Political Concept : Representation

Modern democratic theories are closely bound to the idea of representa-tion. As stressed earlier, when citizens no longer rule directly, democracy is based upon the claim that politicians serve as the people’s representatives. However, what does it mean to say that one person ‘represents’ another?

In ordinary language, to represent means to portray or make present, as when a picture is said to represent a scene or person. In politics, representation suggests that an individual or group somehow stands for, or on behalf of, a larger collection of people. Political representation therefore acknowledges a link between two otherwise separate entities – government and the governed – and implies that through this link the people’s views are articulated or their interests are secured. The precise nature of this link is, nevertheless, a matter of deep disagreement, as is the capacity of representation ever to ensure democratic government.

In practice, there is no single, agreed model of representation but rather a number of competing theories, each based upon particular ideological and political assumptions. Representatives have sometimes been seen as people who ‘know better’ than others, and can therefore act wisely in their interests. This implies that politicians should not be tied like delegates to the views of their constituents, but should have the capacity to think for themselves and use personal judgement. For many, however, elections are the basis of the representative mechanism, elected politicians being able to call themselves representatives on the grounds that they have been mandated by the people. What this mandate means and how it authorizes politicians to act, is however a highly contentious matter. Finally, there is the altogether different idea that a representative is not a person acting on behalf of another, but one who is typical or characteristic of a group or society. Politicians are representatives, then, if they resemble their society in terms of age, gender, social class, ethnic background and so forth. To insist that politicians are a microcosm of society is to call for radical changes in the personnel of government in every country of the world.

Representatives or Delegates?

In his famous speech to the electors of Bristol in 1774 Edmund Burke informed his would-be constituents that ‘your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion’. For Burke, the essence of representation was to serve one’s constituents by the exercise of ‘mature judgement’ and ‘enlightened conscience’. In short, 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. In Burke’s view, this position was justified by the fear that if MPs acted as ambassadors who took instructions directly from their constituents, Parliament would become a battleground for contending local interests, leaving no one to speak on behalf of the nation. ‘Parliament’, Burke emphasised, ‘is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole’.

A similar position was adopted in the nineteenth century by J.S. Mill, whose ideas constitute the basis of the liberal theory of representation. Though a firm believer in extending the franchise to working-class men, and an early advocate of female suffrage, Mill nevertheless rejected the idea that all political opinions are of equal value. In particular, he believed that the opinions of the educated are worth more than those of the uneducated or illiterate. This encouraged him, for instance, to propose a system of plural voting, allocating four or five votes to holders of learned diplomas or degrees, two or three to skilled or managerial workers, a single vote to ordinary workers and none at all to those who are illiterate. In addition, like Burke, he insisted that, once elected, representatives should think for themselves and not sacrifice their judgement to their constituents. Indeed, he argued that rational voters would wish for candidates with greater understanding than they possess themselves, ones who have had specialist knowledge, extensive education and broad experience. They will want politicians who can act wisely on their behalf, not ones who merely reflect their own views.

This theory of representation portrays professional politicians as repre-sentatives in so far as they are an educated elite. It is based upon the belief that knowledge and understanding are unequally distributed in society, in the sense that not all citizens are capable of perceiving their own best interests. If politicians therefore act as delegates, who, like ambassadors, receive instructions from a higher authority without having the capacity to question them, they may succumb to the irrational prejudices and ill-formed judgements of the masses. On the other hand, to advocate representation in preference to delegation is also to invite serious criticism. In the first place, the basic principles of this theory have anti-democratic implications: if politicians should think for themselves rather than reflect the views of the represented because the public is ignorant, poorly educated or deluded, surely it is a mistake to allow them to choose their representatives in the first place. Indeed, if education is the basis of representation, it could be argued that government should be entrusted to non-elected experts, selected, like the Mandarins of Imperial China, on the basis of examination success. Mill, in fact, did accept the need for a non-elected executive on such grounds. Furthermore, the link between representation and education is questionable. Whereas education may certainly be necessary to aid an understanding of intricate political and economic issues, it is far less clear that it helps politicians to make moral judgements about the interests of others. There is little evidence, for example, to support the belief which underpinned J.S. Mill’s theory, and by implication those of Burke, that education gives people a broader sense of social responsibility and a greater willingness to act altruistically.

The most serious criticism of this theory of representation is, however, that it grants representatives considerable latitude in controlling the lives of others. In particular, there is a danger that to the degree to which politicians are encouraged to think for themselves they may become insulated from popular pressures and end up acting in their own selfish interests. In this way, representation could become a substitute for democracy. This fear had traditionally been expressed by radical demo-crats such as Tom Paine. As a keen advocate of the democratic doctrine of popular sovereignty, Paine actively involved himself in both the American and French revolutions. Unlike Rousseau, however, he recog-nized the need for some form of representation. Nevertheless, the theory of representation he advocated in Common Sense ([1776] 1987) came close to the ideal of delegation. Paine proposed ‘frequent interchange’ between representatives and their constituents in the form of regular elections designed to ensure that ‘the elected might never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors’. In addition to frequent elections, radical democrats have also supported the idea of popular initiatives, a system through which the general public can make legislative proposals, and the right of recall, which entitles the electorate to call unsatisfactory elected officials to account and ultimately to remove them. From this point of view, the democratic ideal is realized only if representatives are bound as closely as possible to the views of the represented.

