82043 IMG#22

34 Associaftve Principles and Democratic Reform

contradśction with centralized, bureaucratic public service States 1 that substitute State for society and circumscribe the ‘private’ I    ^Su'

sphere of individual liberty.    ^ii    M

| J    wh

art

Democracy as communication    : Jn    H

sizj

Most associational thinkers have seen representative democracy    I    ^

as an inadeąuate political mechanism. G.D.H. Cole in The Social    1    _§j₍

Theory (1920b) argued that it is impossible to represent the actual    |    ^

wills of the electors and so, while elected assemblies act in the    _t;_N

name of the people, they substitute the will of the representatives    g_C

for the represented. Functional democracy will overcome this    1    +J

problem because the interests involved in the performance of a    ^

function are directly represented on the organizing or coordinat- i ing bodies for that function. Power is dispersed by function, and so i j_n representatives have specific tasks, unlike the representatives of | the people in a sovereign legislature, who may make decisions    1    _ac

on any aspect of life. Cole stands in here for the entire tradition    1    th

of functional democratic and corporatist thinking on this issue.    1    _m

He is explicit in his assumptions and no less coherent in his argu-    I    ar

ments than any other critic of representative democracy, includ*    1    D

ing Hegel.    [Ę    n<

The difficulty with the functional democratic critiąue of repre-    I    as

sentative democracy is that it sees the problem with the latter    1    de

primarily in terms of the inadequacy of its form of representation. I    m

Therefore, it is argued, a change in the form of representation will I    tic

permit the real representation of actual interests and will solve 1    iz<

the problem of the gap between representatives and represented. f    H

This is a false argument. There can be no real representation. Ali |    fo

systems of representation have specific problems and construct I    nc

the ‘represented’ in particular ways (I have argued this case against Cole at length elsewhere - Hirst, 1989: 30-9; Hirst, 1990: i ^ 12-15 - and will not repeat the argument here).    ^K

The problem with representative democracy is different: it is the type of democratic decision process and the scalę of decision* _cqj making which is at issue, not real versus artificial representation. _act The sovereign representative democratic assembly combines a _rat conception of democracy as the exercise of the majoritarian prin- 1    ^

cipie with decision-making in an omnicompetent centralized State.