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

28 September, 2026

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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.

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Liam Stanley

Liam Stanley is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield and a Fellow of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI).

Articles by Liam Stanley
Dillon Wamsley

Dillon Wamsley is a Bicentenary Research Fellow in Humanities in the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester.

Articles by Dillon Wamsley
Joseph Ward

Joseph Ward is a Teaching Associate in Politics at the University of Sheffield.

Articles by Joseph Ward

Symposium on John Boswell’s 'How Citizens Encounter the Democratic State'

When commentators worry about the state of our democracy, they usually worry about voting behaviour: whether citizens vote at all, and whether they vote for parties which promote division and conflict rather than searching for common ground. John Boswell’s book, 'How Citizens Encounter the Democratic State: Weapons of the Meek at the Frontlines of Public Services', starts from the insight that citizens mainly encounter the state in places other than the polling booth: when they seek health care or education, report a crime to the police or indeed are suspected of breaking the law.

In this symposium, Boswell and his interlocutors reflect on what we can learn about our democracy, and how to improve it, when we focus on quotidian interactions with state agencies.

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