Elections and Mandates

For most people, representation is intimately tied up with elections, to such an extent that politicians are commonly referred to as representatives simply because they have been elected. This does not, however, explain how elections serve as a representative mechanism, or how they link the elected to the views of the electors. An election is a device for filling public offices by reference to popular preferences. That being said, electoral systems are widely divergent, some being seen as more democratic or representative than others. It is difficult, for instance, to argue that non-competitive elections, in which only a single candidate is placed before the electorate, can be regarded as democratic, since there is no electoral choice and no opportunity to remove office-holders. However, there are also differences among competitive electoral systems. In countries such as the UK, the USA, New Zealand and India, plurality systems exist, based upon the ‘first-past-the-post’ rule – the victorious candidate needs only acquire more votes than any single rival. Such systems do not seek to equate the overall number of seats won by each party with the number of votes it gains in the election. Typically, plurality systems ‘over-represent’ large parties and ‘under-represent’ smaller ones. In the 1983 British general election, for example, the SDP–Liberal Alliance gained 26 per cent of the vote but won only 3.4 per cent of the seats of the House of Commons. By contrast, proportional electoral systems, used throughout continental Europe and, since 1997, for devolved and EU elections in the UK, employ various devices to ensure a direct, or at least closer, relationship between the votes cast for each party and the seats eventually won.

Regardless of the system employed, there are problems in seeing any form of election as the basis of representation. An election is only representative if its results can be interpreted as granting popular authority for particular forms of government action. In other words, an election must have a meaning. The most common way of imposing meaning upon an election result is to interpret it as providing a ‘mandate’ for the winning candidate or party, an idea that has been developed into a theory of representation, the so-called doctrine of the mandate. A mandate is an authoritative instruction or command. The doctrine of the mandate is based, first of all, upon the willingness of parties or candidates to set out their policy proposals through speeches or by the publication of manifes-tos. These proposals are, in effect, electoral promises, indicating what the party or candidate is committed to doing if elected. The act of voting can thus be understood as the expression of a preference from amongst the various policy programmes on offer. Victory in the election is therefore a reflection of the popularity of one set of proposals over its rivals. In this light, it can be argued that the winning party or candidate not only enjoys a popular mandate to carry out its manifesto pledges but has a duty to do so. The act of representation thus involves politicians remaining faithful to the policies upon which they were elected, which, in turn, provides an obvious justification for strict party discipline.

The great merit of the mandate doctrine is that it seems to impose some kind of meaning upon an election, and so offers popular guidance to those who exercise government power. However, the doctrine also has its drawbacks. For example, the doctrine acts as a straightjacket, limiting government policies to those positions and proposals the party took up during the election, and leaves politicians with no capacity to adjust policies in the light of ever-changing circumstances. The doctrine is therefore of no value in relation to events like international and economic crises which crop up unexpectedly. As a result, the more flexible notion of a ‘mandate to rule’ has sometimes been advanced in place of the conventional ‘policy mandate’. The idea of a mandate to rule is, however, hopelessly vague and comes close to investing politicians with unrestricted authority simply because they have won an election.

It has, furthermore, been suggested that the doctrine of the mandate is based upon a highly questionable model of electoral behaviour. Specifically, it portrays voters as rational creatures, whose political preferences are determined by issues and policy proposals. In reality, there is abundant evidence to suggest that many voters are poorly informed about political issues and possess little knowledge of the content of manifestos. To some extent, voters are influenced by ‘irrational’ factors, such as the personality of party leaders, the image of parties, or habitual allegiances formed through social conditioning. Indeed, modern electoral campaigns fought largely on television have strengthened such tendencies by focusing upon personalities rather than policies, and upon images rather than issues. In no way, therefore, can a vote for a party be interpreted as an endorsement of its manifesto’s contents or any other set of policies. Moreover, even if voters are influenced by policies, it is likely that they will be attracted by certain manifesto commitments, but may be less interested in or even opposed to others. A vote for a party cannot therefore be taken as an endorsement of its entire manifesto. Apart from those rare occasions when an election campaign is dominated by a single, overriding issue, elections are inherently vague and provide no reliable guide about which policies led one party to victory and others to defeat.

