Political representation

In any polity larger than an assembly of all citizens, most people cannot take part directly in most decisions. Representation is the practice by which some act for others. It is also a paradox, as Hanna Pitkin put it: the represented are made present in some sense while not being literally present.

Representation is not only a substitute for direct democracy. Its defenders argue that it allows deliberation, specialisation and compromise that mass assemblies cannot achieve, and that it filters passions. Its critics argue that it turns citizens into spectators and creates a political class with interests of its own.

Pitkin's four views

In The Concept of Representation (1967), Pitkin distinguished:

• Formalistic representation: the institutional arrangements that precede and follow representation, namely authorisation (how representatives obtain their standing) and accountability (how they can be sanctioned).
• Descriptive representation: the extent to which representatives resemble those they represent, for example in gender, class, ethnicity or region.
• Symbolic representation: the meaning a representative has for the represented, and the feelings of being represented.
• Substantive representation: acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to them.

Trustees and delegates

Edmund Burke told the electors of Bristol in 1774 that a representative owes them not only industry but judgement, and that Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation rather than a congress of ambassadors from different interests. This trustee model contrasts with the delegate model, in which representatives follow constituents' instructions. Mandate theories of party government sit between them: voters choose a programme, and representatives are bound to it.

Mansbridge's typology

Jane Mansbridge distinguished promissory representation (keeping campaign promises), anticipatory representation (acting on what voters will reward at the next election), gyroscopic representation (voters select people whose own internal compass they trust) and surrogate representation (representing people outside one's district, as when a legislator speaks for a national minority). She also argued that descriptive representation is especially valuable when interests are uncrystallised and when groups have a history of distrust.

Elections versus lot

Bernard Manin showed that the founders of modern representative government deliberately chose election over lot, which ancient democracies had used for most offices. Election, he argued, has an aristocratic element: it selects people judged superior, and so tends to produce a distinct political elite. This analysis underlies the renewed interest in sortition and citizens' assemblies.

The representative claim

Michael Saward recast representation as a claim: someone presents themselves or others as standing for a constituency, and that claim is accepted or rejected by an audience. This "constructivist turn" helps explain how movements, NGOs, celebrities and online communities claim to represent people who never voted for them.

• Electoral systems shape representation: proportional systems such as party-list PR, the single transferable vote and mixed-member proportional systems give seats roughly in proportion to votes; single-member plurality systems emphasise territorial links and accountability of individual members.
• Quotas and reserved seats: many countries reserve seats or candidate places for women or minorities. India's 1992 constitutional amendments reserved one third of village council leadership positions for women.
• Randomly selected bodies: Ireland's Citizens' Assembly and the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly used stratified lot to produce descriptively representative bodies whose recommendations went to referendums.
• Liquid democracy lets each citizen choose between voting directly and delegating their vote to a representative of their choice, issue by issue.
• Future generations: offices such as the Future Generations Commissioner in Wales attempt to represent people who cannot vote because they do not yet exist.

• Rousseau's objection: sovereignty cannot be represented; a people that elects representatives is free only on election day.
• Elitism: Michels's iron law of oligarchy and Manin's analysis suggest that representative institutions reliably produce a separate class with distinct interests.
• Responsiveness gaps: studies in several democracies find that policy tracks the preferences of affluent citizens more closely than those of others, raising the question of whom representatives actually represent.
• Essentialism: critics of descriptive representation warn that it can assume all members of a group share interests, and that it can freeze identities into fixed categories.
• Accountability limits: elections are blunt instruments that bundle many issues into one choice every few years.

Representation remains the dominant way large polities make decisions, and empirical research shows that who represents matters for what is decided. A field experiment exploiting India's randomly assigned reservations found that women leaders invested more in public goods closer to women's stated priorities, such as drinking water. The practical frontier is mixed systems: elected legislatures complemented by randomly selected assemblies, delegation platforms, and offices representing non-voters.

• Suzanne Dovi and Wendy Salkin, "Political Representation", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Jane Mansbridge, "Rethinking Representation" (2003)
• Jane Mansbridge, "Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women?" (1999)
• Chattopadhyay and Duflo, "Women as Policy Makers" (2004)
• Edmund Burke, Speech to the Electors of Bristol (1774)
• Hanna F. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (University of California Press, 1967)
• Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge University Press, 1997)