Within the last decade, sociologists as well as scholars of political culture and elections have come to conclusions that should warn us about studying political interests as something that is linked to the identity of people in a group. Yet, despite innovation within representation theory concerning the way in which we are to approach and study identity groups, representation theorists, for the most
part, continue to conceive of interest as something that is linked to identity. This paper offers an alternative route. Reopening Pitkin’s classical approach to representation points out that her concept of substantively acting for is a dual one. Hence, it consists of acting for interests that are
attached to the identity of specific people on the one hand (what I term ‘Pitkin’s first way’) and interests that exist unattached of peoples’ identity on the other (what I term ‘Pitkin’s second way’). By reclaiming this much forgotten second way and readjusting it so that it is capable of incorporating the important innovations of recent representation theory and the twenty-first century, the paper
creates an opportunity for representation theorists and political actors alike, to create new distance between identity and interests.