Representative democracy

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Representative democracy is a variety of democracy founded on the principle of elected people representing a group of people, as opposed to direct democracy. For example, two countries which use representative democracy are the United Kingdom (a constitutional monarchy) and Germany (a federal republic).

It is an element of both the parliamentary system and presidential system of government and is typically used in a lower chamber such as the House of Commons (UK) or Bundestag (Germany), and is generally curtailed by constitutional constraints such as an upper chamber. It has been described by some political theorists as Polyarchy.^{[citation needed]}

Characteristics

The representatives form an independent ruling body (for an election period) charged with the responsibility of acting in the people's interest, but not as their proxy representatives nor necessarily always according to their wishes, but with enough authority to exercise swift and resolute initiative in the face of changing circumstances. Moreover, democracies in the modern and contemporary world are so called since the representatives are voted for by the people. Such a method makes them solely accountable to the people.^{[citation needed]} It is often contrasted with direct democracy, where representatives are absent or are limited in power as proxy representatives. Edmund Burke was an early proponent of these principles:

{{quote|...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 unbiased 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.|

There is no necessity that individual liberties be respected in a representative democracy: one that does not is an illiberal democracy. A representative democracy that emphasizes individual liberty is a liberal democracy.^{[citation needed]}

In his book "Political Parties", written in 1911, Robert Michels demonstrates that most representative systems deteriorate towards an oligarchy. This is known as the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" and also as the First Law of Politicology. In line with this law, all Representative Democracies are known to become after time a Particracy. 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 (first edition in German) and a second edition in 1947 (in German). Adolf Gasser noted the following requirements for a representative democracy in order to remain stable, unaffected by the "Iron Law of Oligarchy":

• Society has to be build-up from bottom to top.

As a consequence society is build up by people, which 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 independency, and they are free to determine their own rules.
• Local communities join together 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

The system of Stochocracy has been proposed as an Improved System compared to the system of Representative Democracy, where representatives are elected. Stochocracy aims to be 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”.

Today, in liberal representative democracies, representatives are usually elected in free and fair multi-party elections. Different methods of selecting representatives are described in the article on electoral systems, but often a number of representatives are elected by, and responsible to, a particular subset of the total electorate: this is called his or her constituency.

Powers of representatives

Representatives sometimes hold the power to select other representatives, presidents, or other officers of government (indirect representation)^{[citation needed]}

The power of representatives is usually curtailed by a constitution (as in a constitutional democracy or a constitutional monarchy) or other measures to balance representative power:^{[citation needed]}

• An independent judiciary, which may have the power to declare legislative acts unconstitutional (e.g. constitutional court, supreme court)
• It 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.
• In some cases, a bicameral legislature may have an "upper house" that is not directly elected, such as the Canadian Senate, which was in turn modeled on the British House of Lords.

History

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.^{[citation needed]}

Representative democracy came into particular general favour in post-industrial revolution nation states where large numbers of subjects or (latterly) citizens evinced interest in politics, but where technology and population figures remained unsuited to direct democracy. As noted above, Edmund Burke in his speech to the electors of Bristol classically analysed their operation in Britain and the rights and duties of an elected representative.

Globally, a majority of the world's people live in representative democracies including constitutional monarchy with strong representative branch– the first time in history that this has been true^{[citation needed]}.

Relation to republicanism

The related term republic may have many different meanings. It normally means a state with an elected or otherwise non-monarchical head of state, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran or Republic of Korea.

Sometimes in the US it is used similarly to liberal (representative) democracy.^{[citation needed]} For example:

The United States relies on representative democracy, but its system of government is much more complex than that. It is not a simple representative democracy, but a constitutional republic in which majority rule is tempered.

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See also

• Non-partisan democracy
• Totalitarian democracy
• Stochocracy or Lottocracy