Kristina Vasic // Representation as a Structure of Domination

Abstract: Suppose that P dominates Q in society (on a neo-republican account, where to dominate is to have the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with another’s choices). Suppose further that this society is organized along the principles of representative democracy, where representatives are chosen in elections. Now, only P but not Q tend to get elected, which puts them in a position of passing laws which benefit the class they belong to. But they can also just leave things as they are and not do anything to actively undermine the dominating relationship between P and Q. By doing or failing to do anything on the front of structural domination, they assume a role of regulators, of agents who non-contingently enable or sustain the domination dyad between P and Q. There can be many regulators in structural domination, but the representatives are unique in that they have greater power in comparison to the represented citizen, and this greater power provides them with more leeway within a structure of domination. The normative upshot of their greater power as regulators is, I propose, that they bear greater responsibility for structuring domination, compared to other, ordinary, citizens. Responsibility for structuring domination, in other words, is proportionate to the power one has to undermine the structure. Whether representatives actively contribute to keeping P in dominating position or they fail to effect any change in this regard – they are responsible for structuring domination. The same conclusion can be reached when Q, from the dominated part of the population, assumes the role of a representative but does not strive to dismantle structural domination. The existing accounts of justifying power inequality in representation have so far failed to take account of this possibility, that representatives can structure domination. I believe that an adequate justification of power inequality in representation ought to account for this scenario by construing a further necessary condition of justification, namely, that representation does not structure domination.

Bio: Kristina Vasic is a PhD student in Political Theory at Central European University, Vienna and a visiting student at CEPS, University of Minho. Previously, she was a visiting student at the Center for Political Philosophy at Leiden University. The overall title of her paper-based thesis is Political Equality and Representative Democracy. She works on social equality, representation and structural domination.