Williams defines representation as mediation between citizens and governmental decisions, as the way in which “the different institutions and practices of a scheme of representation operate to shape and transform individual citizen’s political concerns and interests into government decisions and policies” (23). Williams begins with an examination of the accounts of representation offered by Burke, Madison, Calhoun, and Mill (ch. 1). She uses the discussion of these four theorists to identify a number of different ways of thinking about representation, and to make the point that any theory of representation has a concomitant social theory of groups.

Williams argues that existing liberal accounts of representation can neither dismiss nor justify claims to self-representation by marginalized groups without contradiction. Thus, the claims of marginalized groups for self-representation constitute a challenge to liberal theories of representation. Williams describes these liberal accounts of representation as containing two strands. The first is the ideal of fair representation as an outcome of a free and fair election in which every citizen has an equally weighted vote, expressed in the slogan “one person, one vote.” This doctrine is based on the essential moral equality of all persons. The second strand of the liberal concept of representation, interest group pluralism, “expresses a social decision function in which the preferences of different interest groups are weighted according to the amount of organizational effort they expend. In its normative guise, interest group pluralism provides a standard of ‘equitable representation’ against which to judge electoral and representative processes” (57–58).

Williams shows that conceptually and in practice, this understanding of political representation cannot accommodate the reality of historically marginalized ascriptive groups. Conceptual critiques and historical practice suggest that these groups are often further disadvantaged by ostensibly neutral policies. Moreover, these groups are not the shifting, overlapping groups portrayed by pluralist theory, but rather are groups that are permanently and unfairly excluded from power. Liberal representation, argues Williams, “fails to recognize that historically marginalized groups as such might have a distinctive claim, grounded in the principle of political equality, to special representation in legislative bodies” (82).

Williams argues that a commitment to political equality provides strong grounds for arguing that historically marginalized ascriptive groups have a legitimate claim to self-representation in democratic governments. These groups suffer structural inequalities that make them permanent minorities. The three pillars of the claim to self-representation are the group’s claim to a distinctive voice that they alone can effectively articulate, the group’s rational distrust of representatives from other social groups, and the continuity between the group’s current subordination and their historical exclusion and consequent collective memory of this exclusion.

Historically marginalized groups have distinctive, substantive interests in politics. According to Williams, marginalized group “interests and identities are constituted by social processes that have long existed and will likely continue for a long time” (136). Members of other groups cannot easily understand the substance of their political interests and concerns. The personal experience as a member of the marginalized group gives the members of that group an epistemological edge over members of other groups in terms of their ability to understand, appreciate, and respond to their distinctive group concerns and interests. As Williams puts it: “The voice argument for women’s political equality and political representation is essentially an epistemological argument: men lack deep knowledge of women’s ‘thoughts, wills, and respective situations,’ and so women must represent themselves” (137). Certainly, men could learn about this perspective if they were so inclined, but this process, so important to the political representation of women, cannot be left to depend on the good graces of men. Without the power of elective office, the danger is great that “men will continue to turn a deaf ear to women’s voices” (137). This voice must not just be articulated, Williams further argues, it must be heard and responded to. Thus, in order for women to enjoy political equality, women’s distinctive voice must be articulated and responded to by representatives. Without such self-representation, processes that appear on the surface group-neutral will continue to reinforce the subordinate position of marginalized groups since those in government will not be able to articulate or understand their concerns.

Members of historically marginalized groups frequently distrust members of the dominant social group as representatives of their interests. As Williams notes, this distrust is often based on concrete historical experiences of betrayal. Yet procedural accounts of representation, Williams points out, often assume a confluence of interests between legislator and constituent. Legislators will not enact laws contrary to the interests of their constituents, on this view, because they share those interests and they themselves are subject to the law. But when representatives are not drawn from historically marginalized groups, they do not share the distinctive interests of that group. Sometimes, their interests even conflict with those of the marginalized group members they are supposed to represent. Thus, they do not have the will to defend those interests in the same way they defend their own. As Williams notes, “Whereas the voice argument for group representation focuses on the limitations of privileged groups’ capacity to represent marginalized groups,” the argument from trust focuses on their will to do so (150).

