IPOL end-term assigned reading notes
Week 9: democracy through elections
Chapter 10: representation, elections, and voting
Introduction
● Elections are seen as nothing less than democracy in practice. They are means through
which the people can control their government. → central is the notion of
representation.
● Representation may be the closest thing we can come to achieving government by the
people
● No consensus over the criteria
● Little agreement over why voters vote the way they do.
Representation
● Who should be represented is a question that was very central earlier → white
educated men only or all adult citizens? → these days acceptance of the principle of
political equality (one person - one vote)
● Representation: is broadly a relationship through which an individual group stands
for, or acts on behalf of, a larger body of people.
● Theories of representation
➢ Trusteeship
- A trustee is a person who acts on behalf of others, using their superior
knowledge.
- Edmund Burke: representation is a duty → those with the good fortune
to possess education and understanding should act in the interests of
those who are less fortunate.
- Strongly elitist → when representatives are elected they should think
for themselves and exercise independent judgment.
- John Stuart Mill: all individuals have the right to be represented. But
not all opinions are of the equal value → system of plural voting
- Knowledge and understanding are inequality distributed in society, and
not all citizens know what is best for them.
- Critics → it appears to have clearly anti-democratic implications. If
politicians should think for themselves because the public is ignorant
and poorly educated, then surely it is a mistake to allow the public to
elect their representatives in the first place.
➢ Delegation
- 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
judgment/preference.
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, -Ensure that politicians are bound as closely as possible to the views of
the represented → “frequent interchange” between representatives and
their constituents in the form of regular elections and short term in
office.
- Radical democrats advocate for: initiatives and the right of recall as a
means of more control over politicians
- Provides broader opportunities for popular participation and severs to
check the self-serving inclinations of politicians.
- Disadvantage: representatives are bound to the interests of their
constituents, it tends to breed narrowness and foster conflict.
➢ The mandate
- “Doctrine of the mandate” - based on the idea that, in winning an
election, a party gains a popular mandate that authorizes it to carry out
whatever policies or programs it outlines during the election campaign.
As it is the party, rather than individual politicians, that is the agent of
representation, the mandate model provides a clear justification for
party unity.
- A way of keeping politicians to their word
- Criticism: based on a highly questionable model of voting behavior,
insofar as it suggests that voters select parties on the ground of policies
and issues. Voters are not always the regional and well-informed
creatures that this model suggests.
- Criticism: likely that they will be attracted by certain manifesto
commitments, but less interested in, or perhaps opposed to others. A
vote for a party cannot, therefore, be taken to be an endorsement of its
entire manifesto.
- Criticism: limits government policies to those positions and proposals
that the party took up during elections, and leaves no scope to adjust
policies in light of change.
- Manifesto: a document outlining the policies or program a party
proposes to pursue if elected.
➢ Resemblance
- Based less on the manner in which representatives are selected than on
whether they typify or resemble the group they claim to represent.
- By this standard, a representative government could sometimes be said
to constitute a microcosm (literally “little world” but with the exact
features and proportions) or the larger society. → descriptive
representation
- It is accepted that for example, male feminists can and do advance
gender-equitable policy agendas. At the same time, there is a
recognition that it is women officeholders who most often thoroughly
address public policy issues regarding women. → difference between
empathy and experience
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, - A further advantage of descriptive representations is that, 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
● The representative process is intrinsically linked to elections and voting.
● Some thinkers have gone so far as to portray elections as the very heart of democracy.
● Joseph Schumpeter: “institutional arrangement” as a means of filling public office by
a competitive struggle for the people’s vote.
● While few modern democratic theorists are prepared to reduce democracy simply to
competitive elections, most nevertheless follow Schumpeter in understanding
democratic government in terms of the rules and mechanisms that guide the conduct
of elections.
● The different forms that elections can take:
➢ Which offices or posts are subject to the elective principle?
➢ Who is entitled to vote? (In the US most states leave electoral registration
entirely in the hands of the citizen, with the result of non-voting being
widespread. In Australia, Belgium, and Brazil voting is compulsory.)
➢ How are votes cast? (modern political elections are generally held on the basis
of a secret ballot to guarantee a fair election).
➢ Are elections competitive or non-competitive?
➢ How is the election conducted?
● Functions of elections
➢ Recruiting politicians:
➢ Making governments: elections make governments directly only in states such
as the USA, Russia, France, and Venezuela, in which the political executive is
directly elected. In the more common parliamentary systems, elections
influence the formation of governments, most strongly when the electoral
system tends to give a single party a clear parliamentary majority.
➢ Providing representations: elections are a means through which demands are
channelled from the public to the government. The electorate has no effective
means of ensuring that mandates are carried out, apart from its capacity to
inflict punishment at the next election
➢ Influencing policy: election certainly deter governments from pursuing radical
and deeply unpopular policies: however, only in exceptional cases, when a
single issue dominates the election campaign, can they be said to influence
policy directly.
➢ Educating voters: the process of campaigning provides the electorate with an
abundance of information. However, this leads to education only of the
information that is provided, and the way it is provided engages public interest
and stimulates debate, as opposed to apathy and alienation.
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, ➢ 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.
➢ Strengthening elites: elections can also be a vehicle through which elites can
manipulate and control the masses. Political discontent and opposition can be
neutralized by elections that channel them in a constitutional direction and
allow governments to come and go while the regime itself survives.
● Proportional representation: is a principle that parties should be represented in an
assembly or parliament in direct proportion to their overall electoral strength, their
percentage of seats equalling their percentage of votes.
Electoral systems: debates and controversies:
● An electoral system is a set of rules that governs the conduct of elections. → fierce
debate around what rules there should be
● Two types of systems → majoritarian systems (larger parties typically win a higher
proportion of seats than the proportion of seats they gain in the election → increases
the chances of a single party gaining a parliamentary majority and being able to
govern on its own) and proportional systems (More equal relationship between the
sears won by a party and the votes gained in the election, commonly associated with
multi-party systems and coalitions)
● Majoritarian systems are usually thought to be the weakest when evaluated in terms of
their representative functions and do not reflect the distribution of popular preference
→ when the majority of voters oppose the party in power, it is difficult to claim that
that party has a popular mandate for anything.
● Proportional systems are more representative, but it is naive to think that electoral
fairness equates to proportionality.PR systems that have coalitions often make their
policies in post-election deals and thus are not endorsed by any set of electors. The
defence of majoritarian systems is more commonly based on government functions,
and specifically on the capacity of such systems to deliver stable and effective rule =
proportionality may simply be the price paid for strong government. (coalition
governments are weak and unstable in the sense that they are in a constant process of
reconciling opposing views, and liable to collapse as a result of the internal split)
● Supporters of PR argue that a strong sense of government should be understood in the
term of popular support
● Single-member plurality system (SMP)
➢ Type: majoritarian
➢ Used in the UK (House of Commons), the USA, Canada, and India
➢ Advantages
- The system establishes a clear link between representatives and
constituents
- It offers the electorate a clear choice of potential parties of government
- Formation of governments that have a clear mandate from the
electorate. On the basis of plurality support amongst the electorate
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