Making Constituencies is about questions that are both timeless and very recent. Disch's concern for who comes first, the representative or the represented, is at least as old as the French Revolution. As she states towards the end of the book, 1789 is a watershed for the history of representative democracy and for theorists reflecting on the possibilities and limits of representation as a tool of modern politics. Making Constituencies is no exception, insofar as it engages with the revolutionary question whether political representation can serve mass democracy, as well as with its afterlife in twentieth-century political theory. Yet, in addressing such a timeless question, Disch makes explicit her preoccupation with the recent trajectory of American politics and with how it is currently being interpreted by academics, journalists, and the public at large. In fact, a certain urgency animates the book, as manifested in Disch's passionate plea for what she calls “democratic realism,” a vision of politics that rejects the technocratic account of voters’ incompetence and focuses instead on the role institutions play in mobilizing and polarizing constituencies.
This shift in perspective is both welcome and refreshing. In arguing that competence ought not to be the measure against which to evaluate the health of contemporary democratic politics, Disch convincingly deflates common concerns for voters’ manipulation and the elitist and pessimistic attitudes that come with them. The real problem, she argues, is neither the fact that voters do not know their interests (incompetence) nor that they are led to vote against them (manipulation). Rather, what has made American politics so viscerally polarized is “sorting,” the practice of activating and mobilizing constituencies against each other by deliberately foregrounding certain issues and minimizing others. This practice is made possible by what Schattschneider has called bias, which is the power “to favor . . . the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others” (71), and by the fact that institutionalized power engages in a constant process of “division,” whereby “politically constituted divisions, by deciding the nature and number of the forces that come to battle, shape the outcome” (72). Acknowledging this implies that it is not representation that is failing democracy, but rather its misuse by those who are supposed to do the representing. It follows that representation can be made safe for democracy. Although Disch is not in the business of designing a new model of representation, she offers some ideas on what ought to change in order for this to be done.
For one thing, Disch puts forward a methodological argument, internal to political science, in favor of making institutions once again central to the study of politics. In this Disch joins a growing number of scholars who have been arguing for such an approach on both normative and historical grounds. Such an argument is, I believe, fundamental insofar as institutions play a key role in shaping both politics and how we think about it. For another, Disch offers a revitalized understanding of what realism ought to be concerned with, namely, the possibilities of political action that any given institutional context opens or closes. Such an understanding of realism makes it consistent with a commitment to democracy as a normative horizon and as a political system, thus offering a much-needed alternative to recent “realist” arguments against democracy. Another implication of her theory is the adoption of a “constructivist” understanding of representation, in contrast to the primordialist idea according to which voters form constituencies based on preexisting interests and preferences. The constructivist position is necessary to avoid the idea of voters’ incompetence and to deflate concerns about manipulation, but it also raises the question of how far constructivism ought to go. In some passages, Disch seems to suggest that no factor outside of representation can explain constituency formation, as the latter is created by the representatives through sorting and mobilization (136). In other passages, she argues that political representation activates constituencies, thus suggesting that some preexisting (although perhaps not prepolitical) electoral identity exists and is mobilized strategically by the representatives (137). This ambiguity runs through the entire book, but it is particularly consequential in relation to two problems.
The first is explanatory. If we want to take the constructivist position to its logical end, assuming that all political identities and preferences are created through the process of representation, then how are we to explain the fact that certain conflicts mobilize some people but not others? Arguing that it is because representation targets, by design, only the groups that it ends up mobilizing necessarily implies that all mobilization is, by definition, successful. This seems implausible, and indeed it is a conclusion Disch would resist. Resisting it, however, requires finessing the claim that political preferences are constructed by representation, for example by arguing that the way in which representation shapes preferences is neither unidirectional nor linear nor, in fact, directly intentional. Rather, preferences shape what is represented and the act of representing shapes preferences in a complex, multilayered, and lengthy process in which the question of what comes first, preferences or sorting, becomes difficult to answer conclusively.
The second, related ambiguity inherent to the constructivist approach is normative. If we adopt constructivism all the way down, then there is nothing we can say about what constitutes good or bad representation. A fully constructivist approach is inconsistent with the possibility of passing political judgments, i.e., with the possibility of distinguishing between desirable and undesirable sorting. This is because constructivism gives up both on the idea that political preferences (and perhaps even values) can exist as normative ideals above and outside the political process, and on the idea that voters’ preferences are being betrayed by certain types of sorting. This is further evinced by Disch's argument against responsiveness and accountability as the foundations for our model of representation, on the grounds that they entail a unidirectional relation between voters’ preferences and the representatives’ actions. But don't we lose something if we give up accountability and responsiveness as standards against which to judge the work of the representatives? There is no basis on which we can judge the success or failure of representative democratic politics. And yet, Disch herself is certainly not neutral in the face of the failures of American politics today. Indeed, she makes it abundantly clear that some types of sorting are detrimental to democracy, while others are in fact desirable. But how can we justify this judgment?
Perhaps one solution could be found in an agonistic understanding of democracy, one in which we do not adjudicate between types of representation—and their corresponding groups—a priori, but instead focus on making sure that the political struggle is won by one's own group. This route has been taken by theorists of agonistic democracy before, and it could consistently fit Disch's theory too. But are there other options? We might assess the desirability of competing sorting practices by reference to the process that brings them into being, for example, whether it is inclusive and deliberative in character. This would shift the attention away from the clash between opposing groups and focus instead on the institutional and procedural mechanisms that make sorting possible and legitimate. And, in turn, it would also substantively strengthen what I believe to be Disch's most brilliant argument: her passionate defense of institutions as the foundation of democratic politics and of political theorizing.
