Most people do. But, like some of the laws you have to follow, you might be unsure of exactly what this term means, or of the different forms representative democracy can take. Representative democracy gives power to representatives who are elected by citizens. As you may know, political parties have become an important element of representative democracy. They give us a broad-stroke sense of what a candidate stands for based on which party he or she belongs to.
Although we still vote on people when we head to the polls, in reality we are really voting for which political party — and which platform of policy ideas — we want to represent us. In a representative democracy, people generally vote for other people — representatives — rather than on legislative proposals directly. These representatives then formulate, propose, debate and vote on the laws and policies of our country.
That is, they represent our interests. This unburdens us from having to brush up on the finer points of law and policy, and instead gives these responsibilities to someone whose job it is to be expert on these issues. At least in theory. Representative democracy is so popular because direct democracy is just too cumbersome, and people just too busy, to make it work. However, there are still remnants of direct democracy within representative democracies.
Switzerland is often called a semi-direct democracy. Representatives handle the day-to-day administration and decision making, but citizens can propose changes to the constitution or request that a referendum be held on any law. Other representative democracies also allow referendums to decide important issues hello, Brexit. But generally speaking, direct democracy has gone the way of the dodo. Chances are, you live in a representative democracy.
A majority of people live under representative democracy in one form or another. All EU member states are representative democracies, as are almost all countries in the Western Hemisphere. The committee had found:. The Committee found Few were required even to report annually to parliament.
As a result of this Senate review, some of the quangoes were shut down and the reporting processes of those that survived were reformed. Serious reviews began about which government trading enterprises ought to be privatised, and which corporatised. In its review activity, it has revealed serious deficiencies costing millions of dollars in the performance-based pay program in the public service. It disallowed a generous determination in favour of the former controller-general of customs.
And it maintains a continuing and active vigilance over the civil liberties of citizens through the work of its standing committees on regulations and ordinances and scrutiny of bills. Such developments have strengthened the Senate's oversight capacity, with the Senate by and large acting responsibly for the public interest.
The Senate's committee system is a significant development, allowing the Senate more effectively to review government decisions and to attempt to keep the government accountable for its actions. On occasion, however, the Senate's committees become stages for narrow adversarial partisan politics. For example, in there was a clash between government and the Senate when a Senate committee examining foreign ownership in the print media requested documents and government witnesses for its hearings.
The government, having opposed the committee's formation, refused to comply. While the Senate attempted to make the executive accountable to the instrument of the people, [14] the government treated the inquiry in purely partisan terms. The result was a stand-off, but the Senate played an important role in exposing government actions to publicity and increased public awareness.
Committees also provide a formal channel of communication between parliament and the public that encourages greater community participation in the parliamentary process. In recent years, select committees have inquired into matters such as superannuation, uranium mining and milling, the Victorian casino, aircraft noise in Sydney, a new tax system, and currently, the socio-economic consequences of the National Competition Policy.
Citizens can and do participate in law making and policy review. The committee also received form letters from more than students. In addition, the committee received more than submissions including some from private individuals. In the period 31 May to 9 June , the Senate advertised on the World Wide Web as well as in more traditional channels public hearings on the following issues among others :.
The Senate has demonstrated a serious commitment to public participation in its committee processes. Such participation is no longer ad hoc , but an institutionalised part of the Senate's procedures. According to some of the proponents of the managerialist state, accountability can be assured by ensuring the private sector delivers the services the government has contracted to it in a client-sensitive way, and through creating legally enforceable contracts ensuring compliance by service providers.
The most extreme proponents argue that the mechanisms parliament has put in place to enhance the accountability of bureaucrats, including freedom of information, administrative appeals tribunals and Ombudsmen, are irrelevant to modern governance. Neither its Table of Contents nor its overview make any reference to democracy or accountability—let alone equity, responsibility, ethics or participation. It no longer enjoys a monopoly in the delivery of government services so it must prove that it is able to compete on cost and quality with best practice in the private sector … The culture of the APS does not sufficiently promote high performance or drive innovation, and the important contribution often overlooked or stifled by process and unnecessary regulations.
There is evidence of a lack of collective vision amongst its leadership. Management remains cautious and conservative. The Senate has been monitoring the impact of managerialism. For example, a May Senate committee report, Contracting Out of Government Services , raised concerns about the accountability mechanisms that were being developed.
