Symbolic Representation as Political Practice

Abstract

Symbolic representation is a key dimension of political representation and deserves critical attention when the agenda is to rethink popular representation. In his outline of a framework for analysing political representation, Törnquist1 highlights the lasting influence of Pitkin’s classic study of The Concept of Representation.2 Pitkin famously distinguishes between representation as ‘standing for’ and representation as ‘acting for’ another, that is, a distinction between what a representative is and what she does. Within this classification scheme, symbolic representation is presented as one way of standing for a social group. Although descriptive representation means that a representative body reflects the composition of the people that are being represented, symbolic representation implies that a representative symbolises a constituency, for example, the way a king is a symbolic figure for the nation. Symbols might be arbitrary or natural, but this is of little relevance because the connection between a symbol and its referent is about feelings rather than likeness, in contrast to descriptive representation. What matters for symbolic representation is the extent to which people believe in a symbol