The Politics of Representation

Elections are seen as nothing less than “democracy in

practice”. Central to the concept of election is the
principle of representation – portrays politicians
as servants of the people, and invests them with a
responsibility to act for or on behalf of those who
elected them.

Democracy is the “government of the people, by the

people and for the people”. As such,
representation is the closest thing to achieving a
government by the people.

Representation – is a relationship through which an

individual or group stands for, or acts on behalf of
a larger body of people.
Representation vis-à-vis democracy –
representation acknowledges the distinction
between the government and the governed,
whereas classical democracy aspires to abolish
this distinction and establish popular “self-
government”.
the concept of “representative democracy”
constitutes a limited and indirect form of
democratic rule, provided that representation
links the government and the governed in
such a way that the people’s views are
articulated and that their interests are
secured.
Commonly, the political principle of
representation is equated with elections and
voting, politicians being seen as
“representatives” merely because they have
been elected. Yet, the question of
representation is more than this, as it is also
concerned about HOW one person is said to
represent another, and WHAT it is that he or
she represents.
Theoretical Models of Representation
1. Trustee Model

Trustee – is a person who is vested with formal

responsibility for another’s property or affairs.

Edmund Burke once remarked in his election

speech that “you choose a member indeed; but
when you have chosen him he is not a member of
Bristol, but he is a member of the Parliament…
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.”
The essence of representation following the
trustee model is thus to serve one’s
constituents by the exercise “mature
judgment” and “enlightened conscience”. In
short, representation is a moral duty: those
with the good fortune to possess education
and understanding should act in the interest
of those who are less fortunate.
This view is very “elitist” in nature, as it argues
that once elected, representatives should
think for themselves and exercise
independent judgment on the grounds that
the mass of people do not know their best
interest.
Similar view is shared by John Stuart Mill in his
liberal theory of representation based on the
assumption that, although all individuals have
the right to be represented, not all political
opinions are of equal value. Mill proposed a
system of plural voting in which 4 or 5 votes
would be allocated to the highly learned and
educated, 2 or 3 to managerial workers and a
single vote to ordinary workers.
Mill also argued that “rational” voters would
support politicians who could act wisely on
their behalf, rather than the ones who merely
reflected the voters’ own views. Trusteeship
model portrays politicians as representatives
insofar as they are members of an educated
elite and is based on the belief that
knowledge and understanding are unequally
distributed in society, in a sense that not all
citizens know what is best for them.
Criticisms on the Trustee Model:

1. It is clearly antidemocratic – if politicians

should think for themselves because the
public is ignorant, poorly-educated, or
deluded, then it is surely a mistake to allow
the public to elect and vote their
representatives in the first place.
2. Education does not guarantee effective
representation – whereas education may certainly
be of value in aiding the understanding of intricate
political and economic problems, it is far less clear
that it helps politicians to make correct moral
judgment about the interest of others. Education
does not guarantee that the representative will
abide by “enlightened” conscience and judgment.
3. Trustee model is highly corruptible – if politicians
are allowed to exercise their own judgment, they
will use this as venue to pursue their own selfish
interest.
2. Delegate Model

Delegate – is a person who is chosen to act for

another on the basis of clear guidance and
instructions.
Under this model, a delegate is expected to act as a
conduit conveying the views of others, while
having little or no capacity to exercise his or her
own judgment or preferences.
Under the delegate model, there are mechanisms
that ensure that politicians are bound as closely as
possible to the views of the represented. These
include “frequent interchange” between
representatives and their constituents in the form
of regular elections and short terms of offices.
Other mechanism involves the use of initiatives,
plebiscites and referendums and the right to
recall.

