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Political Science 114 Notes
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Representation Chap 10Theories of representation
There are a number of competing theories on representation. Examples:
• Does representative government imply that the government ‘knows better’ than the
people, that the government has somehow ‘been instructed’ by the people what to do and
how to behave?
• Does the government ‘look like’ the people, in that it broadly re ects their characteristics
or features?
• Should elected politicians be bound by policies and positions outlined during an election
and endorsed by the voters, or is it their job to lead public opinion and thereby help to
de ne the public interest?
Four principal models of representation have been advanced.
Trustee model
A trustee is a person who acts on behalf of others, using his or her superior knowledge, better
education or greater experience.
Burke: representation is a moral duty: those with the good fortune to possess education and
understanding should act in the interests of those who are less fortunate. This view had strongly
elitist implications, since it stresses that, once elected, representatives should think for
themselves and exercise independent judgement on the grounds that the mass of people do not
know their own best interests.
Mill: although all individuals have a right to be represented, not all political opinions are of equal
value. The higher the education and the better the job someone has, the more votes they would
have. Rational voters would support politicians who could act wisely on their behalf, rather than
those who merely re ected the voters’ own views.
Trustee representation thus portrays professional politicians as representatives, insofar as they are
members of an educated elite. It is based on the belief that knowledge and understanding are
unequally distributed in society, in the sense that not all citizens know what is best for them.
Criticism of Burke’s view:
• It appears to have clearly anti-democratic implications.
• If politicians should think for themselves because the public is ignorant, poorly educated
or deluded, then surely it is a mistake to allow the public to elect their representatives in the
rst place.
• The link between representation and education is questionable. Whereas education may
certainly be of value in aiding the understanding of intricate political and economic
problems, it is far less clear that it helps politicians to make correct moral judgements about
the interests of others.
• There is little evidence, for example, to support Burke’s and Mill’s belief that education
breeds altruism and gives people a broader sense of social responsibility.
• If politicians are allowed to exercise their own judgement, they will simply use that latitude
to pursue their own sel sh interests. In this way, representation could simply become a
substitute for democracy.
Delegate model
A delegate is a person who acts as a conduit conveying the views of others, while having little or
no capacity to exercise his or her own judgement or preferences.
Those who favour this model of representation as delegation usually support mechanisms that
ensure that politicians are bound as closely as possible to the views of the represented.
Such a mechanism is ‘frequent interchange’ between representatives and their constituents in the
form of regular elections and short terms in o ce. In addition, radical democrats have advocated
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,the use of initiatives and the right of recall as means of giving the public more control over
politicians.
Delegated representation provides broader opportunities for popular participation and serves to
check the self-serving inclinations of professional politicians. It thus comes as close as is possible
in representative government to realizing the ideal of popular sovereignty.
Disadvantages of this model:
• In ensuring that representatives are bound to the interests of their constituents, it tends to
breed narrowness and foster con ict.
• This is what Burke feared would occur if members of the legislature acted as ambassadors
who took instructions from their constituents, rather than as representatives of the nation.
• Because professional politicians are not trusted to exercise their own judgement,
delegation limits the scope for leadership (see p. 334) and statesmanship.
• Politicians are forced to re ect the views of their constituents or even pander to them, and
are thus not able to mobilize the people by providing vision and inspiration.
Mandate model
The trustee model and the delegate model were developed before the emergence of modern
political parties, and therefore view representatives as essentially independent actors. Individual
candidates are now rarely elected mainly on the basis of their personal qualities and talents; more
commonly, they are seen, to a greater or lesser extent, as foot soldiers for a party, and are
supported because of its public image or programme of policies.
A new theory of representation is the ‘doctrine of the mandate’: in winning an election, a party
gains a popular mandate that authorizes it to carry out whatever policies or programmes it
outlined during the election campaign. This model provides a clear justi cation for party unity and
party discipline. In e ect, politicians serve their constituents not by thinking for themselves or
acting as a channel to convey their views, but by remaining loyal to their party and its policies.
Strengths of the mandate model:
• It takes account of the undoubted practical importance of party labels and party policies.
• It provides a means of imposing some kind of meaning on election results, as well as a
way of keeping politicians to their word.
Weaknesses of the mandate model:
• It is based on a highly questionable model of voting behaviour, insofar as it suggests that
voters select parties on the grounds of policies and issues. Voters are not always the
rational and well-informed creatures that this model suggests.
• Even if voters are in uenced by policies, it is likely that they will be attracted by certain
manifesto commitments, but be less interested in, or perhaps opposed to, others.
• The doctrine imposes a straitjacket. It limits government policies to those positions and
proposals that the party took up during the election, and leaves no scope to adjust policies
in the light of changing circumstances.
• The doctrine of the mandate can be applied only in the case of majoritarian electoral
systems, and its use even there may appear absurd if the winning party fails to gain 50 per
cent of the popular vote.
Resemblance model
This theory is based on the typi cation or resemblance the group the representatives claim to
represent. This is embodied in the idea of a ‘representative cross-section’.
A representative government could sometimes be said to constitute a microcosm of the larger
society, containing members drawn from all groups and sections in society, and in numbers that
are proportional to the size of the groups in society at large. This is the idea of descriptive
representation/‘microcosmic representation’.
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, Few advocates of descriptive representation argue that only a member of a minority group can
represent the interests of the group. Ex: men are simply incapable of representing women’s
interests. Instead, it is accepted that male feminists, or ‘pro-feminist’ males, can and do advance
gender-equitable policy agendas in meaningful ways.
