Rebecca Tapscott, Ambizione Research Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, and Danishwara Nathaniel, PhD Researcher, comment on the fourth segment of our interview with Pierre Rosanvallon, now available with English subtitles. They highlight the role of gender, diversity, and representation in democratic practices.

We will publish our research team’s commentaries on the interview’s fifth and final segment, which looks at technology and democratic innovations, next week.

Commentary by Danishwara Nathaniel

This excerpt from Rosanvallon’s interview, which describes the different types of representation inherent to the democratic process, highlights the multidimensional and complex nature of representation. As emphasized by Rosanvallon, these different means of representation do not just happen at an institutional level with procedural requirements. Away from sites where important decision-making take place such as parliamentary buildings, government offices, convention centres, democracy is practiced everyday by ordinary citizens, including those from minority groups. When defining representation, Rosanvallon argues that “all lives that are lived have to be taken into account in society….it’s very important that there’s this whole dimension to representation that gives presence to all lived experiences. That no-one is invisible in society anymore.”  

I would like to expand the visual elements of the democratic process, namely on the dimensions that correspond to the politics of (in)visibility. Increasingly today, democratic practices with respect to representational strategies and forms are facilitated by visual media. Moreover, people’s use of visual media in representing their so-called “lived experiences”, in representing how they see themselves and are seen by others, has become central to everyday politics.

It is interesting that Rosanvallon mentions “the role of cinema in showing realities that have been forgotten”. We can for example think of the role of film festivals in highlighting issues that are of public concerns, as well as more ubiquitous forms like social media, that we have under our very own thumbs. Along with the proliferation of new media technologies and platforms available to many, we are today dealing with a diversity of forms of images and styles of image-making practices that circulate in various platforms. These range from digital images circulating in social media such as memes, demonstration posters, and caricatures, to images in physical urban spaces like art exhibition, street art and graffiti, as well as statues. The speed at which these images circulate has reached unprecedented levels. As they move around public spheres, images can address certain publics, place demands upon them, move people affectively and assemble them for action. Images can provoke and offend some people, excluding certain groups, but also evoke pleasure and nurture feelings of belonging. 

To what extent do image-makers shape representations of society and politics? In the context of Indonesia – the focus of my work –  image-makers have contributed to promote innovative political engagements and public participation through their photographic practices. Transitioning from an authoritarian regime into a more open political situation since 1998, also known as the Reformasi era, Indonesian contemporary photographers respond to the renewed public visibility that Reformasi offered by pursuing the visualization of alternative views and the production of counter-narratives in the form of visual storytelling (see the initiatives of my interlocutor here). The proliferation of new media technology also presents the possibility for once suppressed or marginalized subjects to gain visibility through different forms of presenting photographic images. It also allows new subjects to operate the camera, exposing their ways of seeing in doing so. Recognizing this possibility, these concerned practitioners consider visual media both as a productive tool and a site of contestation among diverse actors working towards socio-political transformation. In this case, visual culture is treated as an everyday arena of experimentation and contestation, providing a space of possibility to relearn what it means to be concerned and engaged citizens in an increasingly digital and visual public terrain. 

These aspects are further explored in our newly launched SNF research project hosted by the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy. Drawing on Patricia Spyer’s argument on “the work on appearances”, we examine the role of image-makers in Eastern Indonesian cities in addressing and redressing representational forms of belonging corresponding to, among others, religion, ethnicity, or race. The project explores how images are produced and deployed to intervene in the visual environment in order to enable socio-political transformation, to make marginalized histories visible, and to eliminate (in)visibilities that foster exclusion. As images have got increasingly salient in the making of social relations, the question of how image-makers and images enable socio-political transformation worldwide deserves attention.

Commentary by Rebecca Tapscott

If representation is a tricky question in democratic states, all the more so in another set of states—so-called electoral authoritarian states, where authoritarianism is practiced “behind the institutional facades of representative democracy”. In a sub-set of these states, electoral competition remains “competitive,” even if unfair: though incumbents employ diverse non-democratic strategies to tilt the playing field in their favour—from setting the electoral rules of the game, to using intimidation and vote-buying—resilient democratic institutions mean that their victory is never certain. These states are neither democracies nor autocracies. Though incumbents continue to participate in elections, often winning them by relatively slim margins, they are still far from democratic polities. For citizens living under such regimes, the questions of representation and how to account for the minority only begin to be asked for those who support the incumbent.

Consider the case of Uganda. The current ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), has held power under the leadership of President Yoweri Museveni for over 35 years, through five elections. Over those years, the party also merged with state institutions, making it difficult to disentangle the two. In part, this was achieved through the implementation of a so-called “no party” system, which was in place for 20 years, between 1986 and 2005. The ban on party competition was justified as radical inclusion. With no distinction between the state and party, all Ugandans would equally be considered part of the NRM, making political competition meritocratic rather than sectarian or party-based. We might liken this to a “society of equals”—in which all Ugandans would theoretically be represented in government policies. 

Of course, in practice many were not represented in government policies – and everyone faced the risk of being pushed outside the “society of equals”. Without viable and legitimate opposition parties, and in a context where the ruling party dominates state institutions, the stakes of exclusion are high. One might even be categorized as an enemy of the state itself. Though Uganda formally reintroduced multi-party political competition in 2005, the regime continues to lean on this vision of opposition as a threat to social and political stability. 

Uganda then offers interesting insight into what the bias in the majority principle looks like in electoral authoritarian regimes. First, take the question of institutional pathways to inclusion. In a pure democracy, one might feel it is “well and good” if you cast a vote for the winner, and that your vote is “lost” if you vote for someone who is defeated. In a case like Uganda, this logic is taken to the extreme. The ruling regime has worked hard to ensure that the only viable pathway to political representation is to vote for the incumbent. In a sense, unanimity has been achieved through political and social processes that was not deliberative, with the aim of transforming the very notion of being Ugandan into a question of loyalty to the incumbent regime. Said differently, the way to represent the class of losers is for them to join the winners.

Second, consider the role of constitutional judges in representing the “general will through the individual attention given to each citizen” and their rights. The melding of the NRM political party to the state means that the ruling party assumes the political role of representing all people. The problems with this dynamic are revealed when citizens’ rights conflict with regime interests. For example, in 2005, after the court granted bail to opposition politicians, the regime immediately deployed soldiers to re-arrest them. The chief judge of the High Court called this violation a “rape of the judiciary”. Such interventions create an environment in which constitutional justices have some independence, but it is retracted when the judiciary defies regime interests.

Third, consider social representation through art and media. This, too, exists with some degree of political independence, but it is structured by the militarized nature of the regime, and the oppressive regimes that came before it. As described by newspaper journalist and editor Bernard Tabaire in 2007, the government’s approach is to “force the press to self-censor” for instance by charging journalists with sedition, criminal libel, and defamation. Though the cases have almost entirely been thrown out, the high cost, reputational damage, and threat of imprisonment have a chilling effect. In the art world, scholar and artist Angelo Kakande has described this dynamic as a productive metaphor rooted in “the ghost of military dictatorship” refracted in across artistic expression, whatever the ideological orientation of the artist. 

Whether considering inclusion through political institutions, constitutional judges, or the media, the case of Uganda shows how electoral authoritarian regimes can capture these political spaces and democratic institutions without collapsing them entirely. These subtle moves create a political context in which claims for representation are necessarily linked to the incumbent, and thus bolster his support.

Read more about Rebecca’s SNF-funded (Ambizione funding scheme) project ‘The transnational politics of ethics review: a study of the effects of ethical regulations on political voice in global south countries’ here.