Participation, control, identification: three critical citizens’ perspectives on representative democracy

Résumé :

Representative democracy faces criticism from multiple actors, including citizens, as illustrated by a wide range of concrete manifestations: the declining support for representative democratic institutions; the emergence of social movements and parties advocating for new forms of citizen participation; the growing success of populist forces calling for a fundamental transformation of existing institutions or the prevalence of technocratic preferences among the citizenry. The existing literature often frames these developments through binary oppositions such as Electoral democracy vs. Participation, or Elitism vs. Populism, and tends to oppose criticism of the status quo with a single, dominant alternative understanding of how democracy ought to function. Departing from the dominant methodological approaches, which mostly rely on survey data or, less frequently, focus groups, I use comprehensive individual interviews with 121 citizens in Belgium, France and Italy to uncover the ideal-typical critical discourses about representative democracy. My main finding is that there is no single dominant critical discourse, but rather three distinct alternatives: Participation, Control, and Identification. Each of these accounts advocates for specific renewed forms of representation, but none of them aims at getting rid of elected politicians altogether. Our analysis shows that the study of citizens' critical discourses on representative democracy allows going beyond the traditional frameworks structuring the literature. For example, participation is just one of the alternatives envisioned by citizens who challenge the institutional status quo, whereas the "populist" label fails to fully capture the aspirations of those dissatisfied with the functioning of representative democracy. More generally, this chapter shows how studying citizens' conceptions of the political system contributes to ongoing debates on participation and representation.