Democracy has been variously described as the government of the people by the people. This is system of government governed through the contribution of the citizens directly or indirectly by political representation as opposed to a dictatorship or monarchial system which is governed singularly by an individual. In the classical theme of ancient Athenian society, it is the representation of the ‘will of the people’ and had to include the views of all citizens in the decision making matters.
Democracy is therefore characterized by representation of the people or constituents in representative political form. John Adams a former United States president quipped that, ‘the only cure for democracy is more democracy’. However, there have been claims that contemporary political representation in modern democracies is eschewed and subject to manipulations hence diverting from the true tenets of democracy. This argument has led to participants and observers to comments that democracy is not the most effective way of ensuring political representation.
Political participation is regarded as one of the pillars of democracy as it legitimizes the political leaders’ right to govern over the constituents. The main form of political representation is through political parties which prospective leaders join and use as a forum to entering the legislative assembly. This evolved from the initial ‘market-place’ democracies of ancient Greek as it became impossible to accommodate the whole population in debates due to the logistics involved and hence evolved to encompass representatives who were to stand for the wishes of the larger population. The representatives were assumed to be superior in judgment, knowledge and skill as compared to their more mundane constituents. John Stuart Mill termed this arrangement as,
‘‘the only government which can fully satisfy all the exigencies of the social state, is the one in which the whole population participate… But since all cannot in a community exceeding a small town participate personally in any but very minor portions of the public business, it follows that the ideal type of perfect government must be representative’’ (Dyson 350).
The representative is elected by the people through secret ballots or in earlier methods acclamation whereby the person with a majority of votes is declared the winner and a legitimate representative. The elected officials converge in the constituent assembly and decide on policy also through voting of the proposed bills or laws that will govern the state or city. The elected officials of the political party with a majority of the officials form the governing party while the minority party or parties constitute an opposition to keep a check on any excesses by the government.
This system of representation has led to the debate over whether constituent democracy is true democracy. The proponents of proportional representation which has been adopted over the last century, point out to it as the most democratic representative government. This is a representation which is dependent on the population of the actual electoral district hence election officials are a percentage of the population. Emerging democracies as well as the older European countries have also adopted the proportional representative democracy e.g. in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Spain, South Africa etc.
The United States type or style of democracy is unpopular with new democracies and even Britain has gradually moved towards representative democracy, e.g. in European Union parliamentary elections and the new legislators in Wales and Northern Ireland. It has also been adopted in non-political elections e.g. schools, universities or city elections like in the Cambridge city of Massachusetts, the Cambridge University in England etc. The merits of the system include improvement of accuracy, fairness, and legitimacy of elections as equality of representation is observed. Secondly, proponents argue that it lessens regionalism as marginalized or conservative/liberal voters can get elected in areas with biased voting patterns. Democracies using this system have more elected women representatives.
In England and USA, there are only approximately ten percent women representatives as opposed to the thirty percent enjoyed by democracies using proportional representation. Another advantage of the system is the more representative assemblies which are elected as voter turnout confirms. In Australia, turnout is 90 percent while in the United States averages 50 percent in the main elections, and 83 percent in the primaries in Australia and 20 percent in USA. There are more varied elected officials, cleaner campaigns based on issues rather than rhetoric, and less influence and use of campaign funds (FairVote.org 1,2).
On the other hand, critics of the system point out at the large areas of the country that are disenfranchised due to the remoteness and distance to be covered by their representative. In Canada and Australia, they have large tracts of the frontier regions that have very low populations’ density and who are inadequately represented as the distant and remoteness discourage them to vote while their ‘elected’ officials have extensive areas to cover in order to access the constituents. In Canada, the Nanavut district with 30,000 inhabitants covers an area of two million square kilometers. This renders the representative and constituents enable to connect or articulate their democratic rights in the vast region (FairVote.org 3).
Political representation has also been described as the use of universal franchise as means of getting the desired leaders or rulers; however it has also been referred as ‘mobocracy’ or the mob rule. The assumption that the majority is always right sometimes means that the wishes of the minority are disregarded even when logic dictates otherwise. The will of the people always lead to populist policies being adopted by the ruling class as they succumb to the ‘mob’ and in the process taking myopic view of development issues to avoid the wrath of their constituents. Such measures have negative impact on the minority part of the population who are forced to exist in uneasy pacts with the larger portion of the population.
Examples of these are found in religious policies especially in sectarian democracies of the Middle East and Asia that adopt extremist religious constitution that ignore the plight of the minority. Similarly, populist policies adopted by liberal socialist leaning countries are espoused at the expense of faster economic development to accommodate the wishes of the majority who crave for handouts from the state. An example is Venezuela and Argentina who ditch pro-development programs to accommodate populist policies that are untenable in the long term.
