Representative democracy

The terms “democracy” and “representative democracy” are both used to describe the system of government that President Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) called “government of the people, for the people, and by the people” in his Gettysburg Address of 1863. Most modern democracies are representative democracies in which the people elect representatives to run the government and establish national policies and priorities, as opposed to direct democracies, in which individuals vote directly on changes in law and public policy.

Background

Traditionally, political theorists have identified three types of representation: formalistic, descriptive, and symbolic. Formalistic representation is based on the works of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), a British contract theorist who argued that, once elected, representatives are free to exercise their own will in making political decisions. Descriptive representation calls for elected officials to meet specific requirements in order for them to reflect their constituencies. This form of representation suggests that only representatives who “look like” those they represent are capable of acting for them. For instance, a number of countries have established quotas requiring that a certain proportion of representatives in their national legislatures be female. The third form of representation is symbolic, suggesting that having minorities present as symbols reminds other representatives that their needs must be addressed.

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin (1931–), a German American political theorist and an internationally renowned scholar in the field of representation, contends that a fourth type of representation should be added to traditional representation theory. Pitkin defines representation as activity, or “acting for others, an activity in behalf of, in the interest of, as the agent of someone else.” Representatives who represent according to the basis of activity may see it as their responsibility to act for the constituency that they symbolize. For instance, US Representative Geraldine Ferraro (1935–2011) served the Ninth Congressional District of New York from 1979 to 1985, when women were still a rarity in Congress. Ferraro saw women as well as her district as her constituency and worked to bring women’s issues to the forefront of the national agenda.

In the American colonies, voting and representation were carried out entirely by white, Protestant property-owning men age twenty-one and older who were considered politically astute and, thus, capable of making decisions for the good of the people. After the colonies gained their independence, representatives in the Continental Congress worked to put a national democratic political system in place and debated the form it would take and the powers it would have. In 1787 in “Federalist No. 10,”James Madison (1751–1836) argues that unequal distribution of property results in factions and suggests that the mischief of factions can be cured by either removing its cause or by controlling its effects. Since Madison sees eliminating liberty as the only way to remove the cause of factions, he contends that representative democracy is a more effective way to control the effects of factions than direct democracy because “the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.”

Over time, the practice of representative democracy in the United States expanded as restrictions on voting were eliminated. By 1810, religious prerequisites had been eliminated, and by 1850, property and tax requirements had been removed. Ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 granted suffrage to African American men, although Jim Crow laws in Southern states effectively disenfranchised them and many remained unregistered to vote until 1965, when the Voting Rights Act was passed. The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 granted American women the right of suffrage. In 1971, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Other groups achieved the right to have a voice in who represented them through a series of laws and court cases.

In the twenty-first century, several states have passed laws that have made it harder for African Americans and other minority voters to exercise their right to suffrage. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has objected to eighteen voting laws imposed by state governments in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. In 2011, several states passed restrictive voter identification laws and other legislation found to disproportionately affect African American voters. In 2013, the US Supreme Court weakened voting protections by ruling in Shelby v. Holder that jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices do not need prior approval from the DoJ to pass changes in voting laws.

Impact

The question of whether or not representatives are honor bound to reflect the wishes of the people who elect them continues to cause controversy in the twenty-first century. Questions also continue to be raised about whether or not representatives must reflect the characteristics of the constituencies that they represent. According to an August 2014 report, “Membership of the 113th Congress: A Profile,” compiled by Jennifer E. Manning for the Congressional Research Service, the 113th Congress included 102 women, 44 African Americans, 37 Hispanics or Latinos, 13 Asian or Pacific Islander Americans, and 2 American Indians. The average age of members of Congress was fifty-seven, and members were overwhelmingly Protestant and college educated.

Many political scientists have expressed concern about what declining voter turnout means for representative democracy. Low voter turnout means that only small percentages of voters cast ballots in any given election. Since not all voters cast their votes for a winning candidate, many elected officials in representative democracies are, in fact, elected by only a minority of eligible voters.

Political scholars have often argued that direct democracy produces a more content citizenry than does representative democracy due to higher satisfaction with policy decisions and greater levels of accountability in direct democracies. However, by the fourth century, governing through direct democracy had become virtually nonexistent in Europe. The classic exception to this rule has been Switzerland, a confederation made up of twenty-six cantons and a population in 2014 of 8,061,516. Switzerland functions as a direct democracy by allowing citizens to play an active role in shaping Swiss government through frequent referendums and initiatives. In the United States, a number of state constitutions provide for voter initiatives, referendums, and recalls, which give the people a direct voice in how their states are run and allow the people to remove those who are deemed incompetent or immoral from office.

Since the late twentieth century, one of the major criticisms of representative democracy has focused on the assertion that it allows politicians to claim electoral mandates at the same time that governments have become less accountable. Lobbying groups and political action committees (PACs) often exert more influence on politicians than do voters because of the large amounts of money the former contribute to political campaigns. Other criticisms focus on the fact that both presidents and members of Congress have lost touch with the will of the people. Despite Madison’s distrust of political factions, political parties have become the most accepted means of identifying the interests of voters in representative democracies. Under the broad labels of liberal and conservative, particular parties are associated with specific issues. Voters know that voting for a candidate of a particular party means that he or she is likely to vote according to party lines. In countries such as Britain where party discipline is strong, voters are virtually guaranteed that outcome. In countries such as the United States with weaker party discipline, representatives may vary from the party line but are still likely to vote with the party on major and procedural issues. In the United States, one problem with party voting is that political packagers have become adept at selling images of candidates to an electorate. When buying into that image, some voters may not understand the political ramifications of voting on single issues such as abortion rights or immigration.

Bibliography

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