Plebiscite – name given to a vote of the people

expressing their choice for or against a proposed
law or enacted submitted to them.
Referendum – is the submission (or reference) to a
law or part thereof to the voting citizens of a
country for their ratification or rejection.
Initiative – is the process wherein the people
directly propose and enact laws.
Recall – a method by which a public officer may be
removed from office during his tenure by a vote
of the people.
The virtue of “delegated representation” is that
it provides broader opportunities for popular
participation and serves to check the self-
serving inclinations of politicians, thus coming
closest to realizing the idea of popular
sovereignty.
Disadvantages of the Delegate Model
1. In ensuring that the representatives are
closely bound to the interest of their
constituents, it tends to breed narrowness
and foster conflict in parliaments and
councils. As Burke said “the Parliament is a
deliberative assembly of one nation, with one
interest – that of the whole”.
2. Delegation limits the scope of leadership and
statesmanship as politicians are not trusted to
exercise their own judgment.
3. Mandate Model
Both the trustee model and delegate model were
developed before the emergence of modern
political parties, and therefore view the
representatives as essentially independent
actors.

However, individual candidates are now rarely

elected on the basis of their personal qualities
and talents; more commonly, they are seen as
foot soldiers for a party, and are therefore
supported because of the party’s public image
and program of policies.
The mandate model emerged from the dynamics of
modern political parties, as it is based on the idea
that, in winning an election, a party gains popular
mandate that authorizes it to carry out whatever
policies or programs it outlined during the election
campaign.
As it is the PARTY, rather than the INDIVIDUAL that is
the agency of representation, the mandate model
provides a clear justification for party unity and
party discipline as such that politicians serve their
constituents not by thinking for themselves or
acting as a channel to convey peoples’ views, but
by remaining loyal to their party and its policies.
Criticisms on the Mandate Model
1. Mandate model is based on the highly
questionable model of voting behavior as it
suggests that voters select parties on the grounds
of policies and issues. Voters are not always the
rational and well-informed creatures as they can
be influenced by “irrational” factors such as
personalities, images, allegiances and social
conditioning.
2. Even if voters are influenced by policies, it is likely
that they will be attracted by certain manifesto or
platform commitments. A vote for a party cannot
therefore be taken to be an endorsement of its
entire manifesto or platform of government, as it
maybe just a vote for any single election promise.
3. Mandate doctrine imposes “straight jacket” –
it limits government policies to those
positions and proposals that the party took up
during the elections, and leaves no scope to
adjust policies in the light of changing
circumstances.
4. The mandate doctrine can only be applied in
majoritarian electoral systems, and even its
application in a majoritarian system may
appear absurd if the winning party fails to gain
50% of the popular vote.
4. Resemblance Model
This model argues that representatives should
typify or resemble the group they claim to
represent. This notion is derived from the idea
of “representative cross-section” – on which a
representative government would constitute a
“microcosm” of the larger society, containing
members drawn from all groups and sections
in society in terms of social class, gender,
religion, ethnicity, age, etc. and in numbers
proportional to the size of the groups in
society at large.
This idea of characteristic representation or
“microcosmic representation” as it is called is
traditionally endorsed by socialist and radical
thinkers arguing that the “under-
representation” of groups at senior levels in
key institutions ensures that their interests are
marginalized or worse, ignored.

The resemblance model suggest that only

people who come from a particular group,
and have shared the experiences of that
group, can fully identify with its interests, and
as such be the most effective and able
representative for the group.
Criticisms on the Resemblance Model

1. It portrays representation in narrow and

exclusive terms, and with representatives
simply advancing the interest of his/her group,
the result is social division and conflict, with
no one being able to defend the common
good or advance a broader public interest.
2. A government as a microcosm of the society
would reflect the society’s weaknesses as well as
its strength. With this, of what advantage would a
government resembling a society if majority of the
population are apathetic, ill-informed, poorly
educated, and cynical?

