Constructivist Turn in Political Representation

Lisa Disch is Professor of Political Science and teaches political theory at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (US). Author of Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy (Cornell University Press 1994), The Tyranny of the Two-Party System (Columbia University Press 2002), and co-editor (with Mary Hawkesworth) of the Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory (Oxford University Press 2016), she works on feminist theory, democratic theory, and environmental political theory Mathijs van de Sande teaches political philosophy at Radboud University Nijmegen. In 2017, he obtained his PhD at the Institute of Philosophy in Leuven with a thesis on the prefigurative repertoire of recent assembly movements, such as Occupy Wall Street. His main research interests are radical democratic theory, political representation, activism and social movement theory. Nadia Urbinati teaches political theory at Columbia University, New York (US). She works on democratic theory, and in particular representative democracy, populism, plebiscitary leadership, post-party representation.

• 1. Introduction: The End of Representative PoliticsLisa DischSection OneThe Constructivist Turn: Anglo-American and Continental Intellectual Genealogies2. Rethinking Representation: Eight Theoretical Issues and a PostscriptDario Castiglione and Mark E. Warren3. Machiavelli against the Venice Myth: The 16th Century Dialogue on the Nature of Political RepresentationJan Biba4. Power without Representation is Blind, Representations without Power are EmptyBernard Flynn5. Two Regimes of the Symbolic: Radical Democracy Between Romanticism and StructuralismWarren Breckman6. Political Representation: The View From FranceRaf Geenens7. Democracy and RepresentationClaude Lefort (translated by Greg Conti)Section TwoThe Constructivist Turn: Normative Challenges8. Representation as Proposition: Democratic Representation after the Constructivist TurnSamuel Hayat9. Don Alejandro’s Fantasy: On Representation and Radical DemocracyOliver Marchart10. Pinning Down RepresentationLasse Thomassen11. Representative Constructivism’s ConundrumNadia UrbinatiSection ThreeConstructivist Representation: Critique and Reproduction of Power12. Exploring the Semantics of Constructivist RepresentationAlessandro Mulieri13. The Improper Politics of RepresentationMark Devenney14. The Constructivist Paradox: Contemporary Protest Movements and (their) RepresentationMathijs van de Sande.