This is sometimes explained in terms of the di erence between empathy, in the sense of ‘putting
oneself in the shoes of another’, and having direct personal experience of what other people go
through.
By countering the systematic exclusion of minority groups, and so increasing the level of diversity
in elected bodies, it ensures that better decisions are made for the common good.
Elections
Elections may not, in themselves, be a su cient condition for political representation but, in
modern circumstances, there is little doubt that they are a necessary condition. Indeed, some
thinkers have gone further and portrayed elections as the very heart of democracy.
Schumpeter: ‘democracy means only that the people have the opportunity of accepting or
refusing the men who are to rule them’.
There are very di erent forms that elections can take:
• Which o ces or posts are subject to the elective principle?
• Although elections are widely used to ll those public o ces whose holders have policy-
making responsibilities (the legislature and executive, in particular), key political institutions
are sometimes treated as exceptions.
• Who is entitled to vote, how widely is the franchise drawn?
• There may be informal restrictions, as in the practice in most US states of leaving electoral
registration entirely in the hands of the citizen, with the result that non-registration and non-
voting are widespread. On the other hand, in some countries voting is compulsory.
• How are votes cast?
• Modern political elections are generally held on the basis of a secret ballot. The secret
ballot is usually seen as the guarantee of a ‘fair’ election, in that it keeps the dangers of
corruption and intimidation at bay.
• It is also a ected by the voters’ access to reliable and balanced information, the range of
choice they are o ered, the circumstances under which campaigning is carried out, and
how scrupulously the vote is counted.
• Are elections competitive or non-competitive?
• Electoral competition is a highly complex and often controversial issue. It concerns not
merely the right of people to stand for election and the ability of political parties to nominate
candidates and campaign legally, but also broader factors that a ect party performance,
such as their sources of funding and their access to the media.
• How is the election conducted?
Functions of elections
The advance of democratization in the 80s and 90s, stimulated in part by the collapse of
communism, has usually been associated with the adoption of liberal-democratic electoral
systems, characterized by universal su rage, the secret ballot and electoral competition.
There are two contrasting views of the function of competitive elections:
• The conventional view is that elections are a mechanism through which politicians can be
called to account and forced to introduce policies that somehow re ect public opinion.
• This emphasizes bottom-up functions of elections: political recruitment, in uencing policy,
representation, etc.
• The radical view portrays them as a means through which governments and political elites
can exercise control over their populations, making them more quiescent, malleable and,
ultimately, governable.
• This emphasizes top-down functions: building legitimacy, shaping public opinion, etc.
In reality, however, elections have no single character; they are neither simply mechanisms of
public accountability, nor a means of ensuring political control.
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, The central functions of elections include the following:
• Recruiting politicians: In democratic states, elections are the principal source of political
recruitment, taking account also of the processes through which parties nominate
candidates. politicians thus tend to possess talents and skills that are related to
electioneering,
• Making governments: elections make governments directly only in states such as the USA.
In the parliamentary systems, elections in uence the formation of governments, most
strongly when the electoral system tends to give a single party a clear parliamentary
majority.
• Providing representation: when they are fair and competitive, elections are a means
through which demands are channelled from the public to the government.
• In uencing policy: elections certainly deter governments from pursuing radical and deeply
unpopular policies. Others suggest that government policy is, in any case, shaped more by
practical dictates, such as the state of the economy, than it is by electoral considerations.
• Educating voters: the process of campaigning provides the electorate with an abundance
of information, about parties, candidates, policies, the current government’s record, the
political system, etc. As candidates and parties seek to persuade, rather than to educate,
they also have a strong incentive to provide incomplete and distorted information.
• Building legitimacy: one reason why even authoritarian regimes bother to hold elections,
even if they are non-competitive, is that elections help to foster legitimacy by providing
justi cation for a system of rule.
• Strengthening elites: elections can also be a vehicle through which elites can manipulate
and control the masses.
Electoral systems: debates and controversies
An electoral system is a set of rules that governs the conduct of elections. These rules vary in a
number of ways:
• Voters may be asked to choose between candidates or between parties.
• Voters may either select a single candidate, or vote preferentially, ranking the candidates
they wish to support in order.
• The electorate may or may not be grouped into electoral units or constituencies.
• Constituencies may return a single member or a number of members.
• The level of support needed to elect a candidate varies from a plurality to an overall or
‘absolute’ majority, or a quota of some kind.
The systems available can be divided into two broad categories on the basis of how they convert
votes into seats:
• In majoritarian systems, larger parties typically win a higher proportion of seats than the
proportion of votes they gain in the election. This increases the chances of a single party
gaining a parliamentary majority and being able to govern on its own.
• Proportional systems guarantee an equal relationship between the seats won by a party
and the votes gained in the election. PR systems therefore make single-party majority rule
less likely, and are commonly associated with multiparty systems and coalition government.
Electoral systems attract attention, in part, because they have a crucial impact on party
performance and, particularly, on their prospects of winning (or, at least, sharing) power.
To a greater or lesser extent, each majoritarian system distorts popular preferences, in the sense
that party representation is not commensurate with electoral strength. This is most glaringly
apparent in their ‘unfairness’ to small parties and parties with evenly distributed geographical
support, and their ‘overfairness’ in relation to large parties and those with geographically
concentrated support.
Two-party systems and single-party government are thus ‘manufactured’ by the majoritarian bias
of the electoral system, and do not re ect the distribution of popular preferences. Moreover, the
fact that parties can come to power with barely two- fths of the popular vote strains the
legitimacy of the entire political system, and creates circumstances in which radical, ideologically
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