Anonymity in political representation: building a theory

我的研究项目涉及匿名代表的概念（即政治候选人对选民的可识别性程度-或缺乏可识别性程度），旨在回答以下研究问题：“执行不同形式的匿名代表（通过制度改革和/或法律约束）对候选人质量和选举过程的潜在影响是什么？”利用政治理论和民主制度设计研究的方法，目的是测试开放和透明作为民主理想的局限性，并询问民主和匿名是否可以在有限的投票箱匿名实施之外同床共床，以及匿名是否有利于审议和民主代表。这些问题是由我们周围随处可见的政治发展引发的，比如政治日益“个人化”，以及“亲密”意识形态的传播，这可能会威胁到民主审查的可能性。到目前为止，关于匿名及其对民主社会政治影响的学术文献几乎只关注普通公民和选民的匿名性，将政治候选人的公众地位视为一个不可改变的常数。然而，政治候选人的公共性质与公民普遍认为选民不应该投票给候选人，而应该投票给他们所代表的政治理念和项目，或者最多投票给候选人作为特定少数民族或社会类别成员的地位的信念是紧张的。大量实证研究指出，选民的选择在很大程度上受到候选人的个人、非政治特征的影响，如魅力、地位、外表、面孔、声音和肢体语言。这些可以对选民的行为产生足够大的影响，从而左右选举。这种情况发生在政治环境中，能力比过去更不重要，候选人的反社会特征，如低水平的亲和性和情绪稳定性，与选举成功正相关。尽管在同行评议的文献中，候选人的公共地位很少受到挑战，但公共领域的学者通常很少关注匿名，在政治代表的背景下，匿名就更少了。鉴于缺乏明确探讨政治代表中的匿名性的学术研究，我计划进行的研究本质上是探索性的。我的第一步将是创建一个类型学，跨越各种形式的匿名与不同的选举过程。由于匿名性和可识别性存在于一个连续体中，代表的匿名性并不一定意味着选民无法获得关于候选人的所有信息。例如，在公开演讲和政治辩论的背景下，代表的匿名性可能意味着当候选人公开讲话时，他们的脸被隐藏（视觉匿名），他们所说的与他们作为政党候选人的身份有关，而他们的个人身份被隐藏（个人匿名），或者他们的真实姓名不为人所知（假名）。在投票箱中，这可能意味着选民投票给候选人的政治声明，而不是候选人本人，没有一个标签，使声明和候选人之间的联系对选民来说是明确的。代表匿名也可以通过法律要求各政党在选举之后而不是在选举之前选出其最突出的候选人来实施。在方法上，我将采用规范性方法（在可取性、可行性和合法性的标准下分析表征类型的各种匿名性）和比较方法。后者将包括分析个性化媒体出现前后的历史案例。

My research project concerns the notion of anonymity of representation (i.e. the degree of identifiability - or lack thereof - of a political candidate to voters) and aims to answer the following research question: "What are the potential effects of the enforcement of different forms of anonymity of representation (through institutional reforms and/or legal constraints) on the quality of candidates and electoral processes?" Drawing on the methods of political theory, and studies of democratic institutional design, the goal is to test the limits of openness and transparency as democratic ideals and to ask whether democracy and anonymity can be bed-fellows beyond the limited implementation of anonymity at the ballot boxes, and whether anonymity can benefit both deliberation and democratic representation. These are questions motivated by political developments seen everywhere around us, like the growing "personalisation" of politics and the dissemination of an ideology of "intimacy" which might threaten the very possibility of democratic scrutiny. So far, the academic literature that addresses anonymity and its effects on politics in democratic societies has focused almost exclusively on the anonymity of common citizens and voters, taking the public status of political candidates as an unchangeable constant. The public nature of political candidates, however, is in tension with the widespread belief, among citizens, that voters should vote not for candidates but rather for the political ideas and projects they represent, or at most for the candidates' status as members of a particular minority or social category. Numerous empirical studies point to the fact that voters' choice is greatly influenced by personal, non-political traits of candidates such as charisma, status, appearance, face, voice and body language. These can have a sufficiently high impact on voters' behaviour to sway elections. This occurs in a political environment in which competence matters less than in the past and candidates' antisocial traits such as low levels of agreeableness and emotional stability are positively correlated with electoral success. Notwithstanding, the public status of candidates is rarely challenged in peer-reviewed literature, scholars of the public sphere have generally paid little attention to anonymity, and even less to anonymity in the context of political representation. Given the lack of scholarship explicitly addressing anonymity in political representation, the research I plan to carry out is exploratory in nature. My first step will be to create a typology that crosses the various forms of anonymity with different electoral processes. Since anonymity and identifiability exist in a continuum, anonymity of representation does notnecessarily mean that all information about candidates is inaccessible to voters. For example, in the context of public speeches and political debates, anonymity of representation could mean that when a candidate talks publicly, their face is concealed (visual anonymity), that what they say is associated with their identity as party candidates while their individual identity is kept hidden (personal anonymity), or that their real name is not known (pseudonymity). At the ballot boxes, it could mean that voters vote for a candidate's political statements instead of for the candidate themselves, without a label that makes the connection between statements and candidate explicit to voters. Anonymity of representation could also be implemented through a legal requirement for parties to select their most prominent candidates after and not before elections. Methodologically, I will take both a normative approach (analysing various anonymity of representation types under the criteria of desirability, feasibility and legitimacy) and a comparative one. The latter will include the analysis of historical cases before and after the advent of personalising media.