequent article, they argued that it is divergence over specific policy areas that cause the discrepancy in opinion (Schmitt and Thomassen 2000). Later studies of issue congruence tend to echo these findings (cf. Arnold and Franklin 2012). Vasilopoulou and Gattermann (2013) found some variance in congruence between parties on socio-economic issues, while MEPs generally tend to be more liberal than their voters.

Other strands of the research on representation in the EU have focused on the role conception of MEPs; particularly to what extent MEPs see themselves as representatives of citizens beyond their own national voters (e.g. Katz and Wessels 1999, Scully et al. 2012).2 Both role conceptions and issue congruence do not tell us much about the process of representation. Congruence is a static measure that gauges

2 Interestingly, Kinski (2016) shows that also national MPs take wider constituencies in account when debating EU-matters.

5 correlation, while most research on role conception focuses on how MEPs’ unilateral perception of their own roles. It says little about how MEPs act. Focusing more on the dynamics of the relationship between MEPs and voters, there are studies that have appraised political responsiveness in the EU (e.g. Schmitt and Thomassen 2000, Hobolt and Klemmensen 2008, Hagemann et al. 2017), or its systemic responsiveness, by comparing public opinion to legislative output (e.g. Toshkov 2011, Bølstad 2015).

Although research on responsiveness has started to move beyond the electoral moment, it has been met with an extensive body of work arguing against a principal- agent depiction of representation (de Wilde 2019). A main proposition in this literature is that representatives are also active in creating preferences and trying to shape public opinion according to their own beliefs and positions (Mansbridge 2003, Saward 2006, Urbinati and Warren 2008). Accompanying this change in perspective from bottom-up to top-down processes is also a shift in focus “from the bedrock of autonomous preference to the communication process” (Disch 2011: 103). This means that rather than politicians acting on signals from the electorate, politicians will attempt to create their constituents in their own image. Accordingly, representation is better understood as a dynamic process, in which the representative and the represented views are dialectically shaped (Saward 2010). A main element to such a performative take on representation (Pollak and Castiglione 2018) is how actors make claims to represent particular interests, in an attempt to construct or shape the representative relationship (Saward 2006).

Only very few have started to engage with the ideas of the ‘constructivist turn’ in the context of the EU, at least empirically. Building on Saward’s account of representative claims, de Wilde (2013) has adapted the theory to empirical investigation (see also de Wilde et al. (2014)). A key component of representative claims analysis is that representative claims do not entail “claiming to stand for constituency X,” but in “claiming policy A, on behalf of constituency X.” (de Wilde 2019: PAGE). If anything, this approach underlines how representative claims- making is essentially about process. Using the representative claims-making approach, Kinski (2018) showed how representation became Europeanized in national parliamentary debates, where MPs were making claims in the name of European

6 citizens. In a later article, she introduces the notion ‘transnational representation’, to denote claims by national parliamentarians on behalf of citizens of other national constituencies (Kinski and Crum 2019: 2). Few have however used the approach to study the representative behaviour by Members of the European Parliament.

Thus, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the literature by exploring how MEPs attend to their roles as representatives. Establishing a pattern of on whose behalf parliamentarians make their claims will provide empirical evidence of how they attempt to shape the representative relationship. Are MEPs active in speaking on behalf of specific constituencies? If so, which constituencies take precedence – is it various groups – consumers, farmers, workers – or the public at large? Or is it rather the national party, the EU party group or even the EU as such?

Data and method The empirical material of the paper is drawn from the debates about the EU-US trade agreement, TTIP. This negotiation was met with unprecedented public attention, with levels of engagement and protest far exceeding that of previous trade talks (Young 2016). The paper explores statements by MEPs in the period from June 2013 when the negotiations were launched throughout December 2015. At this point there was considerable mobilisation against the agreement. The Stop TTIP-campaign launched a European citizens initiative to halt the talks, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Brussels, and the Commission’s consultation on the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism received more than hundred thousands submissions (de Ville and Siles-Brügge 2017). TTIP was not equally contested in all member states, however. While the clear majority of Austrian and Germans were vehemently against TTIP, others such as Ireland, Spain and Sweden were chiefly positive througout (Eurobarometer 81-83). Studies of media debates confirm this image showing how coverage varies considerably between countries (Rosén 2019). The analysis in this paper zooms in on two countries where TTIP was contested to different degrees. In Sweden, political parties had heated debates, but the public remained relatively unengaged. By contrast, TTIP in was highly salient with massive contestation and mobilisation among civil society organisations (Gheyle 2019, Rosén 2019).

