Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

constitutional functions. The crisis of democratic representation
certainly marks one major weakness of the constitutional
arrangement. Legislative powers now have a very weak, almost
nonexistent ability to propose social projects, manage budgets,
and above all control military' affairs. The primary' role of
legislatures, in fact, has become providing support for or creating
obstacles to executive initiatives. It seems that the US Congress's
greatest activity, for example, is to block the projects of the
executive and to bring to a halt the functioning of the
government.
In this context, when the Left entrusts its hopes to the
legislative branch (and this is often the only available space), it is
inevitably frustrated and disillusioned. People's sense of
alienation continues to grow with respect to political parties,
which are the backbone of parliamentary' representation, and the
mistrust of leftist parties is especially strong. The tasks required
of parties from the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries, of
course, have become extraordinarily complex: in addition to the
classical problems of the representation of civil society are
problems of government debt, migrations, energy politics,
climate change, and so forth. Faced with such complexity their
capacities of representation should extend and become more
specialized. In reality, though, their representative capacities
vanish. The parliamentary' system, infested with lobbies, proves
to be totally inadequate for these tasks. How can it be reformed
or renewed Is it possible to create new forms of representation
and a new terrain of civil debate in which a constituent process
could be built from below The traditional Left has no response
to these questions. Debates about reforming electoral systems
invariably go nowhere. In Europe, in particular, in discussions
about electoral laws it is difficult to distinguish between irony
and cynicism. The leftist parties are completely incapable of
confronting the dominant role that money plays in electoral
politics, both through direct campaign contributions and through
the media, which is increasingly becoming the means of
expression for the rich and powerful. Their pretense of
representing society disappears behind the power of money. And,
thus, perhaps paradoxically, corruption becomes, especially for
the Left, an almost unavoidable path to election.