22. How Should We Think About Informal Political Representation? With Wendy Salkin

Ethics Untangled

For this episode, I spoke to Wendy Salkin, a philosophy professor at Stanford University, about informal political representatives: people who speak or act on behalf of groups in the political sphere without being elected to do so. Examples include Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malala Yousafzai, and Greta Thunberg.

Informal political representatives raise awareness of issues and bring about political change, often achieving things that people with more formal power cannot or do not. But their existence also raises some ethical questions. Do they need to be authorised? Can they be held accountable? What if the things they say diverge from the views of the people they represent?

Professor Salkin's book on this subject, Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation, was released by Harvard University Press on July 9th.
Relevant reading:

1. Alcoff, L. (1991). The Problem of Speaking for Others. Cultural Critique, 20, 5–32.
2. Chapman, E.B. (2022). Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy. Princeton University Press.
3. W.E.B. Du Bois, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”
4. Desmond Jagmohan.
5. King, M.L., Jr., (2010) Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. Beacon Press.
6. Mansbridge, J.J. (1983) Beyond Adversary Democracy. University of Chicago Press.
7. Montanaro, L. (2017). Who Elected Oxfam?: A Democratic Defense of Self-Appointed Representatives. Cambridge University Press.
8. Pitkin, H. (1967). The Concept of Representation. University of Los Angeles Press.
9. Andrew Rehfield.
10. Saward, M. (2010). The Representative Claim. Oxford University Press.
11. Booker T. Washington, “The Atlanta Exposition Address”.

Ethics Untangled is produced by the IDEA Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.
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