The importance of making the public sector transparent and accountable has been a continuing theme of public administration and the parliamentary process for many years.
The committee wishes to ensure that these advances There is real concern that the progress that has been made may be threatened as significant areas of public expenditure are subject to contracting out and operational responsibility is transferred from the public to the private sector … that agencies may be less accountable for the manner in which they discharge their responsibilities.
A necessary accompaniment of devolution is increased accountability The quest for economic rationalism should not blind us to the old philosophical debate about ends and means. Parliamentary committees have a proper interest in both. At an institutional level, Australian democracy remains firmly centred around partisan politics and the executive remains dominant. Nonetheless, since the Senate has developed from an all but moribund institution to a vibrant part of Australia's system of representative government.
This change could not have occurred had the Senate remained under the control of either major party. The introduction of proportional representation in gave hitherto unrepresented groups a chance to gain a place in the Senate. The result was the growth of a series of small parties as well as the election of a number of independents. The changes to the Senate's voting system further enhanced the growth of minority parties.
The continued decline in the vote for the major parties, combined with the change in the quota required for election to the Senate, has made it easier for minor parties to be elected. As a consequence, since the s, it is usually the case that neither major party controls a majority in the Senate. Proportional representation, the voting patterns of Australians and its constitutionally embedded powers have given the Senate a base on which to develop into a serious, expert parliamentary institution.
The Senate's activities ensure that the government is not unchallenged, and there is a growing acceptance that the Senate, as an institution, has the right to take on the government. The government partially acknowledged the power of the Senate in that it changed the budget process and now accepts changes to specific budget items.
John Power has described the strengthening of the Senate's various roles as a move towards a consensual style of politics in which there are no longer clear-cut choices; instead policy packages emerge out of hard negotiation. In the process they have forced the Government to agree to some worthwhile reforms, such as the improvements in accountability.
However, developments in the direction of a more managerialist state represent a fundamental challenge to the idea that when public monies are being spent, the public interest is best served and protected by holding the policy-making arm of government, the executive, directly accountable to the elected representative institutions of the parliament.
Were managerialist developments to continue, large areas of policy could be excluded from the Senate's oversight. For the moment, the Senate is resisting managerialism and continuing to insist where it can on the traditional accountability of government to the parliament. Governments do not like it, but to twist Malcolm Fraser's words democracy was never meant to be easy.
Nethercote, ed. I am indebted to Wayne Hooper from the Senate for these recent committees. II s 1 of the US Constitution , representation may become particularly precarious, with the majority of the popular vote and the majority of electoral college votes potentially differing, as they did for example in the Presidential election.
In the case of matters pertaining to representative democracy, as with most constitutional law principles, these doctrinal concepts are informed by, or in fact serve to translate, abstract theory into concrete practice. They may considerably vary in detail between various jurisdictions and legal traditions. However, arguably three doctrinal concepts—with the inevitable variation in each country—may be identified that concern pivotal aspects of representative democracy and cut across various jurisdictions and traditions: free mandate, nexus of legitimation and the statute as central vehicle of democratic representation.
In the UK, together with the concept of parliamentary sovereignty , the free mandate has formed part of the constitutional acquis since the eighteenth century A Weber 47 , even though members of Parliament are deemed to primarily represent their constituencies see van der Hulst 9.
Article 27 of the French Constitution of the 5 th Republic , in line with French tradition since see van der Hulst 8; Favoreu et al 59—60, , declares any form of imperative mandate null and void—a position that has attained, at least on paper, recognition in most Constitutions around the globe Sobolewski 96 ; eg Art. Yet, the theory of the free mandate may clash with the reality of politics.
In particular in constitutional systems featuring influential political parties, the concept of free mandate may clash with the interest of political parties or political factions in parliament to whip their members into line.
In Germany, for example, in the jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany Bundesverfassungsgericht , the principle of the free mandate, enshrined in Article 38 1 of the German Basic Law, receives considerable limitation by way of Article 21 , allowing for so-called Fraktionsdisziplin Funktionszulagen Ger —40 ; Vermittlungsausschuss Ger — Since the people are sovereign, state authorities may only act if their actions may be traced back to a grant of authorization by the sovereign—ie, in a representative democracy, as primarily expressed in elections.
