The Edges of Political Representation: Mapping, Critiquing and Pushing the Boundaries [Paperback]

New ideas, practices and sites of political representation are challenging orthodox thinking in political science and in day-to-day politics. Featuring an impressive range of approaches and methods, the contributors to The Edges of Political Representation describe and interrogate these challengeselectoral, symbolic, transnational and generational among others. The book is a timely and sophisticated series of takes on the new frontiers of representation.This collection is a timely and challenging contribution to thinking about representative democracy. The problem of incomplete representation is tackled throughout: however free and fair elections may be, they do not imply an equal and fair inclusion of intra-societal differences. This makes the book a must-read for all those who care for a just democracy.First critical assessment of traditional understandings of political representation, through electoral means, feminist critiques, multi-level representation, representation of groupsThe concept of political representation has expanded beyond the classical relationship between representative and the represented to encompass advocacy, group identities, non-human voices, future generations, non-democratic systems, symbols, virtual representation and broader interests. As such, literature on political representation stems from a wide range of viewpoints and scholarly traditions, with different norms and assumptions built in.This volume aims to map and critique the edges of political representation. By moving from a discussion in the classical electoral literature through feminist perspectives to different levels of representation, different understandings of who is represented and onto empirical studies of symbolic and virtual representation through participation, the contributions in this book provide a nuanced assessment while also presenting future avenues for research that go beyond the mainstream of research on political representation.Taken together, the chl“V