Finally, these claims most strongly ground a claim to self-representation as equal representation for historically marginalized groups. Historically marginalized groups are those groups for which there is both an objective history of subordination and a collective memory of this history. Collective memory is important because it provides groups with an analysis of their oppression and the confidence to articulate that analysis in order to make claims against the dominant group. Objective historical evidence is required in order to distinguish between valid claims of oppression and scurrilous or overly weak claims. Moreover, this “history” must include current disadvantage: “It is ... clear where an account of the connection between past and present inequality must end: with the establishment that historically oppressed groups do not enjoy full social and political equality in the present” (189). In order to have a strong claim for political self-representation, Williams argues, both the objective and the subjective element must be present (188). As Williams notes:

Because of the impact of group inequality on individuals’ opportunities, self-esteem, and sense of their own agency to define and pursue a life worth living, political systems that overlook patterns of structural inequality will never treat members of marginalized groups as equals. To the extent that a commitment to political equality is a defining attribute of a liberal democratic society, there is a collective responsibility to dismantle the processes that reproduce the inequality generated by the state’s support of past discrimination. Until such dismantling has occurred, procedural conceptions of fairness, whether in competition for employment, education, or political representation, will function to reproduce inequality at the same time as they mask it. (193)

In the final section of the book, Williams surveys some different institutional arrangements to explore the possibility that there exist institutional forms that both recognize the rights of individuals and permit the self-representation of historically marginalized groups. The institutional arrangements surveyed include intra-party quotas, consociational democracy, and a variety of forms of proportional representation. Oddly, despite her strong argument that procedurally neutral processes will never dismantle group inequality, the institutional arrangements she suggests explicitly avoid introducing substantive preferences for any group into electoral processes. Rather, the only variation on various kinds of group-neutral processes is an electoral reform commission comprised of leaders from salient political groups.

Williams’ argument for group representation depends on a problematic epistemology that sees the social perspectives of groups as transparent to individual members of the group. This position requires Williams, despite protestations to the contrary, to attribute levels of internal cohesion and self-consciousness to marginalized groups belied by current scholarship and political life. However, if revised, this epistemological underpinning would strengthen her argument for marginalized groups’ claim to self-representation. The required revision, however, would have significant consequences for the recommendations for institutional reform.

As noted, Williams argues that members of marginalized groups have access to knowledge that members of dominant groups do not have. “The most effective starting point for that knowledge is the representative’s own experience of exclusion and subordination” (193). Individual legislators from marginalized groups can articulate their group’s “point of view.” Individual women legislators, for example, can give voice to women’s point of view (193). When a legislator from a disadvantaged group speaks, “The needs she articulates are not hers alone, but the needs shared by members of the group she represents. ...In articulating the group’s perspective on behalf of her constituents, the representative does not need to take up the standpoint of an other; the perspective is hers immediately, although it is not the full expression of her individuality” (141, emphasis in original).

I think Williams is right to say that marginalized groups have a distinctive perspective, and that this perspective is related to the social structures which position them as disadvantaged and which they confront in their everyday lives. But the argument that marginalized groups’ interests and identities are transparent to individual members of the group is deeply problematic and leads to other discontinuities in the argument, especially in the arguments from voice and memory.

Social perspective is related to group members’ individual experiences, but not in the direct, transparent way that Williams seems to suggest. A social perspective is a type of knowledge that groups have. It reflects the vantage point of the social position in which a group finds itself. As Williams notes, members of the group have the experience of being marked out by society as members of a particular class. As members of the group, they may confront obstacles and issues that others need not confront. But individual members of the group do not know which issues confront them as, say, African Americans, which confront them as women, and which confront them as African-American women. The distinctive voice and collective memory to which Williams refers are the product of group organization and mobilization, not its cause. A group perspective does not reside in individuals. Individual members of the group create this knowledge through their interactions with other members of the group.

This group knowledge resides in organizational materials, and the body of newspapers, magazines, television shows, debates, and cultural productions where the group discusses its own well-being. Young describes the Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American paper, as being a place one might find the perspective of African Americans. Similarly, Kinesis, a Vancouver women’s newspaper, is a place to find indications of Canadian women’s social perspective. A social perspective is more like an agenda than a position, more like a list of problem areas than a list of possible solutions or policy options. Social perspectives or agendas are developed through interaction among the members of a social group. Thus, no individual member on her own has special access to knowledge about the group. Social perspectives are not immediately obvious to individual members of the group.

If the social perspective resides in the group, then interaction among members is required before anyone can speak for the group, before anyone can articulate the group perspective. Individual members of the group cannot claim to speak for the group in the absence of such interactions because they lack the epistemological bases (as well as the normative bases) for doing so.

The assumption that a group perspective resides in individuals leads Williams to make some claims about groups that unnecessarily weaken her argument. Williams argues that inclusion of the distinctive voice of marginalized groups requires their self-representation. The assumption that individuals have access to this perspective leads to the assumption that including individual members of the group is sufficient to represent the group perspective: any individual can speak for the group if she is so inclined. Williams follows Phillips in arguing that accountability requires that women claiming to represent women must be subject to mechanisms of accountability to women, but this argument has no epistemological basis. Epistemologically, any individual has the knowledge to articulate a group’s distinctive “voice.”

