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.