Representative democracy

Short description: Type of democracy principled on elected representation

"Electoral democracy" redirects here. For the type of representative democracy where voters are able to vote officials into office, but have no say in the government, see Electocracy.

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Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy or electoral democracy, is a type of democracy where elected delegates represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy.[1] Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of representative democracy: for example, the United Kingdom (a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy), Germany (a federal parliamentary republic), France (a unitary semi-presidential republic), and the United States (a federal presidential republic).[2] Unlike liberal democracy, a representative democracy may have de facto multiparty, free and fair elections, but may not have a fully developed rule of law and additional individual and minority rights beyond the electoral sphere.[3]

Representative democracy places power in the hands of elected representatives. Political parties often become central to this form of democracy if electoral systems require or encourage voters to vote for political parties or for candidates associated with political parties (as opposed to voting for individual representatives).[4] Some political theorists (including Robert Dahl, Gregory Houston, and Ian Liebenberg) have described representative democracy as polyarchy.[5][6]

Representative democracy can be organized in different ways including both parliamentary and presidential systems of government. Elected representatives typically form a legislature (such as a parliament or congress), which may be composed of a single chamber (unicameral), two chambers (bicameral), or more than two chambers (multicameral). Where two or more chambers exist, their members are often elected in different ways.

## Contents

* 1 Powers of representatives
* 2 History
* 3 Research on representation per se
* 4 Criticisms
* 4.1 Proposed solutions
* 5 See also
* 6 References

## Powers of representatives

In representative democracies, members are elected to legislative chambers by voters, as in elections of national legislatures.[2] In addition to being legislators themselves, elected representatives may have the power to select a president, other legislators or other officers of the government or of the legislature, as the prime minister under the parliamentary system.

The power of representatives is usually curtailed by a constitution (as in constitutional democracies or constitutional monarchies) or other measures.[7]

* An independent judiciary may have the power to declare legislative acts unconstitutional (e.g. constitutional court, supreme court).
* The constitution may also provide for some deliberative democracy (e.g., Royal Commissions) or direct popular measures (e.g., initiative, referendum, recall elections). However, these are not always binding and usually require some legislative action—legal power usually remains firmly with representatives. [where?]
* An "upper house" in a bicameral structure may or may not be elected by voters. The Senate of Canada and the British House of Lords are not elected.

Edmund Burke stated that the duty of a representative is not necessarily to simply follow the wishes of the electorate but also to use their own judgment in the exercise of their powers, even if their views are not reflective of the voters.[8] An elected member who chooses to execute the wishes of their constituents acts as a delegate. If the member uses their best judgment and knowledge in making decisions, even when constituents do not agree with the decision, the member instead acts as a trustee.

A representative may be elected as a representative of a geographic district, in which voters hold a variety of beliefs, and may then be in the situation where no matter how he votes, he will not be upholding the opinion of a group of voters that it is his job to represent. Under proportional representation systems, a member is elected by a group of votes who form an unanimous constituency, in which voters and the elected representative hold shared sentiment.[9]

Representatives can be elected directly by voters or elected by other representatives through indirect elections. Indirectly elected representatives can have reduced political accountability.[10]

## History

See also: Social:Democratization

The Roman Republic was the first known state in the Western world to have a representative government, despite taking the form of a direct government in the Roman assemblies. The Roman model of governance would inspire many political thinkers over the centuries,[11] and today's modern representative democracies imitate more the Roman than the Greek model, because it was a state in which supreme power was held by the people and their elected representatives, and which had an elected or nominated leader.[12] Representative democracy is a form of democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives; as opposed to direct democracy, a form of democracy in which people vote on policy initiatives directly.[13] A European medieval tradition of selecting representatives from the various estates (classes, but not as we know them today) to advise/control monarchs led to relatively wide familiarity with representative systems inspired by Roman systems.

In Britain, representative government grew in the late thirteenth century. The Oxford Parliament of 1258 stripped the king of unlimited authority, and Simon de Montfort's Parliament of 1265 included both noblemen and citizens from each town.[14][15][16] Later, in the 17th century, the Parliament of England implemented some of the ideas and systems of liberal democracy, culminating in the Glorious Revolution and passage of the Bill of Rights 1689.[17][18] Widening of the voting franchise took place through a series of Reform Acts in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The V-Dem Institute's index of electoral democracy (another term for representative democracy) peaked in 2012, and has since declined, with the decline accelerating in the early 2020s.[19]

