Chapter 10: Elections, Representation and Voting
Representation
Theories of representation
There are a number of competing theories on representation. Examples:
1. 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?
2. Does the government ‘look like’ the people, in that it broadly reflects their
characteristics or features?
3. 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 define 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 reflected 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:
1. 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 first place.
2. 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.
3. If politicians are allowed to exercise their own judgement, they will simply use that
latitude to pursue their own selfish 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 office. In addition, radical democrats have
advocated 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:
1. In ensuring that representatives are bound to the interests of their constituents, it
tends to breed narrowness and foster conflict.
○ 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.
2. Because professional politicians are not trusted to exercise their own judgement,
delegation limits the scope for leadership and statesmanship.
○ Politicians are forced to reflect 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
justification for party unity and party discipline. In effect, 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:
1. It takes account of the undoubted practical importance of party labels and party
policies.
2. 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:
1. 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.
2. Even if voters are influenced by policies, it is likely that they will be attracted by
certain manifesto commitments, but be less interested in, or opposed to, others.
3. 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.
4. 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 typification 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’.
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 difference 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 sufficient 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 different forms that elections can take:
1. Which offices or posts are subject to the elective principle?
○ Although elections are widely used to fill those public offices whose holders
have policy-making responsibilities (the legislature and executive, in
particular), key political institutions are sometimes treated as exceptions.
2. 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.
3. 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 affected by the voters’ access to reliable and balanced information,
the range of choice they are offered, the circumstances under which
campaigning is carried out, and how scrupulously the vote is counted.
4. 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 affect party performance, such as their sources of funding
and their access to the media.
5. 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 suffrage, the secret ballot and electoral competition.
There are two contrasting views of the function of competitive elections:
1. The conventional view is that elections are a mechanism through which politicians
can be called to account and forced to introduce policies that somehow reflect public
opinion.
○ This emphasizes bottom-up functions of elections: political recruitment,
influencing policy, representation, etc.
2. 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.
The central functions of elections include the following:
