The Future of Representative Democracy

Since the publication of Hanna Pitkin’s (1967) foundational work, political representation is generally conceived as the activity of making citizens present in the political decision-making processes that affect them. What it means to make citizens present has, however, remained subject to scholarly and societal debate. Some conceive of such presence in terms of patterns of congruence between citizens’ policy preferences and representatives’ acts. Others, then again, suggest that, in open and competitive settings, non-objection to the claims made on behalf of the people may be taken as proof of claims’ representative properties. Additionally, scholars with expertise in feminism and multiculturalism have problematized the assumed homogeneity of ‘constituents’ and the ways in which institutional features (like electoral districts) have privileged the representation of territorial and geographical groups over others. Increasingly, ecologists have called into question the myopia imbued in our representative institutions and the constraints it places on representing future generations and inanimate groups, such as climate or nature. Meanwhile, contemporary political parties, once central actors, and platforms of political representation, have lost much of their trustworthiness in the eyes of many citizens, and citizens increasingly call their representativeness into question. Growing portions of the population seem to feel under-represented or misrepresented. There are numerous claims to the effect that there is a representative disconnect between representatives and represented, between citizens and those that govern them. Such a notion of disconnect brings into question how and in what sense the problem can be located in any one of the elements that make up a democratic system of representation (such as parliaments, parties and citizens), or whether the problem is one of how the system is configured and the arrangements relate to each other. To address such questions, it is important to consider such notions as representative system (the full range of institutions and procedures that make up and structure political representation) and representative ecology (the broader context of norms, rules, institutions, and culture within which the representative system is embedded). Increasingly, consensus is growing on the need to ‘fix’ or future-proof representative democracy. Democratic innovations, like participatory budgeting, deliberative mini-publics, representation by lottery or the introduction of citizens’ chambers of other forms of permanent citizens’ participation in parliament, are increasingly discussed and used to complement or improve the presence guaranteed through traditional forms of political representation. The ‘systemic’ approach queries how such possible fixes can be incorporated into the broader workings of the representative system.