Freedom Is Power: Reinventing Representative Democracy

In this article I propose a different founding view of liberty to help reinvent representative democracy: freedom as power through representation. I argue that representation and associated relations of power can be assessed contextually in terms of whether they enable or disable domination and enhance judgment in politics. I submit that freedom obtains if and only if the existing forms of representation manage power relations to minimize domination in the determination of needs and interests. I end by proposing a set of institutional changes for reinventing representative democracy in line with my account of freedom as power through representation. These include ideas around district assemblies, a revitalized consiliar system, an updated tribunate of the plebs, and constitutional revision. I thereby suggest that my account of liberty in Freedom Is Power would underpin a more robust, critical view of representative democracy.