Legitimacy and hegemony: two accounts of non-electoral representation

Recent theorising on political representation has effectively challenged traditional accounts that located representation in assembled bodies and explained it as the outcome of democratic elections. As a result, and relying on a new conceptual language centred on claim-making, a growing range of political activities, previously labelled as agenda-setting, participation and contestation, are now studied as forms of extra-parliamentary or non-electoral representation. This chapter takes stock of the extant literature and identifies two different ways of looking at non-electoral representation. Each account articulates different normative concerns (democratic legitimacy versus hegemony) and raises different challenges for empirical research.