Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation

Forside
Princeton University Press, 13. aug. 2000 - 329 sider

Does fair political representation for historically disadvantaged groups require their presence in legislative bodies? The intuition that women are best represented by women, and African-Americans by other African-Americans, has deep historical roots. Yet the conception of fair representation that prevails in American political culture and jurisprudence--what Melissa Williams calls "liberal representation"--concludes that the social identity of legislative representatives does not bear on their quality as representatives. Liberal representation's slogan, "one person, one vote," concludes that the outcome of the electoral and legislative process is fair, whatever it happens to be, so long as no voter is systematically excluded. Challenging this notion, Williams maintains that fair representation is powerfully affected by the identity of legislators and whether some of them are actually members of the historically marginalized groups that are most in need of protection in our society.

Williams argues first that the distinctive voice of these groups should be audible within the legislative process. Second, she holds that the self-representation of these groups is necessary to sustain their trust in democratic institutions. The memory of state-sponsored discrimination against these groups, together with ongoing patterns of inequality along group lines, provides both a reason to recognize group claims and a way of distinguishing stronger from weaker claims. The book closes by proposing institutions that can secure fair representation for marginalized groups without compromising principles of democratic freedom and equality.

Inni boken

Innhold

Representation as Mediation
23
The Need for a Political Sociology of Groups and the Flaws of Descriptive Representation
27
III Trust and Political Representation
30
IV Burke
33
V Madison
38
VI Calhoun
42
VII J S Mill
45
VIII Conclusion
50
Hearing Different Voices
131
V Womens Voice and the Dynamics of Legislative Deliberation
137
VI Group Representation and the Limits of the Deliberative Ideal
143
Trust The Racial Divide and Black Rights during Reconstruction
149
From Slavery to Citizenship to Disfranchisement
150
The Declaration and ColorBlind Equality
152
III The Sense of Betrayal and the Turn to SelfRepresentation
161
IV Trust and the American Scheme of Liberal Representation
164

Liberal Equality and Liberal Representation
57
I Liberal Equality
58
II Liberal Representation
62
III Liberal Representation Geographic Districts and Gerrymandering
70
IV The Limits of Liberal Representation
75
The Supreme Court Voting Rights and Representation
83
The Concept of Minority Vote Dilution
85
II DifferenceBlind Proceduralism and Voting Rights Doctrine
89
III From Restrictive to Expansive Readings of Liberal Representation
95
Back to DifferenceBlind Proceduralism
97
Beyond Liberal Representation to Group Representation
102
The Racial Bias of Recent Supreme Court Decisions on Minority Vote Dilution
110
Voice Woman Suffrage and the Representation of Womans Point of View
116
I Womens Claim to Individual Equality
119
The Distinctive Virtue of Womanhood
124
III The Functional Advantages of Womans Point of View
128
Memory The Claims of History in Group Recognition
176
I Critiques of Group Representation
178
II Memory
181
III History
187
IV Memory History and Group Representation
192
V Responses to Liberal Critiques of Group Representation
196
The Institutions of Fair Representation
203
I Defining Constituencies
205
II Dynamics of Legislative Decision Making
221
III LegislatorConstituent Relations
227
Sketch of a Fair System of Political Representation
233
Descriptive Representation with a Difference
238
Notes
245
Bibliography
303
Index
319
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Om forfatteren (2000)

Melissa S. Williams is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

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