The American Revolution led to the creation of a new Constitution of the United States in 1787, with a national legislature based partly on direct elections of representatives every two years, and thus responsible to the electorate for continuance in office. Senators were not directly elected by the people until the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Women, men who owned no property, and Black people, and others not originally given voting rights, in most states eventually gained the vote through changes in state and federal law in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Until it was repealed by the Fourteenth Amendment following the Civil War, the Three-Fifths Compromise gave a disproportionate representation of slave states in the House of Representatives relative to the voters in free states.[20][21]

In 1789, Revolutionary France adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and, although short-lived, the National Convention was elected by all males in 1792.[22] Universal male suffrage was re-established in France in the wake of the French Revolution of 1848.[23]

Representative democracy came into general favour particularly in post-industrial revolution nation states where large numbers of citizens evinced interest in politics, but where technology and population figures remained unsuited to direct democracy. Many historians credit the Reform Act 1832 with launching modern representative democracy in the United Kingdom.[24][25]

Spain's Congress of Deputies, one example of representative democracy

Globally, a majority of governments in the world are representative democracies, including constitutional monarchies and republics with strong representative branches.[26]

## Research on representation per se

Separate but related, and very large, bodies of research in political philosophy and social science investigate how and how well elected representatives, such as legislators, represent the interests or preferences of one or another constituency. The empirical research shows that representative systems tend to be biased towards the representation of more affluent classes to the detriment of the population at large.[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][excessive citations]

## Criticisms

In his book Political Parties, written in 1911, Robert Michels argues that most representative systems deteriorate towards an oligarchy or particracy. This is known as the iron law of oligarchy.[35] Representative democracies which are stable have been analysed by Adolf Gasser and compared to the unstable representative democracies in his book Gemeindefreiheit als Rettung Europas which was published in 1943 and a second edition in 1947.[36] Adolf Gasser stated the following requirements for a representative democracy in order to remain stable, unaffected by the iron law of oligarchy:

* Society has to be built up from bottom to top. As a consequence, society is built up by people, who are free and have the power to defend themselves with weapons.
* These free people join or form local communities. These local communities are independent, which includes financial independence, and they are free to determine their own rules.
* Local communities join into a higher unit, e.g. a canton.
* There is no hierarchical bureaucracy.
* There is competition between these local communities, e.g. on services delivered or on taxes.

A drawback to this type of government is that elected officials are not required to fulfill promises made before their election and are able to promote their own self-interests once elected, providing an incohesive system of governance.[37] Legislators are also under scrutiny as the system of majority-won legislators voting for issues for the large group of people fosters inequality among the marginalized.[38]

Proponents of direct democracy criticize representative democracy due to its inherent structure. As the fundamental basis of representative democracy is non inclusive system, in which representatives turn into an elite class that works behind closed doors, as well as the criticizing the elector system as being driven by a capitalistic and authoritarian system.[39][40]

The V-Dem Institute classifies electoral democracies as the bare minimum of democracies, describing them as being governments that are "de-facto accountable to citizens through periodic elections", but are not liberal democracies and lack further entrenched individual and minority rights beyond the electoral sphere. Basic representative democracies may not possess a fully developed rule of law, legislative and judicial oversight of the executive branch, protections against the "tyranny of the majority", and only minimal fulfillment of Robert Dahl's institutional prerequisites for democracy.[3]

### Proposed solutions

The system of sortition or stochocracy has been proposed as an improved system compared to the system of representative democracy, where representatives are elected. Stochocracy aims to at least reduce this degradation by having all representatives appointed by lottery instead of by voting. Therefore, this system is also called lottocracy. The system was proposed by the writer Roger de Sizif in 1998 in his book La Stochocratie. Choosing officeholders by lot was also the standard practice in ancient Athenian democracy[41] and in ancient India. The rationale behind this practice was to avoid lobbying and electioneering by economic oligarchs.

The system of deliberative democracy is a mix between a majority-ruled system and a consensus-based system. It allows for representative democracies or direct democracies to coexist with its system of governance, providing an initial advantage.[42]

