A Crisis of Representation: Reflections on John Boswell, How Citizens Encounter the Democratic State

Abstract In this symposium contribution, we subject John Boswell's How Citizens Encounter the Democratic State to the scrutiny warranted by its contribution. While the book offers a rich categorisation of the myriad forms of mundane agency one can observe in the underbelly of the democratic state, we seek to extend the argument by situating it in some of the biggest questions in politics and political science: what is power? Who exercises it? How do those without it get what they want? And how do these relations change over time? Our contention is that by explicitly considering these questions alongside the mundane, we will be better placed to grasp fully the crisis of politics confronting liberal democracies.