political representation

The statements of any individual's degree of representation in his government is a complicated. There's a considerable number of ways of representing and of being represented. These different ways vary from time to time both in form and in significance. system of understanding this changing situation is to discover the attitudes of men at different periods to what they call representation.

When an American thinks of representation, he usually thinks of his vote. It is his weapon and with it he can subdue any dragon that may emerge from the cave of political intrigue. From the vote, he supposes, comes his government, and from the government, actions which usually purport to cBooks of Politicsonform along with his wishes. But if he ponders a small longer, he will keep in mind feelings of frustration at definite acts of his representatives; he will recall the depths of his ignorance about the habits and characteristics of his representatives; and he will recognize that his weapon, though a handy, cannot assure his control of all the specialized operations necessary in government.

Historicallyin the past, the attention paid by writers to the idea of representation has centered on particular issues. These have been mainly the suffrage and voting systems such as proportional representation. Another issue that has caused debate has been more psychological in nature: what relationship ought to exist between a representative and his constituents? Surprisingly , these issues have never been regarded as closely dependent on another. As they shall see, they are indeed related. What is perhaps more regrettable is that plenty of other issues of representation have been slighted or ignored by writers.

Representation is primarily a kind of mind, reflecting a method of social communication that often changes in important respects without disturbing the outward appearance of political institutions. Representation is a side of all representative government; without it, the machinery of such government - its laws, franchises, and assemblies - becomes unproductive. But representation is also part of all government - despotic, aristocratic, or democratic - because it concerns the agreement prevailing between ruler and ruled. Representation was a familiar idea before representation government, as the term is often used, existed. Innumerable dynasties that would have shuddered at the thought of representative government were proud of what they termed the "complete" representation in their own societies.

An exception was Maude Clarke who, in her search for the origins of representation in the Middle Ages, found that plenty of conditions lay at the root of the principle of representation. Different kinds of representation manifested themselves, he wrote. These were "personifications, specific acts, undertaken for reasons of administrative convenience and political action bearing directly on public law". All of these were acts of representation, Miss Clarke observed. The full significance and relevance of her enlarged viewpoint will get clarification as they proceed.

They ought to not further postpone, however, specifying the meanings to be given the word representation in the present volume. Representation is a condition that exists when the characteristics and acts of vested with public functions are in accord with the desires of or more persons to whom the functions have objective or subjective importance. A device of representation is an attempt on the part of or more persons to bring about the conditions of representation. Examples would be elections, qualifications for holding office, or the choice of public official by lot. Representation in a given situation may exist for person, a few persons, or a great plenty of. Thus, in the opinion of may, democracy is a society in which the public functionaries give a maximum of representation to a majority of the population. By contrast, a despotism has often been viewed as a society in which only the despot, or his relatives, or the nobility, has possessed the maximum of representation.
The search for the broader meanings of representation, both in the present and the past, must be conducted on levels, and the ideas which men have had concerning representation can best be analyzed by relating them to these levels. The first level is that of the community; it consists of all those conscious and unconscious ways in which men are related to another. The second level of representation is the discussion level; here men consciously make arrangements to further their own aims. This is the "jousting" part of the political method - bargains are made; organizations contend with another; groups and individuals maneuver to acquire power and benefits. On the third level, the administration of government, general acts are brought to bear on individuals of the community. Here the immediate, concrete meaning of representation is present in the functionary's relation to the individual. But the relationship is ruled by a general directive that may be more or less representative to the individual affected.

The community level of representation exhibits in a primitive form, as Maude Clarke has pointed out, in such personifications as the self-sacrifice described in II, Maccabees: "But I, as my brethren, offer up my body and life for the laws of our fathers \.\. that in me and my brethren the fury of the Almighty which is justly brought on all our nation, may cease." The representative embodies the traits, the outlook, even the sins, of the larger group. Furthermore, if the larger group has anything to say about it, the representative ought to possess some massive measure of identity of characteristics with the group qualities, or at least some massive measure of agreement with the group norms. How familiar in plenty of societies are terms like "foreigner," "hick," and "snob" directed at representatives who lack such qualities. In American society there's unacknowledged qualifications of name, nationality, occupation, and schooling for plenty of offices; such stipulations for acting as a representative are none the less effective for not being incorporated in to the written laws. Electors often demand these qualifications and, therefore, they often exist.

If such requirements work to promote an identity of background and experience between representative and constituents, the reason for the requirements lies beyond the method of popular elections. Other systems of recruitment without election may be even more demanding of identical characteristics. They need only mention the well-founded theory that the modern dictator resembles the masses in origins, traits, and behavior. Wrote Roberto Michels of the phenomenon of the "Duce": "He translates in a bare, linear, and briliant form his new consciousness that contains the aims of the multitude. The multitude itself frantically acclaims, answering from the profound voice of its own moral convictions, or, even more profound, of its own sub-conscious."

Those who rule have not been unconscious of this sort of representation, and have played immemorially the part of their subjects. The monarch of plenty of a fairy story dons the clothing of a peasant and ventures forth among the people to discover their issues and to sense their feelings about the government. For a moment at least, he accepts the lot of a victim of his own laws. The popular politician must search unfalteringly for the common denominator of the characteristics of the multitude. Huey Long," The Kingfish" of Louisiana, slept in silk pajamas, but when he was to be photographed signing a bill night en deshabill����¯�¿�½������©, he quickly donned an oldfashioned nightgown to keep away from offending his constituents.

