Legislative protest as disruptive democratic practice
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13510347.2013.786542
ISSN1743-890X
Autores Tópico(s)Electoral Systems and Political Participation
ResumoAbstract This article explores the phenomenon of legislative protest and presents an analytical framework for understanding its significance for democratic theory and practice. Legislative protest is defined as disruptive behaviour of elected representatives within legislative settings. Acts of legislative protest include sit-ins, boycotts, walkouts, and individual or collective disobedience of the presiding officer within legislative chambers or committees. This article begins from the premise that legislative protest should not be dismissed as frivolous or self-interested behaviour. Such acts are significant because they are disruptive, literally of the routine proceedings of legislatures, and figuratively because they transgress boundaries of "orderliness" according to formal rules and norms of behaviour in legislative settings. Variations in the significance and justifiability of such acts of legislative protest are interpreted according to three key debates in democratic theory, namely legislative conflict, deliberation, and representation. Beyond these three broad debates, it is argued that any attempt to decipher the substantive meaning of legislative protest must be informed by a grounded analysis paying attention to specific forms of protest performed within specific legislative settings. Such analysis should acknowledge the corporeality of protest and its embeddedness within historically contextualized institutional and cultural scripts. Keywords: legislative protestdisruptiondeliberationrepresentationparliamentsdemocratic practice Acknowledgements The author would like to thank in particular Shirin Rai, James Brassett, and an anonymous reviewer for their very helpful comments and discussions; Ravindra Garimella of the Parliament of India for discussing his thoughts on disruptions to parliamentary debate in the Parliament of India; and the Leverhulme Trust for funding the research on which this article is based. Notes Young, Inclusion and Democracy. Ibid. For example, Young, Inclusion and Democracy; cf. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement. Rai, "Political Performance"; Coole, "Experiencing Discourse"; Puwar, Space Invaders. Rai, "Political Performance"; Saward, The Representative Claim. Bachtiger et al., "Disentangling Diversity," 32; Mansbridge et al., "Norms of Deliberation," 9. Saward, The Representative Claim; Rai, "Political Performance." Congressional Record – House, 28 March 2012, H1647; "Congressman Bobby Rush Wears Hoodie on House Floor to Protest against Trayvon Martin Case – Video", 28 March 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/mar/28/congressman-hoodie-house-trayvon-martin-video; "A Hood on the Head Does Not Mean a Hoodlum in the Head", press release by Rep. Bobby Rush, 28 March 2012, http://rush.house.gov/press-release/hood-head-does-not-mean-hoodlum-head, last accessed 23 August 2012; "Aung San Suu Kyi to Take Burmese Parliamentary Oath", The Guardian, April 30, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/30/aung-san-suu-kyi-oath?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487,; "Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi Threatens to Boycott Newly-Won Seats", The Telegraph, April 17, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/burmamyanmar/9209159/Burma-Aung-San-Suu-Kyi-threatens-to-boycott-newly-won-seats.html; "Suu Kyi's Party 'Boycotts' Assembly Over Oath", Asia Times Online, April 25, 2012, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/ND25Ae04.html; Recorded Proceedings of Debates, Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 8 and 9 March 2010. Gandrud, "Two Sword Lengths," 3. Smith, "Democracy, Deliberation and Disobedience." Drawing on the work of Young and Bohman, Smith sees civil disobedience in deliberation as justifiable but reproduces the tendency of many deliberative democrats to see protest primarily located in the sphere of civil society performed by activist-citizens, where activists seek to persuade policy-makers to take a different course of action. He states that "as a communicative act, civil disobedience as a response to bias in deliberation is directed towards state actors" as well as "a wake-up call to other deliberative actors in civil society" (367). Acts of civil disobedience are "extra-institutional activity" that arises from institutional exclusion: "exclusion … makes it harder for those persons or interests to be represented through normal institutional means, creating the need for extra-institutional activity like civil disobedience" (369). The possibility of legislative elites being potentially both the targeted audience and the instigator of protest acts remains outside the scope of his analysis. Puwar, Space Invaders. "Blair Hit During Commons Protest", BBC News, May 19, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3728617.stm "Senate Page Fired for Anti-Harper Protest", CBC News, June 3, 2011, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/06/03/pol-senate-page.html. See Parkinson, this issue, for more on the securitization of legislative institutions and the impact on public democratic engagement. Young, Inclusion and Democracy. Spary, "Disrupting Rituals of Debate." Two branches of legislative studies which concern legislators' behaviour include legislative ethics and legislative discipline. However, their concerns are peripheral to analyses of legislative protest as defined here. The former is concerned more with the probity of representatives' behaviour concerning public conduct and corruption (such as investigations into criminal conduct and accepting money in exchange for representation for example). The latter is concerned with the internal dynamics of parties within legislatures and relates to issues of party cohesion including the power of party whips to control members' behaviour in order to secure support for policy and votes on legislation, and the likelihood and dynamics of representatives crossing-the-floor (defecting to rival parties) for example. Studies of party cohesion seek to explain why individual or factional protests by legislators occur in terms of party rebellion and are less concerned with the significance of the modes of protest. Their focus is concerned with adherence to the party line rather than to parliamentary procedures (for example, see the Journal of Legislative Studies 2003 special issue on party discipline and cohesion, and Newell, "Turning Over a New Leaf?"). For example, Ostrow, "Institutional Design and Legislative Conflict." This may differ across institutions depending on the rules and norms regarding the extent of partisanship of presiding officers. See Laundy, The Office of the Speaker in the Parliaments. Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Weisberg and Patterson, "Theatre in the Round," 8. Ibid., 12. Saward, The Representative Claim, 48. For example, see Chatterjee, Keeping the Faith. See Armitage, this issue, on changes in informal processes of negotiating conflict in Westminster. In February 2012, the French cabinet walked out of the parliament in response to an alleged insult by an opposition MP aimed at the French Interior Minister. Referring to comments the Minister had made in a public meeting, the opposition MP reportedly accused the Minister of 'flirting with Nazi ideology'. "French Cabinet Walks out of Parliament over Nazi Claim," The Guardian, February 7, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/07/french-cabinet-walkout-parliament. Wawro and Schickler, Filibuster, 17–18. Ostrow, "Institutional Design and Legislative Conflict." Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond, 1. See Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, on "reciprocity". Respectively, Young, Inclusion and Democracy, Mouffe, "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?"; Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralisation, and Connolly, Identity/Difference. Some theorists of deliberation have argued that legislatures are not the best institutional settings in which to observe and assess the mechanisms and quality of deliberative practices. See Young, Inclusion and Democracy. Coole, "Experiencing Discourse", however, is particularly interested in neglected aspects of corporeality of deliberation within representative legislatures, and how this inflects deliberative practice. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, engages with legislative deliberation directly. Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 47. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 49. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement; Dryzek, "Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies". Peter, Democratic Legitimacy, 32. Bohman and Rehg, Deliberative Democracy, 322–3; Peter, Democratic Legitimacy, 69–73. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, 135–6. Ibid., 136; Smith, "Democracy, Deliberation and Disobedience," 355. Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement, 137. Peter, Democratic Legitimacy, 34. Ibid.,126; Drexler, "Politics Improper," 13. Drexler, "Politics improper," 5. Mouffe, "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?" 16. Ibid., 17. Saward, The Representative Claim. Inglis, 1996, cited in Young, "Political and Parliamentary Speech." Saward, The Representative Claim. Constituents need not be defined narrowly as those citizens who reside within the legislator's constituency. They may also include party workers, movement activists, elite interests, and others. Ibid., 45. To be clear, Saward does not explicitly discuss the kind of legislative performances referred to here, although a sympathetic reading would suggest they are included. Ibid., 46–8. This is distinct from Gutmann and Thompson's economy of moral disagreement, outlined in Democracy and Disagreement, in which "moral disagreement" refers to deep moral-based disagreements over substantive content of policy or legislation, and cites pro-life and pro-choice perspectives on abortion in the US as an example. Instead, the moral economy to which I am referring relates to moral values imparted to modes of protest, including variations in non-violent modes of protest as well as non-violent versus violent modes of protest as acts of civil disobedience in legislative settings. Of course, substantive content may have a bearing on justifiability of modes of protest and intractable moral disagreements on the former may indeed create grounds for more extreme modes of protest, as Gutmann and Thompson acknowledge (90). Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 48. Ibid. Wawro and Schickler, Filibuster, 9. "French Female Minister Wolf-whistled in Parliament", The Telegraph, July 20, 2012, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9414590/French-female-minister-wolf-whistled-in-parliament.html. Rai, "Political Performance," 5. Coole, "Experiencing Discourse"; Puwar, Space Invaders. Coole, "Experiencing Discourse", 413. Mansbridge, "Everyday Talk," 223; cf. Sanders, 1997, cited in Mansbridge. Rai, "Political Performance," 11. See Congressman Bobby L. Rush – Biography, House of Representatives, no date, http://rush.house.gov/about-me/biography, last accessed August 23, 2012; Who Runs Gov Profile: Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Washington Post, no date, available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bobby-lee-rush-d-ill/gIQAPjFgAP_topic.html#at-a-glance, last accessed September 13, 2012. Parliamentary Etiquette and Manners, training video issued by Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training, Parliament of India, New Delhi. No date. On file with the author. Wawro and Schickler, Filibuster, 18. Rai, "Political Performance," 6. Magliocca, "Reforming the Filibuster," 304. Wawro and Schickler, Filibuster, 6. What is remarkable is the strength of this cultural resonance in light of how infrequent filibusters are actually performed, and that legislative time is so valuable that the threat of a filibuster can be sufficiently on its own. See Sinclair, "Partisan Models," 344. Coole, "Experiencing Discourse." The first elected Indian Presiding Officer of the pre-Independence Central Legislative Assembly, Vithalbhai Patel, was a notable obstructionist. Patel, Vithalbhai. Chatterjee, "On Civil and Political Society"; Morris-Jones, The Government and Politics of India, 54–5. Chatterjee, "On Civil and Political Society." Wolfe, "Creating Democracy's Good Losers." Spary, "Disrupting Rituals." Gandrud, "Two Sword Lengths." Salisbury, "'Mr Speaker, I withdraw … '." Mansbridge, "Everyday Talk," 213. Smith, "Democracy, Deliberation and Disobedience," 367. Dryzek, "Deliberative Democracy in Divided Societies."
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