From representative democracy to political representation

JOÃO MINEIRO

Researcher CRIA | Iscte – Centre for Research in Anthropology

“Doing Politics: An Ethnography of the Assembly of the Republic” is the result of doctoral research that, for three years, delved into the labyrinths of parliament to understand how deputies, advisors, officials and journalists understand politics.

What was the starting question for this investigation?

Research questions are a permanent construct. It is hard to imagine a question posed at the beginning of an investigation that is precisely the question at the end. The fact that this work is an ethnography is reflected in this. In ethnography, questions arise as we enter a particular human context, such as a village, a church, or a parliament. In the beginning, my questions were empirical: is there an idea of how parliament works, especially from media representations or how it presents itself? I wanted to understand how parliament works beyond that image: What are the formal/informal workspaces? What is the story of the people who arrive there? How do they learn to be parliamentarians? What is the role of officials or journalists? What do Members do when they travel to districts, and what meaning do they attach to these visits? What are the backstage spaces, and how do they relate to the more public spaces?

These questions were starting points, but over time, the reflection metamorphosed into a central question that filled the entire thesis: “What idea of politics is constructed in the daily life of a parliament?” This question guided the way I read that world. When I studied the life trajectory of the deputies, I did so with the question, “What is politics for these people? How does their life story relate to the way they have been imagining politics? What kind of knowledge is valued in politics? What kind of relationships are revealed in institutional politics?”

We all have an idea about what politics is. The book begins with this discussion: what politics is for each of us, in different theoretical traditions, social movements, etc. We may have different conceptions. In parliament, a concrete idea of politics is constructed, which determines who accesses and who does not, who can adapt to the institution, how people present themselves as public representatives, how they relate to citizens, and how they build a boundary between who is inside and outside. The work also focused on advisors, journalists, HR employees and citizens.

What method and period were covered in the study?

The study occurred between July 2015 and October 2018, following three legislative sessions, the so-called "contraption" period. In terms of methodology, I start from the idea that ethnography is the global methodology of research, but that it then unfolds into a set of particular methods: I frame participant and non-participant observation – a prolonged presence with the people who work there, sometimes in a more direct way, and sometimes in a more distant way. A second method was ethnographic job shadowing, which involved following a week's work of certain people. Learning the work they do implies sitting next to someone who is working and receiving emails and understanding with the person what are the criteria they use to answer, what kind of answers they give, whether or not they have autonomy, how they get the memory of the institution, if they have to improvise, in short, learn this work in practice – following people's work like a shadow. I also conducted 134 interviews, some of which were protracted, as in the case of the new Members. I used descriptive statistics mainly to make a socio-demographic analysis of the characteristics of the deputies. I did media analysis, that is, how face-to-face interactions are transformed into representation on social networks and how everything is processed with the journalist's role. I also carried out a documentary analysis of the RA diaries, the internal regulations, and the bills. I also made biographical portraits. The whole methodology was focused on understanding practices, discourses and relationships.

How much of the deputies did it cover the political-ideological stain of the parliament? How was it received?

One of the defects of this work stems from one of its advantages: it does not differentiate the body of representatives by partisanship. I do not distinguish between parties, and I don't even reveal people's political identity. If the methodology is not considered, we can be left with a homogeneous conception of Members who are, in fact, diverse. Choosing not to put the names and not to differentiate the parties was a sine qua non-condition for many to let me observe their offices, workrooms, and emails. That was not set in stone at the outset.

For example, I would like to understand the hierarchies: in parliament, there are formal and informal ones, and they happen within groups, in which there are logics of power disputes based on seniority and symbolic power. People only reported this to me on condition of anonymity. They gained confidence, and as I say in the book, for an ethnographer, the most important thing is "to understand what a secret is in an institution". It is being told to me and is not supposed to be revealed. It is not supposed to say a certain intrigue but to understand its role in this social world. Not disclosing people's identities can be considered a disadvantage. The advantage is that not having the names of the parties avoids reproducing. Some political scientists refer to the party as a "cognitive shortcut." When the name of a party is linked to a fact, we activate a set of preconceptions. I wanted to avoid that.

The researcher is also a citizen with political ideas and interests, certainly. Wasn't there this bias in your research? How did you protect yourself?

From a methodological point of view, an ethnographer starts from the assumption that the knowledge he constructs is based on an intersubjective relationship between those observing and those being observed. I reveal things about myself to the people I'm with to the extent that they reveal things about themselves, and it's in this dialogue that we gain trust.

In parliament, hierarchies are complex, formal/informal, and happen within groups. There is a logic of power disputes within parliamentary groups based on seniority and symbolic power.

How can we not let the identity of the investigator condition the vision?