7 Politicisation no doubt provides an incentive for politicians to engage in public debate. If an issue becomes important in public debate – if it engages mass politics (Hooghe and Marks 2009) – the cost of ignoring the ‘voice of the people’ increases. Or to put it another way, politicization entails “the demand that reflection takes place” (de Wilde and Zürn 2012: 140). In a recent study, de Bruycker (2017) demonstrated how salient issues generate more statements referring to public interest among EU elites. Moreover, in a study of TTIP specifically, Rosén (2019) showed that MEPs became more engaged as the levels of contestation grew. The question remains, however, whether the MEPs’ engagement encompasses representative claims, and if so, who they claim to represent.

The source of data in this paper is newspaper articles reporting on TTIP and plenary debates in the European Parliament. To the average citizen, media is the key access point for information about decision-making processes and positions of political actors, including challenges to decisions (Statham and Trenz 2015: 291-292). In each of the countries, two quality newspapers were chosen: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany, Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet in Sweden. Quality newspapers have a greater likelihood of featuring EU-actors in their coverage (de Vreese et al. 2006). Furthermore, the newspapers are chosen to represent both sides of -right spectrum. The media sample includes all articles mentioning TTIP from June 2013 to December 2015.3 At the same time, because MEPs are not free to determine their response through the media, plenary debates about TTIP are used to access ‘un-filtered’ statements. The EP passed two resolutions on TTIP, one in May 2013, just before the launch of the talks between the EU and the US, and one in July 2015, after 9 rounds of negotiations had taken place. Thus, plenary data is gathered from two occasions when the EP debated TTIP, focusing on interventions by MEPs from Germany and Sweden (including explanations for votes).4

3 Search words for Sweden were transatlantisk*, handelsavtal* and TTIP, for Germany TTIP and Freihandelsabkommen, and for the UK: TTIP, transatlantic trade, EU AND trade. 4 The plenary debates can be accessed here (2013): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=PV&reference=20130522&sec ondRef=ITEM-017&language=EN&ring=B7-2013-0187 and here (2015): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=PV&reference=20150707&sec ondRef=ITEM-004&language=EN&ring=A8-2015-0175.

8 Statements by MEPs in newspapers and plenary debates are analysed using representative claims-making methodology. The analytical unit of the study is actors’ claims. Claims-making methodology is a form of content analysis, where 'claims' mean actor statements that express for instance a political demand, criticism, proposals or calls to action (Statham and Koopmans 2009: 437). Different variables can then be assigned to each claim: Who is making the claim, when and where it is made and what the content of the claim is (ibid.). Because the claims-making approach can capture both instances of communicative responsiveness and representative claims, this methodology is particularly fitting to the purpose of this project. Claims made on behalf of someone, qualify as ’representative claims’ (de Wilde, 2013). Examples of the latter is is when Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Cecilia Wikström (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group), in defending her vote for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), makes a promise to “the thousands of citizens of Sweden” who have contacted her that “the norms and values we safeguard in the EU should in no way be sacrificed or lowered through TTIP” (EP-plenary, 2015).

How do MEPs represent? As described above, the attention to TTIP in Germany and Sweden was rather dissimilar. The table below shows the number of newspaper articles published in the two countries from June 2013 to December 2015.

9 In Germany there is a clear pattern of increasing attention to TTIP. In Germany, the TTIP-debate throughout 2013 was almost completely dominated by the spying scandal. After documents released by Edward Snowden revealed that the Americans had been tapping into Angela Merkel’s phone, a lot of actors demanded that the TTIP- negotiations had to be stopped. Then from mid-2014 onwards there is a sharp increase in the number of articles. This coincides with the elections for the European Parliament in the end of May, where the possibility of a free trade agreement between the EU and the US became a hot topic. After that, the overall reporting on TTIP in Germany remains on a high level although with a slight downward in 2015 (Rosén 2019).

In Sweden, the overall impression based on the coverage over time, is that the Swedish debate reflect a rather low level of politicization. Over time, the one spike in coverage is around the EP- and general elections in May and September 2014 where TTIP became a contested topic among Swedish parties. Thus, despite low levels of politicization, the news reporting is not dominated by surrogate-reporting, as was for instance the case for the debate about the EU constitution (Trenz et al. 2009). The media debate in Sweden largely reflects national considerations regarding TTIP, rather than observing for instance the German debate. Over half of the non-executive actors in Swedish media debates are MEPs, MPs or other representatives of political parties. 5 Although the share of MEPs in the total sample of media debates is moderate with around 11% of the claims made by MEPs, they do feature regularly in the newspaper coverage. Several of the claims made by Swedish MEPs stem from op-eds. A string of contributions by MEPs discussed back and forth the transparency of the negotiations as well as controversial issues such as the investor state dispute settlement mechanism.

In Sweden, the percentage of the total number of claims is higher than in Germany with around 20% compared to around 8% (Rosén 2019). The total number of claims made by MEPs in Germany is higher, which is not surprising, given the amount of coverage. At the same time, while the number of claims by MEPs in Sweden drop immediately after the EP has gone forward with its vote in July 2015, German MEPs

5 By comparison, national governments – whilst clearly pro-TTIP – were not very active, but Trade Commissioner Malmström was highly visible in the Swedish debate from the time her candidacy was announced at the end of the summer of 2014.