This easy equation of the individual and the group renders invisible the within-group politics of historically marginalized groups. Solidarity among these groups is usually the product of organizational work and political struggle, not natural affinities. This is not nitpicking: the internal conflicts within these groups present some of the knottiest problems for representation for marginalized groups. Is a minority adequately represented by an all-male team? Can a group of white, straight women speak for minority or lesbian women? One of the most difficult problems for marginalized groups is creating organizations that are representative of their diversity, and which do not reproduce internally the relations of inequality that characterize society at large. There may be institutional mechanisms for doing so, but these must be specified, not assumed.

If, on the other hand, a social perspective is a group attribute, one would never expect individual members of a group to be able to articulate that perspective. Giving voice to the distinctive perspective of marginalized groups would require officially recognized group processes, such as elections or conventions. This seems to me to match more closely the demands of women’s groups and African American organizations which oppose tokenism and demand a real voice in public deliberations.

The memory argument requires that marginalized groups (for the most part) share an identity, and that they may mobilize to articulate it. In requiring a sense of shared political identity, Williams deviates from her strict insistence that the feature of historically marginalized groups that grounds their claim to representation is the structural inequality to which they are subject. She argues this move is necessary in order to respect the interpretation that group members themselves give to these phenomena (199). It is also required to establish that there is, in fact, a group to be represented. A shared political identity, of course, does not assume total agreement, but rather a “subjective sense of shared political interests,” and a shared “memory” or “collective group identity” (196).

This move to require a subjective affinity, a political mobilization around an identity or shared experience rather than around an acknowledgement of a structural condition, weakens the argument. The requirement is too strong even for groups Williams thinks meet it, and it unaccountably excludes some others to whom we might extend special representation.

How will we know if groups have a strong enough sense of affinity to warrant special representation? Williams argues that unanimity is not required, but in some sense the group must see itself as a class. How do we know if ‘the group’ sees itself as a class? Eschewing a unanimity requirement does not solve this problem. How much identification is enough, and how will we know when we meet that level? Certainly many women and African Americans, groups Williams wishes to include, dispute the relevance of group membership to their identity. Conversely, many working-class people and immigrants see their identity as such as central to their experience.

Members of marginalized groups share a structural position, and indeed that position often leads others to identify and usually stigmatize members of the group as being ‘the same’ in that they share some assumed set of characteristics. But few members of these groups have shared experiences or collective memories in the strong sense Williams requires. Women’s history, for example, is not a shared narrative or a collective memory, but rather a set of structurally related accounts of the very different experiences of say, African-American, working-class women and middle-class, white women. It is also controversial to say that women as women have a shared political identity or collective memory. Minority women and lesbian women, in particular, have objected to the assumption that straight white women share their interests or identities. Many marginalized women report feeling little affinity for, and may even feel hostility towards, majority women. This objection cannot be addressed by noting that “all social groups are characterized by diversity” (293) or by pointing out that the identity requirement does not need unanimity.

This requirement also excludes other groups to whom we may wish to allocate special representatives despite their lack of a shared identity (201). We may want to do this especially because the limited resources, geographical dispersion, and the diverse backgrounds of the members of these groups makes organizing around their common structural disadvantage particularly difficult. For example, immigrants to the United States from different parts of the world may find themselves in structurally similar positions, but they may feel little affinity for one another and may have little in the way of shared experience. Yet one would think that the politically weak position of these groups makes them particularly vulnerable to attack (as when the Republican Congress sought to single out legal immigrants in their 1996 Welfare Reform bill), and gives them an especially strong claim to self-representation: they are so disadvantaged that they cannot organize effectively on their own.

Williams acknowledges that the exclusion of such groups is a difficult challenge to her argument, but she contends that providing special representation to unmobilized groups smacks of vanguardism (201). She argues that groups such as class which are characterized by a weak subjective identity must be excluded from claims for self-representation (201). Indeed, she notes that “it would be ridiculous to regard a person as a representative of a class of citizens who do not believe themselves to be a class” (198).

The basis for requiring that the working class must first organize politically around a shared identity is empirical or practical rather than normative. Williams notes, “without such a shared identity, it is impossible to identify the shared interests for which they would hold representatives accountable” (200). I agree with Williams that groups must be able to articulate a common platform or agenda in order to be effectively represented, but such a claim conflicts with the individualist epistemology advanced earlier. Moreover, the inability of these groups to organize effectively may ground claims for special mechanisms to assist in the articulation of that perspective, something Williams still seems to regard as vanguardism.