## See also

* Democracy
* Political representation
* Proportional representation
* Voir dire

## References

1. ↑ "Victorian Electronic Democracy, Final Report – Glossary". 28 July 2005. http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/SARC/E-Democracy/Final_Report/Glossary.htm.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Loeper, Antoine (2016). "Cross-border externalities and cooperation among representative democracies". European Economic Review 91: 180–208. doi:10.1016/j.euroecorev.2016.10.003.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lührmann, Anna; Tannenberg, Marcus; Lindberg, Staffan I. (19 March 2018). "Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes". Politics and Governance 6 (1): 60–77. doi:10.17645/pag.v6i1.1214. ISSN 2183-2463. https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/1214/714. Retrieved May 16, 2025.
4. ↑ De Vos et al (2014). South African Constitutional Law in Context. Oxford University Press.
5. ↑ Houston, G F (2001). Public Participation in Democratic Governance in South Africa. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council HSRC Press.
6. ↑ Dahl, R A (2005). "Is international democracy possible? A critical view". in Sergio Fabbrini (editor): Democracy and Federalism in the European Union and the United States: Exploring post-national governance. pp. 195–204 (Chapter 13). Abingdon on the Thames: Routledge.
7. ↑ "CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY". https://www.civiced.org/resources/publications/resource-materials/390-constitutional-democracy.
8. ↑ The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Volume I. London: Henry G. Bohn. 1854. pp. 446–448. "Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. 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."
9. ↑ Lakeman and Lambert, Voting in Democracies (1959), p. 102, 112, 118
10. ↑ Rogers, Steven (2012). "The Responsiveness of Direct and Indirect Elections". Legislative Studies Quarterly 37 (4): 509–532. doi:10.1111/j.1939-9162.2012.00060.x. ISSN 0362-9805.
11. ↑ Livy; De Sélincourt, A.; Ogilvie, R. M.; Oakley, S. P. (2002). The early history of Rome: books I-V of The history of Rome from its foundations. Penguin Classics. p. 34. ISBN 0-14-044809-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZHh7heON3sQC.
12. ↑ Watson, 2005, p. 271
13. ↑ Budge, Ian (2001). "Direct democracy". Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-19396-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=srzDCqnZkfUC&pg=PA224.
14. ↑ Norgate, Kate (1894). "Montfort, Simon of (1208?-1265)". in Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography. 38. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
15. ↑ Jobson, Adrian (2012). The First English Revolution: Simon de Montfort, Henry III and the Barons' War. Bloomsbury. pp. 173–4. ISBN 978-1-84725-226-5.
16. ↑ "Simon de Montfort: The turning point for democracy that gets overlooked". BBC. 19 January 2015. Retrieved 19 January 2015; "The January Parliament and how it defined Britain". The Telegraph. 20 January 2015. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 28 January 2015
17. ↑ Kopstein, Jeffrey; Lichbach, Mark; Hanson, Stephen E., eds (2014). Comparative Politics: Interests, Identities, and Institutions in a Changing Global Order (4, revised ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 37–9. ISBN 978-1139991384. https://books.google.com/books?id=L2jwAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA38. "Britain pioneered the system of liberal democracy that has now spread in one form or another to most of the world's countries"
18. ↑ "Constitutionalism: America & Beyond". Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP), U.S. Department of State. http://www.ait.org.tw/infousa/zhtw/DOCS/Demopaper/dmpaper2.html. "The earliest, and perhaps greatest, victory for liberalism was achieved in England. The rising commercial class that had supported the Tudor monarchy in the 16th century led the revolutionary battle in the 17th and succeeded in establishing the supremacy of Parliament and, eventually, of the House of Commons. What emerged as the distinctive feature of modern constitutionalism was not the insistence on the idea that the king is subject to the law (although this concept is an essential attribute of all constitutionalism). This notion was already well established in the Middle Ages. What was distinctive was the establishment of effective means of political control whereby the rule of law might be enforced. Modern constitutionalism was born with the political requirement that representative government depended upon the consent of citizen subjects... However, as can be seen through provisions in the 1689 Bill of Rights, the English Revolution was fought not just to protect the rights of property (in the narrow sense) but to establish those liberties which liberals believed essential to human dignity and moral worth. The "rights of man" enumerated in the English Bill of Rights gradually were proclaimed beyond the boundaries of England, notably in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789."
19. ↑ "Country Graph". V-Dem Institute. March 2026. https://www.v-dem.net/data_analysis/CountryGraph/. (Choose "World" and under "VDem Indices" select "Election Democracy Index" and "Liberal Democracy Index". Click on the three horizontal lines in the upper right, and in the resulting drop-down menu choose "Download Graph Data as CSV")