3. The microcosmic ideal can only be achieved by

imposing powerful constraints on electoral choice
and freedom. As such, in the name of
representation political parties may be forced to
impose quotas for female and minority candidates
and electorate might have to be classified on the
basis of class, gender, race, and so on, thereby
contradicting democracy itself.
Integration:
Contemporary mass democracies owe their
existence to a relatively modern invention:
representative government. From the ancient
Greeks up to the time Rousseau, democracy was
equated with direct participation of the citizenry
in the affairs of the government.
The invention of representative government freed
democracy from the constraints of ideal direct
democracy. Instead of participating in political
decision-making, groups of citizens selected
legislators to represent them in democratic
deliberations, and the democratic process thus
depended on the relationship between the
representative and the represented.
The justification of representation is largely based
on necessity. Democracy requires citizen control
over the political process, in large nation-states,
the town-meeting model is no longer feasible.
Proponents of representative government also
stress the limited political skills of the average
citizen and the need for professional politicians.

Citizen control over political elites is routinized

through periodic and competitive elections to
select leaders. Elections are intended to ensure
that elites remain responsive and accountable to
the public. By accepting the electoral process, the
public gives its consent to be governed by the
elites elected.
Yet, many traditional democratic theorists were
critical of the concept of representation and felt
that it undermined the very tenets of
democracy. Representative government
transferred political power from the people to a
small group of designated elites.

Voters had power only on the day their ballots were

cast and waited in servitude until the next
election. Under representative government the
citizens may control, but the elites rule. Rousseau
once warned in the Social Contract that “the
instant a people allows itself to be represented,
it loses its freedom”.
The democratic principle of people’s control
over the government is replaced by a
commitment to routinized electoral
procedures. Other opportunities for
increasing popular control are not developed
because elections provide the accepted
standard of citizen influence. Critics are not
intrinsically opposed to representative
government, but they oppose a political
system that stops at representation and
limits or excludes other (and perhaps more
influential) methods of citizen influence.
Elections and Voting Behavior
the Representative process and the politics of
representation is intrinsically connected to
ELECTIONS and VOTING.

Elections may not be in themselves a sufficient

condition for political representation, but
there is little doubt that they are a NECESSARY
condition.
In discussing elections, these questions should
be considered:

1. Which offices or posts are subject to the

elective principle?
- although elections are widely used to fill
those public offices whose holders have
policy-making responsibilities (legislature and
executive), key political institutions are
sometimes treated as exemption to the
electoral rule (Courts and Justice system).
2. Who is entitled to vote and how widely is the
voting franchise drawn?

- Some restrictions on the right to vote may

have been abandoned in the light of modern
democracies, like property ownership, race,
gender and education. Nevertheless, there
may be informal restrictions, like citizenship,
voter registration, residency requirement, etc.
3. How are the votes cast?

- Modern political elections are generally held

on the basis of secret ballot (or sometimes
called an “Australian ballot”). The secret ballot
is usually seen as the guarantee of a “fair
election”, in that it keeps the dangers of
corruption and intimidation at bay.
- But, electoral fairness cannot simply be
reduced to the issue of how people vote. It is
also affected by the voters’ access to reliable
and balanced information, the range of
choice they are offered, the circumstances
under which campaigning is carried out, and
how the votes are counted.
4. Are elections competitive or non-
competitive?
- this is usually seen as the most crucial of
distinctions, as only about half of the
countries that use elections offer the voting
public with a genuine choice of both
candidates and parties.
Electoral competition is highly complex and
often controversial issue, as distinctions
between single-candidate election and plural
elections provide voters range of choices.
5. How is the election conducted?

- as there a numerous variety of electoral

systems, each of which has its own strengths
and weaknesses and has its own unique
political and constitutional implications, the
manner and conduct of election and the
typology of electoral system adopted is
crucial.
Functions of Elections
- the conventional view is that elections are a
mechanism through which politicians can be
called to account and forced to introduce
policies that somehow reflect public opinion. The
functions of elections can generally be classified
in two (2):
1. Bottom –up functions of elections include;
political recruitment, representation, making the
government, influencing policy and so on.
2. Top-down functions which include; building
legitimacy, shaping public opinion and
strengthening the elites.
But it must be noted that elections are a “two-
way street” that provides the government and
the people, the elite and the masses, with the
opportunity to influence one another. The
central functions of elections under this view
include the following:

