User:American Lautaro/Representative democracy

The Classic View of Bernard Manin
Bernard Manin argues in "The Principles of Representative Government" that all governments that can be correctly labelled "representative governments" have 4 fundamental characteristics in common.


 * 1) Partial Independence of Representatives. Elected representatives are not be formally bound by campaign promises, or instructions from the public. They must have some agency in what parts of their agenda to enact, or whether to enact it at all.
 * 2) Freedom of Public Opinion. The public needs to have the freedom to form and express opinions that may disagree with their government. For this condition to be met, the public must have access to political information and the right to publicly express their opinions form based on this political information.
 * 3) The Repeated Character of Elections. Elections must be frequent enough so as to provide the possibility of accountability. Repeated elections are important in large part because it is essential that elected representatives anticipate that they will be punished electorally by voters for bad behavior like breaking promises or behaving purely out of self-interest.
 * 4) Trial by Discussion. Decisions must be subject to some sort of persuasive discussion on the merits of the policy before being passed into law. This principle comes from the need to produce some sort of consensus among elected representatives and public interests that will have different, competing ideas. In a representative government, persuasive discussion is the mechanism by which a majority (parliamentary or otherwise) forms around a policy direction.

Manin summarizes his findings neatly, writing "The principle of representative government must therefore be formulated as follows: no proposal can acquire the force of public decision unless it has obtained the consent of the majority after having been subjected to trial by discussion. " (190) He further argues that governments which have the 4 characteristics above can be labelled properly as representative governments, and that if they are lacking them, they cannot.

Polyarchy and The View of Robert Dahl
Robert Dahl re-labels governments which we call representative democracies as "polyarchies", to highlight that none of our systems will ever reach the ideal of "democracy", which he writes is a government which is perfectly responsive to the wishes of its citizens. He defines a democracy as a form of government which provides its citizens the right to:


 * 1) "formulate their preferences"
 * 2) "to signify their preferences to their fellow citizens and the government by individual and collective action"
 * 3) "to have their preferences weighed equally in the conduct of government, that is, weighted with no discrimination because of the content or source of the preference".

Dahl establishes two different variables upon which we must judge a government before labeling it a polyarchy, inclusiveness and liberalization. Liberalization is a measure how much freedom the body of citizens have to formulate their preferences, signify them through action, and whether all their preferences are weighted equally. Inclusiveness is a measure how limited the body of citizens is, if the vast majority of people living in a country are afforded the full rights of citizenship, it can be said to be fairly inclusive. When a regime demonstrates high levels of both inclusiveness and liberalization, it can be labelled a polyarchy. [Insert photo?]