The Good Representative (New Directions in Ethics)

✍ Scribed by Suzanne Dovi

• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 274
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In The Good Representative, Suzanne Dovi argues that democratic citizens should assess their representatives by their display of three virtues: they must be fair-minded, build critical trust, and be good gatekeepers.This important book provides standards for evaluating the democratic credentials of representatives.Identifies the problems with and obstacles to good democratic representation.Argues that democratic representation, even good democratic representation, is not always desirable.Timely and original, this book rejects the tendency to equate respect for the preferences of citizens with neutrality on the standards used in choosing their representatives.

✦ Table of Contents

The Good Representative......Page 5
Contents......Page 7
Preface......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 13
1 Who is a Good Representative?......Page 17
An Ethics of Democratic Representation......Page 22
The Proper Scope of an Ethics of Democratic Representation......Page 25
Three Assumptions......Page 30
The Theoretical Contribution of The Good Representative......Page 33
Deliberative democracy......Page 34
Descriptive representation for historically disadvantaged groups......Page 37
The Structure of The Good Representative......Page 39
2 Moving beyond Descriptive Representation......Page 43
Democratic Representation and Descriptive Representation......Page 45
Two Problems with Descriptive Representation......Page 50
Justifying the Silence about Criteria......Page 52
The Need for Criteria......Page 55
The Need for Democratic Standards......Page 60
3 Democratic Advocacy and Good Democratic Representation......Page 68
The Scope of Democratic Representation......Page 69
Sources of Authority for Democratic Representatives......Page 78
Holding Democratic Representatives Accountable......Page 81
Existing Standards for Identifying Bad Representatives......Page 84
The interests of the constituents......Page 85
Autonomy......Page 87
Professional norms......Page 88
Why Democratic Standards?......Page 91
The importance of standards......Page 94
The Importance of Function......Page 97
Identifying the function of democratic representatives......Page 100
Political advocacy......Page 101
Democratic advocacy......Page 104
The Three Virtues......Page 106
Democracy and Democratic Citizens' Preferences......Page 108
4 The Virtue of Fair-Mindedness......Page 116
Political Efficacy......Page 117
Democratic Efficacy......Page 120
Why Civic Equality?......Page 121
The Meaning of Civic Equality......Page 124
Using the First Virtue to Evaluate Representatives......Page 130
Two Problems with the First Virtue......Page 136
5 The Virtue of Critical Trust Building......Page 140
Democratic Representation and Participation......Page 143
Problems with Evaluating Representatives by Citizen Participation......Page 146
The Virtue of Critical Trust Building......Page 150
Promoting Critical Trust......Page 155
Problems with the Second Virtue......Page 157
6 The Virtue of Good Gatekeeping......Page 161
Developing the Right Relationships......Page 164
The Scope of Mutual Relations......Page 171
The Virtue of Good Gatekeeping......Page 177
Political opponents......Page 178
The dispossessed......Page 180
The marginalized......Page 183
A Perspective of Exclusion......Page 186
Problems with the Third Virtue......Page 190
Conclusion......Page 193
7 Preferable Democratic Representatives: Real-World Political Virtues......Page 195
Preferability and the Virtues......Page 198
Preferability and System-Dependency......Page 199
Are Good Descriptive Representatives Good Democratic Representatives?......Page 201
Choosing among the Virtues......Page 206
Bad Democratic Representatives......Page 212
Notes......Page 217
References......Page 244
Index......Page 257