Advocates of the system however point out at the imprudent actions from an adoption of constituent democracy. This is where the constitution is more supreme than the occasional wishes of the majority. The critics of this method give an example of the abortion debate whereby a majority of voters have variously voiced opposition to the practice but the constitution still upholds the rights of the minority as opposed to the majority. Similarly the opposition to sodomy laws and rules, and the over three million demonstrators against Iraq war in London as cases where the will of the people was disregarded hence rendering democracy ineffective.
The critics therefore argue that democracy is only applicable during times of election and is ignored or redundant thereafter as the constituents are ignored in decision making. This trend is not true in some countries where in modern liberal democracies the citizens collect signatures to force debates on pressing issues that could otherwise be overlooked. This are usually over a hundred thousand signatures hence giving voice to the will of the people.
The use of democracy in political representation has also been cited as the reason behind low voter turnout. In established democracies like Britain, France and United States, voter apathy is especially high in parliamentary or municipal elections ranging from 30 to 40 percent. Many reasons are given for this trend but the system use of big party funding, media manipulation and unequal representation are the main factors as constituents view their participation in the elections as being inconsequential. The electoral processes is acknowledged as flawed and subject to manipulation as exemplified in the 2005 general elections in Britain; the Labor Party even without 59.2 percent of votes still managed to garner 356 seats in parliament with a majority of 66 seats.
In France voter apathy has resulted to some extremely lethargic altitude as the incumbent administration are usually voted out as a show of dissatisfaction with the ruling elite. This led to an election of an extreme right-wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen who went on to a second round run-off against President Chirac. His run-up to this was fueled mostly due to the public demonstration of disentrancement with the political representative democratic system as practiced in France (Affairs 118-137).
Anne Philips argues that although political representation through participatory democracy is termed as impractical, representative democracy has also proven to be unrepresentative of the majority. She points out that although over half of the population consists of women, they only constitute a small fraction of the population (Philips 2). Traditional theorists have differed on whether political representatives should act as people’s delegates or their trustees. The view of delegates is that of expressing the preferences of their constituents. Trustees on the other hand use their own discretion or perceived higher learning to represent the wishes of the constituents.
Edmund Burke in advocating the latter method argued that parliament is not a congruence of representatives from differing hostile regions but a deliberate assembly of national legislators with a singular concern of the whole nation as members of parliament (Burke 115). The delegate and trustee concepts which require political representatives to follow their voters wishes in the former and own judgment in the latter project conflicting demands on the elected officials.
The advent of marginalized groups due to race, religion, ethnicity, class (both economic and social), regional or remoteness have led to the need for other representatives of the citizens acting outside the formal political system. New players in form of worldwide, intercontinental and non-governmental actors have taken up the role of the people’s representatives for these marginalized groups. Suzanne Dovi argues that the complexities of modern issues and political power have stripped the traditional political powers the sole focus of representing the citizens just as the powers of nation-state have declined in the international arena.
The impact and role played by the international and national non-governmental organizations influence public policies and opinion tremendously and political representation is not solely dependent on the elected officials. She also argues that these changes indicate transformation in political representation to include societal movements, interest groups, and civic organizations which contribute to the representative democracies (Dovi 6).
Modern democracies have evolved to have four types of political representation: promissory, anticipatory, gyroscopic, and surrogacy. Promissory representation is experienced in the formal political representation mode of promises to constituents during the campaign period. Anticipatory representation similarly is focused on the constituents anticipated needs for the coming period while discarding the last set of promises in the preceding election. In gyroscopic representation, the officials search from inner or own experience to generate appropriate concepts used to represent the constituents while in surrogate representation it is when representation is based away from the actual constituency of the citizens.
Democracy in political representation has been found to be flawed in that it is subject to manipulation by the political and social class. Non-elective representation although an alternative forum for expressing the wishes of the marginalized groups, is also equally accused of serving the interests of selfish groups rather than their self-professed special interests. As both groups require funding to manage their affairs, they tend to fall into the trap of the affluent financiers who demand special concessions and articulations in return for their funding.
The lack of competitive suffrage among the non-governmental organization makes their claim of aiding or representing democracy hollow and they are sometimes accused of practicing the same decadent policies that they admonish the elected political class of modern political democracies therefore require a mixture of both plural and proportional representation to ensure less manipulation and equitable representation for the majority of the constituents. Although political representation is faulty democracy, it is still the best form of democracy as acknowledged by Winston Churchill.
Work Cited
Affairs, Oxford Journal of Parliamentary. “Disenfranchment From Mainstream.” Oxford Journal of Parliamentary Affairs (2004): 118-137.
Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. London: Penguin Books, 1968.
Dovi, Suzanne. “Political Representation.” 2006. Stanford University Metaphysics Research Lab. Web.
Dyson, R. W. Aquinas, Thomas. Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 350.
FairVote.org. Right to Vote. 2007. Web..
Philips, Anne. “Philosophy Bites.” 2005. Philosophy Bites. Web.
Steunenberg, Bernard and J. J. A.Thomassen. 2002. The European Parliament: Moving Toward Democracy in the EU. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.