The gist of this doctrine requires that certain exercise of public authority, most notably those that restrict fundamental rights, need a statutory basis cf eg Art. If the sovereign people are the seat of legitimacy, only the people themselves may authorize official acts limiting fundamental rights—and must determine the essential details of these limits cf Hochmann In a representative democracy, such authorization and determination are exercised through the vehicle of the statute. Even without such metaphysical charging, eg on a Madisonian account, one may regard the statute as the central product of representation and thus as a means to bring about public good Federalist No.
In any case, the importance of such doctrine in a representative democracy becomes apparent: it is through the law that democratic representation is effectuated. However, the German practice is considerably stricter than the French one, particularly regarding the level of detail to be determined by statutory authorization cf Marsch —34 ; Freedom of Communication Fr 10 and with respect to the competence of the government to issue regulations and ordinances in Articles 37 and 38 of the French Constitution of the 5 th Republic.
Indeed, from the perspective of democratic representation, there is less tension in the US case, since the US President is directly elected by the people and widely regarded, in US constitutional practice and doctrine, as the representative of the entire nation cf Brito Vieira and Runciman Similarly so under the Westminster system, since it is rather parliamentary sovereignty than popular sovereignty that requires parliamentary authorization of executive law-making cf Miller UK The most prominent critique was submitted by Rousseau, who regarded the concepts of representation and of popular sovereignty as counter-exclusive Rousseau Liberalism and democracy are separate concepts.
As scholars such as Carl Schmitt and Chantal Mouffe stress, a democracy does not necessarily need to be liberal Schmitt 13; Mouffe However, contra Schmitt 13 et seq liberalism is also not irreconcilable with democracy. By contrast, liberal concepts, such as the protection of the freedom of expression and the freedom of assembly as well as safeguards for the political minority may foster and warrant democratic process and discourse. But, undeniably, a liberal concept of democracy inheres tensions see Mouffe 2 , particularly with respect to individual rights and judicial review.
Individual rights are intended to constrain certain expressions of the popular will cf Dworkin Hence, popular sovereignty finds its limits in constitutional rights and principles.
Moreover, whether or not such rights and principles are violated by the exercise of popular will is a decision usually left to courts, whose democratic legitimacy is rather thin: in fact, it is instead their independence and thus their lack of recurring democratic accountability that defines them.
From the perspective of democratic legitimacy and accountability, by contrast, this detachment is problematic. In between these periods, the representatives govern. Therefore, they usually develop into professional politicians.
They form a political elite M Weber 14 et seq ; M Weber et seq , which, together with the social, economic, and cultural elites that are a common phenomenon of liberal if not all societies, may become rather detached from the ordinary people, the non-members of the elite, who they are supposed to represent Crouch Its antagonism with direct democracy permeates political thought on representative democracy. Depending on the answer to these questions, Constitutions build different institutional structures, leading to numerous variations of representation through the branches of government, notably the legislature and the executive Part D.
Further, institutional structure heavily influences doctrinal concepts as to the appropriate means to bring about democratic representation. Their differences to the non-delegation doctrine in US constitutional law demonstrate the effect of institutional structure in this regard Part E. The more the individual constitutional order grants the parliament the role as a central, or even primary, seat of direct representation of the people and popular will, as under the German parliamentary system, the higher the degree of detail in what a parliamentary statute has to regulate.
However, note the difference to the Westminster system that relies on parliamentary instead of popular sovereignty. The more the executive claims a separate and independent position from parliament and itself enjoys a strong representative nexus to the people, as under the US presidential system, the more room is left for executive law-making. Finally, the current debate on populist backlash leads back to the tension between direct and representative democracy, particularly in combination with liberal counter-majoritarian concepts of individual rights protection through judicial review Part F.
I 5 th edn Bohn Cheneval, F, Demokratietheorien Junius Crouch, C, Post-Democracy Polity Favoreu, L, et al, Droit constitutionnel 22 nd edn Dalloz Hamilton, A, and Madison. Studien zur Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte von der Antike bis ins Jahrhundert Duncker and Humblot Lincoln, A, The Gettysburg Address Penguin
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