Care and Political Representation: Exploring the Challenges of Contemporary Representative Democracy with an Account of Democratic Care Ethics

Abstract

Care, as a concept and a practice, is meaningful for many aspects of human life. Characterised by responsiveness to need and ongoing practice, it has informed the development of diverse scholarship. One strand in particular, care ethics, advances unique insights for an array of phenomena which stem from the meaning and value of the notion of care. This array of phenomena is not limited to our most intimate conditions of need but extends into our public and our political lives. Care and democracy, for example, can be intricately linked. This thesis addresses these links and presents an account of democratic care ethics as a productive approach to consider the challenges in contemporary democracies and the place and potential of political representation in democratic theory and practice. To develop an argument for the value of such an account, this thesis resists standard typologies of representation and incorporates representative claims-making into the meaning of “democratic”; and it distils insights from care ethics to express the idea of caring representative democracies. The first of the two moves hinges on the identification of a uniqueness to democratic engagement, and the emphasis of political judgement and need evaluation. The second move hinges on a nuanced account of caring, a recognition of interdependence, and the continued renegotiation of the boundary between morality and politics. Through these moves, this work brings together, with mutual benefit, two fields of study and, in doing so, attempts to embrace the insights of care ethics about what people give and receive – what they may want and what they may get – from politics, from democracy and from each other.