The constructivist turn in political representation

This volume traces the roots of the constructivist turn in the distinct (and competing) traditions of Continental and Anglo-American Western political thought. Divided into three thematic parts, these 13 newly commissioned essays develop the constructivist turn as a central concept. They advance the insight that there can be no democratic politics without representation; constituencies or groups exist as agents of democratic politics only insofar as they are represented.

Intro -- Tables -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction: the end of representative politics? -- Part I The constructivist turn: Anglo-American and Continental intellectual genealogies -- 2 Rethinking democratic representation: eight theoretical issues and a postscript -- 3 Machiavelli against the Venice myth: a sixteenth-century dialogue on the nature of political representation -- 4 Power without representation is blind, representations without power are empty -- 5 Two regimes of the symbolic: radical democracy between Romanticism and structuralism

6 Political representation: the view from France -- 7 Democracy and representation -- Part II The constructivist turn: normative challenges -- 8 Representation as proposition: democratic representation after the constructivist turn -- 9 Don Alejandro's fantasy: radical democracy and the negative concept of representation -- 10 Pinning down representation -- 11 Representative constructivism's conundrum -- Part III Constructivist representation: critique and reproduction of power -- 12 Exploring the Semantics of Constructivist Representation -- 13 The improper politics of representation

14 The constructivist paradox: contemporary protest…