Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2021 Political representation in liquid democracy Valsangiacomo, Chiara Abstract: This article provides an in-depth survey of political representation in Liquid Democracy (LD). More precisely, it refutes two potential criticisms: 1) LD impoverishes the concept of political representa- tion relative to existing representative democracies; 2) LD undermines the centrality of political parties. In answer to (1), the article shows that LD is compatible with a selection model of representation, in which proxies are characterized as gyroscopic representatives, driven by intrinsic motivation and indif- ferent to sanctions. This claim has far-reaching normative implications for the mandate-independence tradeoff, anti-elitism, and deliberation under LD. With regard to (2), the article examines thefunction of parties, arguing that, although it puts parties and interest groups on a level playing field, LD does not threaten partisanship, but rather expands the range of potential carriers of partisanship. In addressing these objections, this article demonstrates the democratic credentials of LD, showing that LD is compat- ible with a high-quality, democratic understanding of representation, which is surrounded by a cluster of thick concepts like commitment, intrinsic motivation, alignment of objectives, sympathy, trust, and dialogue. This turns LD into a powerful instrument for the refurbishment of representation both as a unique mode of political participation and as a practice of self-government. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.591853 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-202298 Journal Article Published Version The following work is licensed under a Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. Originally published at: Valsangiacomo, Chiara (2021). Political representation in liquid democracy. Frontiers in Political Science, 3:591853. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.591853 ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 25 March 2021 doi: 10.3389/fpos.2021.591853 Political Representation in Liquid Democracy Chiara Valsangiacomo 1,2,3* 1University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland, 2Institute of Political Science, Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland, 3Chair of Political Philosophy, Zürich, Switzerland This article provides an in-depth survey of political representation in Liquid Democracy (LD). More precisely, it refutes two potential criticisms: 1) LD impoverishes the concept of political representation relative to existing representative democracies; 2) LD undermines the centrality of political parties. In answer to (1), the article shows that LD is compatible with a selection model of representation, in which proxies are characterized as gyroscopic representatives, driven by intrinsic motivation and indifferent to sanctions. This claim has far- reaching normative implications for the mandate-independence tradeoff, anti-elitism, and deliberation under LD. With regard to (2), the article examines the function of parties, arguing that, although it puts parties and interest groups on a level playing field, LD does not threaten partisanship, but rather expands the range of potential carriers of partisanship. In addressing these objections, this article demonstrates the democratic credentials of LD, showing that LD is compatible with a high-quality, democratic understanding of representation, which is surrounded by a cluster of thick concepts like commitment, intrinsic motivation, alignment of Edited by: objectives, sympathy, trust, and dialogue. This turns LD into a powerful instrument for the Pierre-Etienne Vandamme, refurbishment of representation both as a unique mode of political participation and as a Université libre De Bruxelles, Belgium practice of self-government. Reviewed by: Chiara Destri, Keywords: political representation, liquid democracy, substantive and gyroscopic representation, selection model UMR7048, Centre De Recherches of representation, political parties and interest groups, carrier of partisanship Politiques De Sciences Po (CEVIPOF), France Valeria Ottonelli, INTRODUCTION University of Genoa, Italy *Correspondence: Liquid Democracy (LD) is a timely, alternative model of collective decision-making that challenges Chiara Valsangiacomo traditional models of electoral representation. LD can be considered a technologically enhanced [email protected] democratic innovation, containing elements that could help remedy the shortcomings of existing representative-democratic systems, by opening up democracy to citizen participation outside of Specialty section: elections (Landemore, 2020, Ch. 5). The core idea behind LD is that, for each issue to be decided, each This article was submitted to citizen has a single vote that can be transferred to a trusted person (or ‘proxy’) at will (Miller, 1969, Elections and Representation, 108). In other words, citizens can freely decide whether to cast their vote directly or to delegate it, a section of the journal Frontiers in Political Science with a given citizen potentially choosing different proxies for different topics (Blum and Zuber, 2016, 165, 168–169). Anyone can become a proxy, meaning that the number of ‘elected’ representatives is Received: 05 August 2020 potentially unlimited (Tullock, 1967, 145–146). Metadelegation, in turn, allows proxies to transfer Accepted: 15 January 2021 Published: 25 March 2021 their delegations to other proxies, with the caveat that the original voters can withdraw the delegation at any time (Ford, 2002,4;Green-Armytage, 2015, 199). Significantly, LD uses a weighted-voting Citation: Valsangiacomo C (2021) Political system, in which voters who cast their ballot directly have a single vote, while proxies cast all of the Representation in Liquid Democracy. votes that have been transferred to them plus their own vote (New York Times, 1912; Alger, 2006). Front. Polit. Sci. 3:591853. This entire process is facilitated by the use of information and communication technologies. In the doi: 10.3389/fpos.2021.591853 present article, I adopt the following working hypothesis: In a population with universal suffrage, LD Frontiers in Political Science | www.frontiersin.org 1 March 2021 | Volume 3 | Article 591853 Valsangiacomo Political Representation in Liquid Democracy can be used as a voting scheme for governmental policymaking, at point of view. This section therefore aims to characterize political the local, regional, and national levels. In other words, LD can be representation in LD from various angles. It begins by showing integrated into existing democratic systems, potentially replacing that LD inherently fulfills the requirements of the so-called existing electoral processes and reshaping current legislative ‘formalistic’ and ‘descriptive’ aspects of political representation.1 mechanisms. It then provides a brief clarification of what is at stake in discussions That LD is intrinsically concerned with representation is clear of political representation in democracies, which supports my from the following concise definition: LD is a decision-making or claim that more research is needed to understand how, if at all, policy-making scheme based on voluntary delegation and proxy representation in LD can be conceptualized from a more voting, combining aspects of both direct and representative ‘substantive’ perspective. Finally, this section outlines the two democracy (Valsangiacomo, 2020). On the one hand, LD is gaps in the research that will be addressed more thoroughly in direct because citizens enjoy the right to represent themselves the following sections. and to engage in legislative, issue-specific (German: A clear-cut, analytic, and uncontroversial definition of political sachunmittelbar) participation. On the other hand, the representation is absent from the extensive literature on this topic representative element in LD is much more equivocal: For (Rehfeld, 2018,218–221). For many political theorists of different example, can proxies be compared to today’s elected members orientations, representation is the making present (in a non-literal or of parliament, or are they a whole new kind of representative? non-physical sense) by some party of another party, who is absent or What is their role and what should we expect from them? How otherwise excluded (e.g., Pitkin, 1967,9;Plotke, 1997,27;Runciman, does delegation alter the relationship between citizens and 2007; Lacey, 2017,54;Castiglione and Pollak, 2018,Ch.1).What representatives? In other words, it is not yet clear how distinguishes political representatives from other types of representation in LD should be conceptualized and how it representatives is mainly their acquisition of specificsocialand compares to existing forms of democratic representation. A political powers (Rehfeld, 2018, 232–235). Because representation is study of this topic is thus needed, especially since scholars are never an end in itself, the nature of these powers will vary depending starting to view LD as a potential complement to or even on how the function of political representation is specified (Rehfeld, substitute for traditional representative democracies (e.g., Blum 2006,5–6). The function at issue in this article is collective decision- and Zuber, 2016; Landemore, 2020; Valsangiacomo, 2020). making: Proxies are selected to legislate and their powers thus include The aim of this