If merely being the member of a disadvantaged group (i.e., being a woman, African-American, etc., without the condition that one recognizes oneself as such) gives one an epistemological basis for articulating a group perspective, then I think Williams’ argument as it stands would support this individual’s claim for a voice, for self-representation. The marginalized and non-marginalized “live in different worlds.” So even if one working-class person recognizes herself as disadvantaged by structural inequality, shouldn’t she have a claim to special representation? Her group membership in a marginalized group gives her special knowledge, and her disadvantaged status as a member of that group gives her a special claim to speak for that group. Group disadvantage can be established by objective historical data, and the individual can speak for that group, can articulate the excluded voice. Why does one need group mobilization to ground the claims of this person for special representation? I do not think Williams’ epistemology can support this requirement of group self-consciousness, rather than individual members’ recognition of the group of which they are part. The practical requirement that a group must exist to be represented is met by the objective criteria, and a speaker exists to give that group a voice. The point is not that I would advocate recognizing this person as a group representative, but rather that I think stronger grounds are required for adding the subjective identity requirement.

The basis for requiring a group articulation of the social perspective is much stronger if one assumes that group organization and interaction is required for the articulation of group perspectives. And giving a group a voice may mean giving it a forum in which to organize and deliberate, such as an election. Then the question becomes: by what mechanism should the social perspective of this group be represented? Should mechanisms for such articulation be provided to groups who are too weak to organize themselves? Ensuring that such groups are represented just means ensuring that they have a voice. Speaking for them would be vanguardism, but allowing them to speak, even if it is to say nothing or to advocate their own exclusion or non-participation (as Williams suggests could be the case for Native Americans), does not seem like the same thing. Indeed, it would appear that any decisions about a group preference for exclusion or non-participation would require, first, their articulation of that preference.

This epistemological revision would strengthen Williams’s already powerful argument for self-representation, and would render more salient elements of her argument that she does not emphasize. As noted, the revised epistemology I suggest would require that there must be organization and interaction wherein members of marginalized groups can develop their perspective, and representatives can speak for the group only on the basis of their involvement in such deliberations. This suggests that representation would be most effective where marginalized groups are represented by more than one person, and where those representatives are institutionally required to engage in conversations with members of marginalized groups. Although their absence is symptomatic of a problem, we cannot expect legislators who happen to be women or African-American to be able to represent those groups just by “being there,” given the intra-group conflicts and countervailing pressures identified above.

Williams’ suggestion that a proportional representation system using devices such as the cumulative vote and the single transferable vote, combined with an electoral commission comprised of “leaders” of marginalized groups, seems to me inadequate given her own arguments about accountability and the need for a voice in government deliberations. Ultimately, Williams does not support institutional arrangements that guarantee representation for minority groups. This is true in spite of her recognition that in the current situation marginalized groups must depend on the good graces of dominant groups in order to get their voice heard: that is, dominant group representatives must do the work to educate themselves as to the perspective of the minority group and must commit themselves to promoting marginalized group concerns.

Williams’ argument seems to me to require special representatives for marginalized groups. Wouldn’t creating special representatives for women as women or African Americans as African Americans serve the political purpose of guaranteeing them a voice? It might be problematic to insist that women and African Americans could only vote for their own representatives. So perhaps we need to think about less coercive ways of providing special representation.

In the United States, we should add guaranteed representation for marginalized groups to our current system of representation. Nobody argues that the current electoral system does a bad job of giving a voice to privileged groups, such as middle-class white men, or suburbanites. So the real question is what to add to the current electoral system to ensure that marginalized groups have a voice.

One possibility would be two additional elections, one for African-American representatives and one for women, in which women or African Americans could choose to vote (eligibility could be determined the way it is determined now for Minority Business Certification, i.e., a passport or other identifying documents). This would mean that women and African Americans would get an additional vote, and African-American women would get an additional two votes. The meaning of these additional votes would depend on the powers invested in the special representatives. They could be given a purely advisory capacity, although that might not be enough motivation for majority representatives to listen to them seriously. Young has suggested giving marginalized groups a veto over the issues of special importance to them. Williams argues that requiring a super-majority on issues such as government budgets offers more promise since it does not prejudge the issues that will be of importance. Both ideas hold promise, but the idea is that there must be some institutional mechanism, as Williams recognizes, “to increase incentives for deliberation” (236).

The main strengths of this proposal are that it preserves the ideas of authorization and accountability that are so central to democratic representation, and that it does not place additional burdens on already beleaguered marginalized group representatives who have managed to get themselves elected in a general election.

In conclusion, Williams’ concepts of voice, trust, and memory provide the basis for a powerful claim to self-representation of marginalized groups on grounds of political equality. This argument could be made even stronger, I contend, if its epistemological underpinnings were revised to reflect the interactive bases of group perspectives. Even without such revision, Williams’ argument seems to support claims for substantive measures to ensure the inclusion of marginalized groups’ voices in government deliberations. Yet her own recommendations for institutional reform appear quite weak given her compelling critique of proceduralism, her recognition of the importance of democratic accountability for representation, and her acknowledgment of the barriers to the effective articulation of marginalized voices in contexts of domination. In spite of these issues, readers committed to the political equality of all persons, and those interested in the politics of marginalized groups, should take care to read this excellent piece of scholarship.