Representative democracy
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Representative democracy comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein voters choose (in free, secret, multi-party elections) representatives to act in their interests, but not as their proxies—i.e., not necessarily according to their voters' wishes, but with enough authority to exercise initiative in the face of changing circumstances. Modern liberal democracies are important examples of representative democracy. In the United States this term is often synonymous with "republic." Another form of representative democracy involves impartial selection of representatives through sortition.
A representative democracy may involve more powers given to the legislators than under a constitutional monarchy or participatory democracy, so almost all constitutions provide for an independent judiciary and other measures to balance representative power:
- A representative democracy may provide for recall of elected representatives that voters become dissatisfied with.
- It may also provide for some deliberative democracy (e.g., Canadian Royal Commission) or
- direct democracy (e.g., referendum) measures. However, these are not always binding and usually require some legislative action - legal power usually remains firmly with representatives.
- Sometimes there is an "upper house" that is not directly elected, such as the Canadian Senate, which was in turn modelled on the UK House of Lords.
A European medieval tradition of selecting representatives from the various estates (effectively, social classes, but not as we know them today) to advise/control monarchs led to relatively wide familiarity with representative systems. 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.
Representative democracy came into particular general favour in post-industrial revolution nation states where large numbers of subjects or (more recently) citizens evinced interest in politics, but where technology and population figures remained unsuited to direct democracy.
Globally, in 2003, a majority of the world's people live in representative democracies (including constitutional monarchies with a strong representative branch)—the first time in history that this has been true. Representative democracy has been the most successful form of civics since absolute monarchy. Indeed, many (perhaps most) absolute monarchies were overthrown by the advocates of representative democracy, either in a revolution or through a gradual process of reform that saw the monarch lose most of his/her powers.
Normally each representative is elected by, and responsible to, a particular subset of the total electorate: this is called his or her constituency.
Most modern representative democracies incorporate elements of direct democracy: for example Switzerland always had a strong tradition in this sense. For other countries the reservations against direct democracy are often still stronger. In the European Union, for example, such differences between countries became apparent in the different approval procedures for the new European constitution. In some countries the constitution could only be accepted by referendum; in other countries such referendums are not compulsory and/or not binding, while yet other countries held no referendum at all.