1. Recruiting Politicians – in democratic

states, elections are the principal source of
political recruitment, taking account of the
process to which parties nominate possible
candidates.
2. Making Governments – elections make
governments directly in states in which the
political executive is directly elected.
3. Providing Representation – when elections
are fair and competitive, they provide means
to which demands are channeled from the
public to the government.
4. Influencing Policy – elections generally
prevent governments from pursuing radical
and deeply unpopular policies and tend to
favor policies that would elicit popular
support from the voting public.
5. Educating Voters – the process of electoral
campaign provides the voters with an abundance of
information about parties, candidates, policies,
current government’s record, the political system,
and so on.
6. Building Legitimacy – this is the very reason why
even authoritarian regimes bother to hold
elections, even they are non-competitive because
elections help foster legitimacy by providing
justification for a system of rule.
7. Strengthening Elites – elections can also be a
vehicle through which elites can manipulate and
control the masses and at the same time giving the
citizens an impression that they are exercising
power over the government.
Another popular characterization on the
functions of elections includes:
1. Leadership Selection – the government give
primacy to the element of CONSENT by the
governed to be expressed manifestly. Election
serves to clothe the exercise of authority by
the government for us to consider such
exercise as legitimate.
- it enables the electorate to choose
among the candidates those who best
represent their interests and in turn, the
elected candidates assume public office by the
virtue of the MANDATE of the people.
2. Performance Review – elections serve as a
powerful mechanism of ensuring public
accountability as the elected representatives
should promote people’s interests and be
responsive to their needs.

- elections provide the people opportunities

to review and therefore render judgment
upon the performance of such officials
mandated to formulate and implement
government policies and programs for a given
period.
3. Renewal of Consent – elections serve as a
venue for the voters to renew or terminate
their consent to their elective officials as
incumbents may either be retained in office or
rejected publicly to give way to a new set of
leaders.
- if and when the people decided to change
their representatives in the government,
elections facilitate an orderly transfer of
power from one set of leaders to another.
Elections may thus be viewed as renewal of
consent between the government and the
governed, that is between the elected
representatives and the sovereign people.
4. Index of Political Currents – elections serve as
useful approximation of the political weather
and as a tool to gauge political currents and
strengths that guide power seekers in their
campaign strategies.
5. Access Channels – electoral process also
serve as an access channel for those sectors
of the society who have no other means of
being heard. It serves as an access channel
especially for the poor and disadvantaged
sectors of society to air their concerns and
demands to the candidates.
Voting Behavior
- The growth of academic interest in voting
behavior coincided with the rise of behavioral
political science. At the high point of
behavioral revolution it was thought that
voting held the key to disclosing all the
mysteries of the political system, and perhaps
allowing for laws of mass political psychology
to be developed. Even though this very high
hope was never achieved, it opened the door
for “psephology” – or the scientific study of
voting behavior.
Voting behavior is a dominant theme in
behavioral political science as it provides one
of the richest sources of information about
the interaction between individuals, society
and politics. Voting behavior is clearly shaped
by short term and long term influences.

Short term influences are specific to a particular

election and do not allow conclusions to be
drawn about voting patterns in general. Short
term influences in voting behavior include:
1. State of Economy – which reflects that there
is usually a link between a government’s
popularity and economic variables such as
unemployment, inflation, and disposable
income.
- It is often alleged that governments
orchestrates pre-elections economic booms
and growth in the hope of improving their
chances in winning elections and provide the
voting public with a “feel good” atmosphere
before casting their votes.
2. Personality and Public Standing of Party
leaders – this is important because media
exposure portrays leaders as the brand image
of their party. This means that a party may try
to rekindle and boost popular support by
recruiting famous personalities to their party
and/or replacing a leader who is perceived as an
electoral liability.
3. Style and effectiveness of electoral
campaigning – opinion polls are usually thought
to be significant in this respect, either giving a
candidate’s or party’s campaign momentum or
instilling disillusionment or even complacency
amongst the voters.
4. Mass Media’s biased or partisan coverage –
may come based on press control and
ownership, or a dominant party’s pressure on
media institutions.
Theories of Voting Behavior

1. Party-identification Model
- is the earliest theory of voting behavior, is
based on a sense of psychological attachment
that people have to parties. People identify with
a party, in as sense of being long-term supporters
who regard the party as “their” party.
- in this view, voting is therefore a
manifestation of partisanship, not a product of
calculation influenced by factors such as policies,
personalities, campaigning and media coverage.
-this model places heavy stress on early political
socialization, seeing the family as the principal
means through which political loyalties are
forged.

