Convincing claims? Democracy and representation in post-9/11 Britain

This article is about political representation and representative claim making, taking as its backdrop the ongoing public controversy and disaffection concerning the British government's policy and conduct in the 'war on terror'. We investigate ethnographic-style data that chart the responses of citizens to foreign and domestic policy in the war on terror and in particular their responses to the representation and justification of policy decisions by political leaders. Our focus is not on political representatives and their intentions, but on the representations of objects and identities in political discourse and how citizens respond to these representations. We suggest that despite the existence of matters of potentially shared concern, such as 'Iraq' and 'terrorism', the representations offered by the British government have often been too certain, fixed and direct, making it difficult for citizens to comprehend or connect to their representations as meaningful and negotiable. Following Bruno Latour, we describe this mode of representation as 'fundamentalist', and contrast it with a 'constructivist' mode of more contingent representations where politicians take into account and can be taken into account. Our analysis suggests citizens respond to fundamentalist claims in several ways. For some, the response has been antagonism, alienation and a lack of belief in the ability of democratic politics to arrive at responsible decisions on shared problems and concerns. For others, however, inadequate representative claims generate a demand for the construction of more nuanced, complex representations, even acting as a spur for some to contest the claims through political engagement.