Representative Democracy

TO ADOPT LINCOLN'S Gettysburg declaration that democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is to endorse a formula that only begins to explain the diversity of regimes that have labeled themselves democratic. A great deal depends on how government might be said to belong to the people and how governments actually operate. A key variable in such considerations is the nature of political representation.

Governments that claim to be “of the people” will vary in the extent to which they represent the range and diversity of voices that constitute the polities that elect them. Apart from those who have been elected, government of the people also depends on who is represented between elections. If government is by the people, it matters which people come to be the people's representatives in government. Only in very small polities can there be any meaningful form of direct democracy. In modern democratic states with mass franchises, some form of representation is necessary. Given the necessary selectivity of this process, it [Page 708]is important to know who runs and who does not run for office, and what chance they have of election. The electoral system itself influences who runs for office and who is elected. Government that is for the people presumably acts in their interests. Mechanisms are needed to assess such interests and how to represent them. Governments vary in how far they are prepared to go on behalf of their people, and may represent forces other than the interests of the people. A major challenge is to come up with people and practices to faithfully represent the public.

Democratic representation is associated with the rise of complex modern societies, notably those that have evolved over the past 200 years. Contemporary democracies have given rise to the growth of political institutions, such as legislatures, and political organizations such as political parties and interest groups. Representative democracy is complex and an adequate understanding of it is grounded in an appreciation of how institutional structures, political organizations, and political movements interact. Despite this, the basic model of representation is quite simple, it is inherent in all forms of political life, even those that existed in egalitarian pre-modern societies. From the beginning, human groups have found it useful to establish roles and select persons who are able to express the ideas, the purposes, or the visions of a number of others.

Representation has at least four distinct meanings in contemporary representative democracies, and particular political systems and eras can be characterized on the basis of particular mixes of these. Mandate representation consists of attempting to transmit, as faithfully as possible, precisely what the people have instructed them to do. In sociodemographic representation, individuals represent others to the extent that they approximate them in their background and personal characteristics such as age, sex, race, region, and religion.

Contemporary polities have been built around political parties. These are organizations that aggregate the generalized political will of large numbers of people. Members of political parties are bound by adherence to the party line; to the extent that they follow it, they manifest partisan representation. People held in high esteem, those who are knowledgeable, intelligent, and of good character, can be said to represent others based upon intrinsic qualities that set them apart from others and fit them for leadership. Philosopher Edmund Burke referred to such qualities as virtual representation.

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