- but, a major drawback of this model is the

growing evidence from a number of countries
of partisan dealignment – which indicates a
general fall in party identification and decline
in habitual voting patterns.
2. Sociological Model

- links voting behavior to group membership,

suggesting that electors tend to adopt a
voting pattern that reflects the economic and
social position of the group to which they
belong.
- Rather than developing an attachment to a
party in terms of family influence, this model
highlights the importance of social alignment,
reflecting the various tensions and divisions
within a society.
- the most significant of these divisions are
class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and region.

- the weakness of this model lies on the fact

that, in focusing on groups, it ignores the
individual and the role of personal self-
interest. Also, there is the phenomenon of
class dealignment and the concept of class
“block” voting is no longer that strong.
3. Rational-choice Model
-this model focuses on the individual as it shifts
attention away from socialization and behavior of
social groups.
- in this view, voting is seen as a rational act, in the
sense that individual electors are believed to decide
their party preference on the basis of personal self-
interests. Rather than being a habitual
manifestation of broader group or party
attachments and allegiances, voting is essentially
INSTRUMENTAL: that is, as a means to an end.
- This model is strongly linked to “issue voting” – that
is voting behavior is shaped by choices on policy
options on a calculation of personal interest.
4. Dominant-ideology Model
- is more radical in nature as it sees voting behavior
and individual choices as shaped by a process of
ideological manipulation and control. This theory
emphasize on how groups and individuals interpret
their position depends on how information has
been presented to them through education by the
government, and above all, by the mass media.
- In this way, this model portrays election far from
challenging the existing distribution of power and
resources in the society, but rather the electoral
process upholds it such that those who control
resources are the ones that dominate elections.
Political Parties and Party
Systems
Political Parties are relatively recent invention,
as they came in existence only in the early
nineteenth century. But now, they are
everywhere, as the only nations without
political parties are those where they are
suppressed by dictatorship or military rule.
The development of political parties and
acquisition of a party system came to be
recognized as the mark of political
modernization.
Political parties is seen as a major organizing
mechanism of modern politics, as it serves as
the vital link between the state and the civil
society, between the institutions of
government and the groups and interests that
operate within the society.
Political Party – is a group of people that is
organized for the purpose of winning
government power by electoral or other
means. Parties are often confused with
interest groups or social movements, but four
(4) characteristics usually distinguish parties
from groups;
1. Parties aim to exercise government power by
winning political office (small parties may
nevertheless use elections more to gain platform
than to win power)
2. Parties are organized bodies with formal “card
carrying” membership. This distinguishes them
from broader and more diffuse social
movements.
3. Parties typically adopt broad issue focus,
addressing each of the major areas of
government policy (small parties, however, may
have single-use focus, thus resembling interest
groups).
4. To varying degrees, parties are united by shared
political preferences and a general ideological
identity.
1. Parties aim to exercise government power by
winning political office (small parties may
nevertheless use elections more to gain platform
than to win power)
2. Parties are organized bodies with formal “card
carrying” membership. This distinguishes them
from broader and more diffuse social
movements.
3. Parties typically adopt broad issue focus,
addressing each of the major areas of
government policy (small parties, however, may
have single-use focus, thus resembling interest
groups).
4. To varying degrees, parties are united by shared
political preferences and a general ideological
identity.
-parties also facilitate cooperation between the
two major branches of government: the
executive and legislative. In parliamentary
systems this is effectively guaranteed by the fact
that the government is formed from party or
parties that have majority control of the
assembly.
- parties also provide, in competitive systems at
least, a vital source of opposition and criticism,
both inside and outside government. as well as
broadening political debate and educating the
electorate, this helps to ensure that government