Finally, countries with plurality electoral systems have the further problem that governments can be formed on the basis of a plurality of votes rather than an overall majority. For instance, Bill Clinton was elected US president in 1992 on the basis of 43 per cent of the popular vote, and in 2001 the Blair government in the UK gained an overall majority in the House of Commons of 167 seats with only 41 per cent of the vote. When more voters oppose the elected government or administration than support it, it seems frankly absurd to claim that it enjoys a mandate from the people. On the other hand, proportional systems, which tend to lead to the formation of coalition governments, also get in the way of mandate democracy. In such cases, government policies are often hammered out through post-election deals negotiated by coalition partners. In the process, the policies which may have attracted support in the first place may be amended or traded-off as a compromise package of policies is constructed. It is not therefore possible to assume that all those who voted for one of the coalition parties will be satisfied by the eventual government programme. Indeed, it can be argued that such a package enjoys no mandate whatsoever because no set of voters has been asked to endorse it.

Characteristic Representation

A final theory of representation is based less upon the manner in which representatives are selected than on whether or not they typify or resemble the group they claim to represent. This notion of representation is embodied in the idea of a ‘representative cross-section’, employed by market researchers and opinion pollsters. To be ‘representative’ in this sense it is necessary to be drawn from a particular group and to share its characteristics. A representative government would therefore be a microcosm of the larger society, containing members drawn from all groups and sections in society, in terms of social class, gender, religion, ethnicity, age and so forth, and in numbers that are proportional to their strength in society at large.

This theory of representation has enjoyed support amongst a broad range of theorists and political activists. It has, for instance, been accepted by many socialists, who believe that an individual’s beliefs, attitudes and values tend to be shaped by their social background. Thus people’s views can, in most cases, be traced back to their class origins, family circum-stances, education, occupation and so on. This is why socialists have long believed that an obstacle to democracy exists in the fact that the political elite – ministers, civil servants, judges, police and military chiefs – are drawn disproportionately from the ranks of the privileged and prosperous. Because the working classes, the poor and the disadvantaged are ‘under-represented’ in the corridors of power, their interests tend to be margin-alized or ignored altogether. Feminist theorists also show sympathy for this notion of representation, suggesting that patriarchy, dominance by the male sex, operates in part through the exclusion of women from the ranks of the powerful and influential in all sectors of life. Groups such as the National Organization of Women (NOW) in the United States have therefore campaigned to increase the number of women in political and professional life. Anti-racist campaigners argue similarly that prejudice and bigotry is maintained by the ‘under-representation’ of racial minorities in government and elsewhere. Civil rights groups, particularly in the USA, have made an increase in minority representation in public life a major objective.

This theory of representation is based upon the belief that only people who are drawn from a particular group can genuinely articulate its interests. To represent means to speak for, or on behalf of, others, something that is impossible if representatives do not have intimate and personal knowledge of the people they represent. In its crudest form, this argument suggests that people are merely conditioned by their back-grounds and are incapable of or unwilling to understand the views of people different from themselves. In its more sophisticated form, however, it draws a distinction between the capacity to empathize or ‘put oneself in the shoes of another’ through an act of imagination, and, on the other hand, direct and personal experience of what other people go through, something which engages a deeper level of emotional response. This implies, for example, that although the so-called ‘New Man’ or ‘pro-feminist’ male, may sympathize with women’s interests and support the principle of sexual equality, he will never be able to take women’s problems as seriously as women do themselves. Men will therefore not regard the crime of rape as seriously as do women, since they are far less likely to be a victim of rape. In the same way, white liberals may show a laudable concern for the plight of ethnic minorities but, never having experienced racism, their attitude towards it is unlikely to match the passion and commitment that many members of minority communities feel. Similarly, those who come from affluent and secure backgrounds may never fully appreciate what it means to be poor or disadvantaged.

Nevertheless, the belief that representatives should resemble the repre-sented, and that government should be a microcosm of the people, is by no means universally accepted. Many, in fact, regard it as a positive threat to democracy rather than as a necessary precondition. It could be argued, first, that people simply do not want to be ruled by politicians like themselves. Nowhere in the world can government be described as a representative cross-section of the governed and, ironically, the countries that have come closest to this ideal, orthodox communist regimes, were one-party states. Moreover, if politicians are selected on the basis that they are typical or characteristic of the larger society, government itself may simply reflect the limitations of that society. What is the advantage, for instance, of government resembling society when the majority of the population is apathetic, ill-informed and little educated? Critics of this idea of representation point out, as J.S. Mill emphasized, that good government requires politicians to be drawn from the ranks of the educated, the able and the successful.

A further danger is that this theory sees representation in exclusive or narrow terms. Only a woman can represent women; only a black can represent other blacks; only a member of the working class can represent the working classes, and so forth. If all representatives are concerned to advance the interests of the sectional groups from which they come, who is prepared to defend the common good or advance the national interest? Indeed, this form of representation may simply be a recipe for social division and conflict. In addition to this, characteristic representation must confront the problem of how its objective is to be achieved. If the goal is to make government a microcosm of the governed, the only way of achieving this is to impose powerful constraints upon electoral choice and individual freedom. For instance, political parties may have to be forced to select a quota of female and minority candidates; or certain constituencies may be set aside for candidates from particular backgrounds; or, more dramati-cally, the electorate may have to be divided on the basis of class, gender, race and so on, and only allowed to vote for candidates from their own group.