20. ↑ "We Hold These Truths to be Self-evident;" An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Roots of Racism & slavery in America Kenneth N. Addison; Introduction P. xxii
21. ↑ "Expansion of Rights and Liberties". National Archives. 30 October 2015. https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters_of_freedom_13.html.
22. ↑ "The French Revolution II". Mars.wnec.edu. http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/rev892.html.
23. ↑ French National Assembly. "1848 " Désormais le bulletin de vote doit remplacer le fusil "" (in fr). http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/suffrage_universel/suffrage-1848.asp.
24. ↑ A. Ricardo López; Barbara Weinstein (2012). The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational History. Duke UP. p. 58. ISBN 978-0822351290. https://books.google.com/books?id=Y-wPB0I-5yEC&pg=PA58.
25. ↑ Eric J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783–1870 (2nd ed. 1996) p. 229
26. ↑ Roser, Max (2013-03-15). "Democracy". Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/democracy.
27. ↑ Jacobs, Lawrence R.; Page, Benjamin I. (February 2005). "Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy?". American Political Science Review 99 (1): 107–123. doi:10.1017/S000305540505152X.
28. ↑ Bernauer, Julian; Giger, Nathalie; Rosset, Jan (January 2015). "Mind the gap: Do proportional electoral systems foster a more equal representation of women and men, poor and rich?". International Political Science Review 36 (1): 78–98. doi:10.1177/0192512113498830.
29. ↑ Gilens, Martin; Page, Benjamin I. (September 2014). "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens". Perspectives on Politics 12 (3): 564–581. doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595.
30. ↑ Carnes, Nicholas (2013). White-Collar Government: The Hidden Role of Class in Economic Policy Making. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-08728-3.
31. ↑ Carnes, Nicholas; Lupu, Noam (January 2015). "Rethinking the Comparative Perspective on Class and Representation: Evidence from Latin America". American Journal of Political Science 59 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1111/ajps.12112. https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/Rethinking_the_Comparative_Perspective_on_Class_and_Representation_Evidence_from_Latin_America/26125930.
32. ↑ Giger, Nathalie; Rosset, Jan; Bernauer, Julian (April 2012). "The Poor Political Representation of the Poor in a Comparative Perspective". Representation 48 (1): 47–61. doi:10.1080/00344893.2012.653238.
33. ↑ Peters, Yvette; Ensink, Sander J. (4 May 2015). "Differential Responsiveness in Europe: The Effects of Preference Difference and Electoral Participation". West European Politics 38 (3): 577–600. doi:10.1080/01402382.2014.973260.
34. ↑ Schakel, Wouter; Burgoon, Brian; Hakhverdian, Armen (March 2020). "Real but Unequal Representation in Welfare State Reform". Politics & Society 48 (1): 131–163. doi:10.1177/0032329219897984.
35. ↑ Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens (1911, 1925; 1970). Translated as Sociologia del partito politico nella democrazia moderna : studi sulle tendenze oligarchiche degli aggregati politici, from the German original by Dr. Alfredo Polledro, revised and expanded (1912). Translated, from the Italian, by Eden and Cedar Paul as Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (Hearst's International Library Co., 1915; Free Press, 1949; Dover Publications, 1959); republished with an introduction by Seymour Martin Lipset (Crowell-Collier, 1962; Transaction Publishers, 1999, ISBN 0-7658-0469-7); translated in French by S. Jankélévitch, Les partis politiques. Essai sur les tendances oligarchiques des démocraties, Brussels, Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 2009 (ISBN 978-2-8004-1443-0).
36. ↑ Gemeindefreiheit als Rettung Europas. Grundlinien einer ethischen Geschichtsauffassung. Verlag Bücherfreunde, Basel 1947. In 1983 republished under: "Gemeindefreiheit – kommunale Selbstverwaltung" (Adolf Gasser/Franz-Ludwig Knemeyer), in de reeks "Studien zur Soziologie", Nymphenburger, München, 1983.
37. ↑ Sørensen, Eva (25 April 2016). "Enhancing policy innovation by redesigning representative democracy". Policy & Politics 44 (2): 155–170. doi:10.1332/030557315X14399997475941. ProQuest 1948833814. https://forskning.ruc.dk/da/publications/45ace289-675a-4d49-a03c-fea638fc36cb.
38. ↑ Thaa, Winfried (3 May 2016). "Issues and images – new sources of inequality in current representative democracy". Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 19 (3): 357–375. doi:10.1080/13698230.2016.1144859.
39. ↑ Razsa, Maple; Kurnik, Andrej (May 2012). "The Occupy Movement in Žižek's hometown: Direct democracy and a politics of becoming: The Occupy Movement in Žižek's hometown". American Ethnologist 39 (2): 238–258. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01361.x.
40. ↑ Heckert, Jamie (2010). "Anarchist roots & routes". European Journal of Ecopsychology 1: 19–36. http://ecopsychology-journal.eu/v1/EJE v1_Heckert.pdf.
41. ↑ "1,5". Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Josiah Ober, Robert Wallace, Paul Cartledge, Cynthia Farrar (1st ed.). 15 October 2008. pp. 17,105. ISBN 978-0520258099.
42. ↑ Bohman, James (1997). Deliberative Democracy. MIT Press. http://www.sze.hu/~smuk/Nyilvanossag_torvenyek_CEE/Szakirodalom/Deliberatív demokrácia/deliberative democracy book.pdf#page=72. Retrieved 28 November 2016.

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