For the People?: Democratic Representation in America

Many scholars of American government believe representative democracy is failing more systematically than even the recent spectacle of political extremism suggests. Unprecedented levels of elite polarization, severe partisan gerrymandering, weakened party institutions, easing of restrictions on campaign finance, and other forces-all in the context of rising levels of economic inequality-produce dysfunction that subverts healthy political competition. A gridlocked U.S. Congress offers few solutions to broadly recognized public problems. Legislation favors the interests of elites when they conflict with those of the majority.

In his 2022 Berkeley Tanner Lectures, Charles Beitz examines the narrative of dysfunction by reading the literature of political science as democratic theory. The narrative raises two questions. First, are symptoms documented by political scientists really failures? What norms of democratic representation do they infringe? This is a problem of diagnosis. Second, what would successful democratic representation look like? This is a problem of prescription. Beitz's book explores both.

The literatures of political scientists, constitutional lawyers, and democratic theorists on norms of democratic representation tend to cross too seldom. They do not agree about the meaning of fair and effective representation. One might look to democratic theory for insight, but for the most part it has been too remote from political practice to illuminate the problems of America's recent institutional history. Beitz's lectures bring the theory of democratic representation into closer contact with its troubled American practice. Emphasizing the constructive role that competition can play in democratic politics, they aim to articulate systemic norms for fair and effective democratic representation through critical engagement with the findings of scholars who have studied it in the wild.

The volume includes commentaries by a political scientist, Martin Gilens; a constitutional lawyer, Pamela S. Karlan; and a political theorist, Jane Mansbridge. Their commentaries elaborate themes in the lectures and pose critical questions. Charles Beitz responds in a concluding comment.