10 remain active throughout the period under study. The autumn of 2015 was a period where the German public was mobilising strongly against TTIP, with a lot of demonstrations and community meetings taking place. Whereas they may not have led the politicization of TTIP, German MEPs might be waking up to the fact that they need to somehow respond to the massive resistance towards the agreement in Germany (Rosén 2019).

The visibility of MEPs does not say much about how they act as representatives. Turning then to the question of whether they also make representative claims, in the media sample, there were 230 claims made by MEPs, 61 in Sweden and 169 in Germany. Starting with Sweden, few of the claims made are representative in the sense that they are made on behalf of specific groups, be they territorial or functional. Out of the 61 claims, 8 are coded as being representative. Some refer to how civil society and (Swedish) citizens will be affected by TTIP or have trouble overseeing the negotiations. In an op-ed together with colleagues from the Swedish national parliament MEP Malin Björk (GUE-NGL) writes: “The Left party demands that the EU Commission and the government take seriously the legitimate concerns of the critics of the TTIP agreement“.6 Some also speak on behalf of Sweden qua polity: “I am genuinely concerned for Sweden as Europe’s free trade-friendly nation” (MEP Christofer Fjellner (Moderates), criticising the position of the new government).7

Almost immediately after the launch of the negotiations in June 2013, the news about the US spying on Germany broke, and several German MEPs replied by demanding a freeze the TTIP-negotiations. This demand dominates almost all claims made by MEPs in the German sample from 2013 as well as the first half of 2014. From then on, MEPs focus more on the negotiations and content of the EU/US-deal. The German sample is similar to the Swedish in that most claims are not made – explicitly – on someone’s behalf. The Green party criticises the ISDS-mechanism out of fear that it will reduce the government’s opportunities to protect citizens (and the environment).8 MEP from the CDU asked opponents of TTIP not to link the NSA-scandal to the negotiations, since the talks are in the “strategic interest

6 REF 7 REF 8 MEP Martin Häusling (Greens), Süddeutsche Zeitung, 18/05/2014.

11 of all Europeans”.9 MEP (S&D), is content that “the new EU- Commission has recognised the signs of the times” and is prepared “to act in the interests of European citizens and citizens”.10 Thus, there are several examples of representative claims made on behalf of citizens especially – national and European, as well as more specific groups such as consumers and companies, but these are far from the majority.

The amount and type of claims found in the media sample raise some issues that are worth discussing in more detail. It may be that representative claims become victim to the media logic where claims made on the behalf of this group or the other is not considered newsworthy (O’Neill and Harcup 2009). During plenary debates MEPs are able to shape their own message in full. In the 2013 parliamentary debate, there were a total of 12 interventions made by Swedish (2) and German (10) MEPs (44 during the entire debate). In 2015, there were 20 interventions by Swedish (4) and German (16) MEPs (110 during the entire debate). In 2013, MEP Bernd Lange from (SPD) explains his group’s support for TTIP on economic grounds, while indicating some apprehension about the negotiation partner’s standards. TTIP-supporter ’s (EPP) interventions clearly reflect that he does not see a great need to engage with voters’ concerns. Instead he argues that most Germans trust politicians to manage trade politics, and that “a large part of the citizens in Europe just do not want to deal with such topics”. Only the opponents to TTIP are clear on whose behalf they are taking a stands (Rosén 2019). The intervention by MEP Scholz (GUE-NGL), for example, explicitly refers to specific “worries of the people”, and that his party group assesses every agreement according to the interest of the people”.

Two years later, the situation is different. The opponents of TTIP are not the only ones taking contingent positions (Rosén 2019). (EPP) declares: “no lowering of standards!”, while his colleague, promises to make it clear to the Americans “what cannot be done with us Europeans”. Joachim Schuster (S&D), for example, state that they have succeeded in picking up many of the issues that have been discussed in the public, and translated them into conditions to the Commission. MEP Cecilia Wikström (ALDE), in defending her vote for TTIP, makes

9 FAZ, XX/07/2013. 10 “EU beugt sich Druck der Freihandelsgegner”, FAZ, 29/09/2014.

12 a promise to “the thousands of citizens of Sweden” who have contacted her that “the norms and values we safeguard in the EU should in no way be sacrificed or lowered through TTIP” nor will [p]roducts that do not meet EU high standards” be approved in the European market.