policy is more thoroughly scrutinized and
therefore more likely to be workable.
 Functions of Parties
1. Representation – is often seen as the primary
function of political parties. It refers to the
capacity of parties to respond to and
articulate the views of both members and
their voters. In the language of systems
theory, political parties are seen as major
“inputting” devices to ensure that the
government heeds the needs and wishes of
the larger society.
- rational-choice theorist, explains this process by
suggesting that the political market follows the
economic market, in that politicians act
essentially as entrepreneurs seeking votes,
meaning that parties behave much like
businesses. Power thus ultimately resides with
the consumers – the voters.
- this “economic model” can, however, be criticized
on the ground that parties seek to shape or
mobilize public opinion as well as respond to it,
that the image of voters as well-informed,
rational and issue-oriented consumers is
questionable, and that the range of consumer
(electoral) choice is often narrow.
2. Elite Formation and Recruitment – parties of
all kinds are responsible of providing the state
with their leaders. Much more commonly,
politicians achieve office by the virtue of their
party post: contestants in presidential
elections are usually party leaders while in
parliamentary systems, the leader of the
largest party in the assembly normally
becomes the prime minister.
- in most cases, parties therefore provide a
training ground for politicians, equipping
them with skills, knowledge and experience,
and offering them with some form of career
structure- something that depends on the
fortunes of the party.
- yet this function is criticized in a way that
parties ensure that political leaders are drawn
from a relatively small pool of talents: the
senior figures in a handful of major parties,
though in some cases, this is negated through
holding of primary elections.
3. Goal Formulation – political parties are
means through which societies set collective
goals and, in some cases ensure that they are
carried out. Parties play this role because in
the process of seeking for power, they
formulate programs of government with a
view of attracting popular support.
- not only does means that parties are a major
source of policy initiation, it also encourages
them to formulate coherent sets of policy
options that give the electorate a choice
amongst realistic and achievable goals.
4. Interest Articulation and Aggregation – in the
process of developing collective goals, parties
also help articulate and aggregate the various
interests found in society, as they often act as
vehicles through which business, labor, religious,
ethnic or other groups advance or defend their
various interests.
- other parties have effectively recruited interests
and groups in order to broaden their electoral
base. The fact that national parties invariably
articulate the demands of a multitude of groups
forces them to aggregate these interests by
drawing them together into a coherent whole, it
balances competing interests against each other.
5. Socialization and Mobilization – through
internal debate and discussion, as well as
campaigning and electoral competition,
parties are important agents of political
education and socialization. Parties in
competitive systems play no less significant a
role in encouraging groups to play by the rules
of the democratic game, thus mobilizing
support for the regime itself.
- yet, partisan dealignment brought doubt to
the capacity of parties to mobilize and
socialize as there is growing disenchantment
with conventional pro-system parties. The
problem is that parties to some extent are
socialized (or corrupted) by the experience of
government, making them less attractive in
engaging partisan sympathies and attracting
emotional attachments.
6. Organization of Government – it is often
argued that complex modern societies would
be ungovernable in the absence of political
parties, as they help in the formulation of
government; the case of parliamentary
systems points to the possibility of having a
“party government”.
- parties also give governments a degree of
stability and coherence, especially if the
members of the government are drawn from a
single party and are therefore united by
common sympathies and attachments.
-parties also facilitate cooperation between the
two major branches of government: the
executive and legislative. In parliamentary
systems this is effectively guaranteed by the fact
that the government is formed from party or
parties that have majority control of the
assembly.
- parties also provide, in competitive systems at
least, a vital source of opposition and criticism,
both inside and outside government. as well as
broadening political debate and educating the
electorate, this helps to ensure that government
policy is more thoroughly scrutinized and
therefore more likely to be workable.