Powers of will and opinion: Nadia Urbinati and the constructivist turn

This paper examines the constructivist turn in political representation from the perspective of Nadia Urbinati’s diarchic model of democracy. To properly assess the significance of Urbinati’s work, it is necessary to situate diarchy within constructivism. While constructivism aims to create new representation spaces for the excluded and marginalized, this endeavour faces challenges in allegations of elitism and manipulation. This paper compares democracy as diarchy with two prominent constructivist approaches, Saward’s claim-making, and Laclau’s hegemonic representation, and it suggests that both fail to address these allegations because they see procedures as external to democratic will formation. This paper concludes that Urbinati’s understanding of how procedures are inherent to democracy provides a valuable synthesis of proceduralism and constructivism, thus providing a novel way of thinking about democratic legitimacy within the constructivist turn.