Political Representation: Taxonomy, Ambiguities, and Functions in Liberal Democracy

Political Representation

The Concept of Political Representation

1. The Taxonomy of Political Representation

Elections are not an end in themselves, but a means of staffing political bodies. Political representation, as a key organizational problem, addresses this staffing process. Birch has outlined three disputes concerning parliamentary representation:

1. Who and what should be represented?
2. How are representatives selected?
3. How should representatives behave?

The first dispute concerns who should be included in the vote. The answer is all adults, excluding those incapacitated or mentally handicapped. However, societies are permeated by various social divisions. The answers to the second and third questions are more complex. The dispute over electoral systems is ongoing and has no single solution. The same applies to the relationship between representatives and the represented. These three disputes are intractable because political representation is a pluralistic and imprecise concept, and every answer to these problems favors a particular meaning of political representation.

Birch identified four types of representation:

1. The first refers to the usage when we say a lawyer represents us, or an ambassador represents a country—someone acting as a spokesperson for another entity.
2. The second refers to physical likeness or imitation of reality. This applies when we say something is representative of something else, such as sociological representation, referring to the similarity between society and its political representatives.
3. The third refers to symbolic representation.
4. The fourth, according to Birch, addresses the fact that none of the above fully captures the function of a parliamentary representative. This refers to the reason why representatives are elected to parliament. This sense of political representation is key to understanding its meaning in a liberal democracy.

The functions of political representation in this context are:

1. Political recruitment to fill political positions.
2. Evaluation of candidates for political office through electoral competition.
3. Ensuring government responsiveness to demands.
4. Enabling political accountability of rulers.
5. Legitimizing government.
6. Mobilizing support for the government by publicizing and justifying its plans.

2. The Ambiguities of Political Representation

Political representation has a political meaning related to an elected government chosen through an electoral process approved by the people. Liberal democracy is representative democracy. David Held identified two types of democracy: direct and representative. Direct democracy literally means rule by the people, where citizens make policy decisions directly. Representative democracy is not as easy to define, as it combines the above concept with the idea of representation. The adjective "representative" elicits too many meanings with varying scopes. The dictionary defines representative government as one in which the nation is represented by its delegates in the formation of laws. Democracy is the political doctrine favoring the intervention of the people in government and the predominance of the people in the political governance of a state. We conclude that the differentiation between these two basic models identified by Held is difficult to sustain.