Relative to the number of interventions, MEPs make more representative claims in the plenary debates, particularly in 2015. Although numbers are very small, this pattern is also visible in the media sample. In the plenary, there is a tendency for parliamentarians to become more specific on their conditions for support of the deal (Rosén 2019), the same can be found in the media debates. In addition, there are more representative claims. Based on the data in this paper, it is hard to discern whether it is the forum or the changing salience that has the bigger impact. In a large study of representative claims, de Wilde (2019) found no significant difference between the presence of representative claims in media versus plenary debates. Furthermore, Swedish MEPs wrote several op-eds on TTIP, allowing them to choose how to approach readers.

First, it raises the question whether parliamentarians and politicians tend not to be explicit about the groups that they speak on behalf of. Or it could be a feature particular to MEPs. As described above, it is common to assume that the electoral linkage between MEPs and EU citizens is weak, and that MEPs are more oriented towards their national party and EP party group. One way to measure this is to see how often MEPs refer to their own party (group). If the party (group) is an object, it qualifies as a representative claim (de Wilde et al. 2014), while claims where the party (group) is a subject does not. Still, representative claims-making involves actors speaking for others as well as for themselves (Saward 2018: 278). The latter entails claims containing references to the party, e.g. “the CDU/EPP believes…”, or we/us.11 For example, when MEP Bernd Lange (S&D), states: “We do not want private arbitration courts”, at a press conference following the vote on the TTIP-negotiations in the European Parliament.12 The media samples show that both Swedish and German MEPs make more claims on behalf of their parties – in “we”-form – than

11 Vi/oss (S), wir/uns (D). 12 “EU-Parlament verschiebt nach Tumult Debatte über TTIP-Abkommen”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10/06/2015.

13 they do on behalf of an explicit constituency. In the case of TTIP, MEPs were more visible in national media than were MPs (Rosén 2019). Still, it is not unexpected that they first and foremost make claims on behalf of their own party. TTIP was a contested issue, and claims are is a form of activity that is directed at other actors, explicitly or implicitly. In Sweden, for example, the debate about TTIP was characterised by marked party competition throughout the time period.

Is it surprising that there are not more representative claims overall? Based on the data in this paper, representative claims make up only a small fraction of the total number of claims made by MEPs. From previous studies, we know that politicians (and non-elected) make a lot of representative claims (de Wilde 2019: 16). Still, we know less about how often they make representative claims– compared to non- representative claims. The question is whether representative claims is something that politicians use on certain occasions and not others. Based on the data in this paper, it is difficult test this. However, it ties in with another issue, notably the extent to which representative claims overlap with responsiveness.

Key to the identification of representative claims is that the claim should be made explicitly on behalf of a group. Not a “non-human purpose”, but a human person – a group, an actor or a constituency (de Wilde et al. 2014: 36, Gora and de Wilde 2019: 27). Interestingly, this is how other studies have conceptualised responsiveness. Referring to public interests has also been described as a form of ‘rhetorical responsiveness’ (cf. Hobolt and Klemmensen 2008): by openly appealing to public interests, elites can signal to citizens whether their interests are being considered, alleviating or stimulating public pressures” (de Bruycker 2017: 604). This means that evoking public opinion encompasses both a responsive element and making a claim to represent. But is this necessarily the case?

This illustrates possible tension between two key literatures on representation. It is commonly argued that representatives are supposed to act “in the interest of the represented [and] in a manner responsive to them” (Pitkin 1967: 209). Much research on representation then focuses on the topic of policy responsiveness (for an overview, see Soroka and Wlezien 2010). The work ascribed to the ‘constructivist turn’ has begun questioning this somewhat unilateral depiction of the representative

14 relationship where politicians respond to popular demand. However, contributions to the constructivist turn are more vague about the role of responsiveness in the context of representative claims. On the one hand, it is argued that if representative claims aim to be democratic they should be responsive (Mansbridge 2018). On the other, this account of the relationship is inconsistent with a conception of representation that is disentagled from democracy (Rehfeld 2005), which is at the core of the constructivist turn. Saward for instance (2010: 298) argues that representation should be understood as a process, shifting the focus from the product of representation – democratic or not – to what takes place between actors who claim to be acting on behalf of someone else: “We need to move away from the idea that representation is first and foremost a given, factual product of elections, rather than a precarious and curious sort of claim about a dynamic relationship”. To retain the separation of democratic representation and the act of representing, an alternative account of the relationship between responsive statements and representative claims is required. Warren (2018: 42) claims that the “representative constitution of the interests of the represented are not arbitrary; they are moulded within discursive relationships and justified by arguments to the represented”. What this means in empirical terms is not spelled out, nor is it entirely clear what theoretical expectations we can deduct from this description of the relationship between bottom-up and top-down processes.

One could argue that representative claims need not be responsive. In other words, politicians might sometimes address the concerns of their constituents and at other times, they might not, even when evoking public opinion. Whether they choose the former or latter does not preclude them from claiming that they speak on behalf of someone’s interests. We lack of theoretical specification of precisely how responsiveness and representative claims coincide.

TBC

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