Representative Falsehoods

Abstract In a democracy, public speakers routinely use their speech to represent others. Yet political representatives are notoriously prone to deploying falsehoods. Chapter 4 investigates what moral difference it makes that a falsehood is deployed by a representative. Is the use of falsehoods a betrayal of their role as representatives? Or can falsehoods actually help representatives perform their distinctive functions? I argue that political representation has an ambivalent relationship to falsehoods. Representatives’ distinctive role can indeed place added moral constraints on the use of falsehoods. Yet some misrepresentations are justified partly because they are deployed by a representative. This last point derives from two considerations: that representatives do not merely respond to, but also construct, their constituencies, and that representatives can be authorized to deploy falsehoods. But, even when representative falsehoods are justified, the chapter explains, it is crucial that constituents be capable of holding representatives accountable for using them.