It is to multiply the number of people we are with and to examine the methodology critically.
I followed all the parties (CDS, PSD, PS, PAN, PCP, PEV, BE), but it was difficult, and not all had the same openness. When a parliamentary leader says, 'I have half an hour to you', I can only do a directive interview and choose the questions well. In other cases, I could do an open interview with more time. It is, therefore, essential to multiply protagonists, not only in terms of partisanship but also in terms of diversity. By then, I noticed that I was listening almost exclusively to men. Of course, parliament tends to be dominated by men, but it is even more so in the leadership of parliamentary groups and committees. Throughout the investigation, there are times when I take stock of the situation. The parliament is very fragmented, and I needed to include people who did not belong to the leadership, did not speak in the plenary, and had no contact with journalists. Then I realised I had to focus on the anonymous Members to understand what they do. It was a way to avoid bias inherent in the process. In research, we must consider the methodologies we apply and adjust.

He encountered different party cultures. Did you find similarities and differences beyond ideologies?

The body of representatives is not homogeneous but coherent. Although there is a diversity of positions of life histories, there are dominant characteristics: common educational paths, dominant professions, a form of relationship that tends to be professionalised with the parties, a way of understanding politics in parliament not as a transitional phase, but as a moment of politics to which others are added, in the municipalities, in the parties, and so on. There is a shared poly-involvement, so 54% of the deputies were candidates during local elections.
Multipositional political representation is prevalent in municipalities, parliaments, and parties. The paths are similar when we discover how they became deputies. Then, in terms of sociability, the groups of friends, the family relationships, and the vision of the world, they revolve around politics. That is why I say it is coherent: politics becomes a referential dimension of these people's lives.

Political journalism, which designates itself as an element of scrutiny of reality, is an element of constructing that reality.

Do younger Members find it challenging to fit in?

The more cultural and social proximity people have, the easier it is for them to get there and their ability to adapt. And it is in this sense that they are not homogeneous, but they are coherent. A Member of Parliament said, in the book: 'We are politicians, but we have to have the car keys in our pockets because at any moment this could end, and we have to move on'. However, he was a teacher in the 1970s, and the discipline he taught had already changed twice. He acknowledged that he was no longer in a position to return. Some people live a little tormented by what they have given up.
The rhythm that has intensified with social networks, with 24-hour newscasts, has made the policy of such a demand, in terms of involvement, that it has forced many of these people to give up a lot, not to have the relationships with family and friends that they would like, to give up personal hobbies, and not to be able to be in public spaces in the same way. There is a bitterness that is very real.
It takes time to gain a status within parliament. With the sociocultural factor, there begins to be recognition of collaboration, empathy, and a sense of belonging that shapes people's trajectories. A bubble is built, and it is natural for people to live in this bubble and disconnect a little from the country's social life—they no longer have a profession for many years. They no longer get along daily with people outside of there.

In this work, he also accompanied parliamentary journalists. Are they a very particular body?

Political journalism, which designates itself as an element of scrutiny of reality, is an element of constructing that reality. In other words, journalists construct a particular idea of politics, of a specific time that politics has, of a particular urgency and need for hypercommunication.
There is an episode where two journalists got upset with each other because they had agreed to use the "ping-pong strategy", and it did not happen. And what is this strategy? One requests a statement from a deputy and sends it to another by WhatsApp so that he can ask for a reaction from another party, and so on. They would get together and make a play when they had some reactions. This is ping-pong journalism. What is the issue here? This is not a form of scrutiny of political reality but a form of construction because the journalist is constructing this action/counter-reaction.
On the other hand, journalists who have been in parliament for many years are very critical of the way news coverage has evolved. They do not have time to reflect or historise the processes, nor do they do fact-checking. This creates the illusion that merely recording what is observed represents what is happening. And it's not. Another example. I witnessed a very heated debate between the Prime Minister (PM) and a member of parliament from one of the left-wing parties. However, the discussion ends, and the PM is seen with a deputy from that party, someone close to the negotiations of the contraption. The journalists then said that the PM and the deputy were resolving the disagreement in the plenary. Nothing could be more wrong: they were dealing with an announcement on another topic that would only become public two months later. That issue discussed in the plenary had already been agreed upon for several weeks. What is the purpose of the plenary? To show that despite the compromise that would be announced a few days later, the parties' starting positions were different.

In other words, is the plenary the stage for representing something negotiated behind the scenes?

Parliament only functions in this dual articulation between the public representation of politics and the backstage of representative democracy.
What I tried to do was an honest account of the workings of the parliament. We may think: the vices of this democracy are mirrored here. We can look at it from another perspective: we have one of the few parliaments in the world where a breadth of ideological currents is represented, which has survived and maintained diversity (which does not happen in supposedly consolidated democracies, such as the USA or England). In other words, we have a parliament with more than half a dozen parties represented, and that works, even though we have people from the extreme right and racists, even people who do not see themselves in the model of liberal democracy. The parliament functions as a space for public representation of these differences.