Representative Democracy
[I]n competing against the vast entertainment industry for the public’s
flickering attention, the media have largely grown indifferent to reporting
the complexities and difficulties of policy-making in favour of an eye-
catching but adversarial and often contemptuous attitudes to politics.
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Introduction
Social choice for making law is made in most cases through the institution of
representative democracy when legislatures elected by the citizenry pass
statutes. While this has many benefits, it also is fraught with problems.
Operation
In practice representative democracy involves a two phase process. Citizens
vote at the ballot box to elect legislative representatives. This part is highly
contentious because there is no perfect method of selection of candidates. So,
there will be anomalies regardless of which voting system is deployed.
Second, once elected, these representatives make laws on behalf of their
constituents. There are two approaches as to how representatives should
behave. One approach is enunciated in the doctrine known as Edmund
Burke’s Principle.
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Representatives, while elected by the people, are elected
to exercise their own judgment and to act according to their own conscience.
An alternative approach is that a representative must at least consider the views
of their electors; however in extreme form this view says that representatives
are mere delegates of the electorates and should act only on the wishes of their
___________________
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John Lloyd, Director of Journalism, Reuters Institute for the Study of
Journalism, at Oxford University. This account of John Lloyd’s views was written
by James Button in “Fourth estate fouls its own nest” in The Sydney Morning Herald
13-14 January 2007.
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This was named after Edmund Burke (1729-1797) the English lawyer,
politician and writer. Burke’s principle is laid out in the following passage:
"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests;
which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents
and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one
interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to
guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You
choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of
Bristol, but he is a member of parliament”. And further: "Your representative
owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of
serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion”. (Speech to the Electors of Bristol,
November 3, 1774.)
Burke was a member of the House of Commons from 1765-
1794. During most of this time, as a Whig, he was in opposition. Chambers
Biographical Dictionary says that the “best of Burke's writings and speeches belong
to this period, and may be described as a defence of sound constitutional
statesmanship against prevailing abuse and misgovernment”.
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