Furthermore, so-called democracies have been known to pick representatives by reason of their superior class position than to reject them because of it. The society's norms for representation may have demanded special differences than identity. Lecky reminds us in his History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe that "as a great aristocracy is never insulated, as its ramifications penetrate in to plenty of spheres, and its social influence modifies all the relations of a society, the minds of men become insensibly habituated to a standard of judgment from which they would otherwise have recoiled." Thus the representative must mirror social norms.

There's occasions when the whole idea of representation tends to be encompassed by the idea of community. They frequently forget this in our "rational" and "scientific" age. Primitive law is customary law, in the sense that specialized legal organs do not exist; there's no written codes and law is not foreign to the every day life of the people. The law of the early Middle Ages in much of Western Europe was customary law. Law was "found," never made, and it was found by abstracting the customary behavior of the population.

When the Norman kings wished to discover the laws of Saxon England, they took a kind of public-opinion poll, according to a later historian describing the event. A writ went to the counties to form an inquest jury. "Twelve men, therefore, were selected to make known the provision of their laws and customs, as far as they were able, omitting nothing and changing nothing by deception." In our own times, the jury is still a random sampling to get the sense and reason of the community. The Supreme Court declared in 1942: "Tendencies, no matter how slight, toward the choice of jurors by any system other than a method which will insure a trial by a representative group are an undermining method weakening the institution of jury trial, and ought to be sturdily resisted."

Moving from public law in to the realms of private law, they find in the law of agency significant analogies to the practice of representation. The legal agent has always been the restricted fine-tune ego of his principal, with power no greater than that of his principal, bound by ethics, and now by legal sanctions, not to permit any intrusion of his own interests in to the affairs of his principle. He must "impersonate" his client to the best of his ability, and, indeed, the word "impersonate" derives from the same root as the word "representation." Today legal agency and representation are distantly related analogies. In the early elections of representative assemblies, the delegates were regarded as a species of legal attorney. And, as each chapter will show, this idea has always been present in the minds of plenty of men.

The illustrations thus far offered can be multiplied from the vastness of political life. All of them indicate that ideas of political representation come not only from the level of rational political adjustments and of mechanical devices to promote the particular desires of various groups, but come also from a region in which community ties preponderate. Representation, then, may be regarded as a consensus of characteristics between politically unequal parties of which is the representative and the other the constituent, such consensus being derived from the plenty of means by which a public is organized.

From the community level of representation, moves in to the "rational," "secondary," and "individualistic" level of representation. Here unconscious, traditional factors are less strong, and all those selective factors requiring similarities of appearance, background, and habits of life recede in importance. The representative and the represented are in accord because of said facts, visible tendencies, and agreement in interests that are defined very often in the press, speeches, platforms, and records of past actions. This is regarded as the typical sphere of representative government as that sphere is outlined in the classical expositions - in Locke's Second Essay on Civil Government, in J.S. Mill's Representative Government, in the framing of the American Constitution, and in the Italian Constitution of 1795. This is the representation of the Congressional Record, of Hansard's Debates, the representation which Carlyle said was a "talking shop," and about which T.V. Smith wrote when he declared: "Once admit that if opposing points of view are to be acknowledged, they must permit partisans to represent them, then they must start to provide an institution under which all points of view can meet on equal terms and have it out."

This is the level of representation which has been peculiarly the hallmark of representative governments, and Fascists and Communists have been quick to deny its importance. Fascist Spain, Nazi Spain, and Soviet Russia made obeisance to the traditional representative structures which they inherited from the Age of Representative Government, but such structures became vermiform appendixes in systems that took drastically different methods of achieving what those governments thought about representation. The feeble efforts of Hobbes to keep alive the representation on which his original social contract was based, and the significant denial by Rousseau that the sovereignty of the people could be alienated or delegated to deputies, culminated in Pareto, who pontificated: " They need not linger on the fiction of 'popular representation' -- poppycock grinds no flour," and in the Nazi Koellreutter, who eliminated worries over representation by the formula:" The who has authority represents directly through his persona."

Representation operates on the level of unconscious expression and of discussion and legislation, but it is also found on the level of administration. Administration, broadly defined to include the dispensation of justice, deals usually with materials that have been discussed and legislated on or with materials that are so usually agreed to that they are for the moment not part of the discussion-legislation sphere. These materials, as introduced to administrators and judges, are couched in the general language of principles or policies. The general must then be deduced and applied to the particular case. The method by which abstract statements or directives are transformed in to actions with reference to individuals is relevant in several ways to the study of representation.

The administrative method also introduces by its nature a difference between the representation that usually occurs in legislative assemblies & that which occurs in administration. While the values introduced for consideration in legislatures & among other selected officials are often the values of particular groups - sectarian, economic, or local - the values introduced for consideration in administration tend to be ethical or legal abstractions. The pure type of administration justifies its action as representative instances of abstractions like "the law," "the executive order," or " the national interest." It strives to offer the community specific & logical deductions from the abstract principles; it calls this offering the "true" representation.

The nature of the administrative function itself introduces issues of representation. In the areas of politics in which community sentiments & discussion make their influence on representation felt, the trend of thought is inductive toward symbolic expression or the declaration of policyowner. In administration, the trend of thinking is deductive toward execution. In this deductive method, which characterizes administrative work, sure factors diminish or magnify the representative condition that may have prevailed when the declaration of policyowner occurred. Examples of such factors would be recruitment by examination & long tenure in office, the sine qua non of technically competent execution of policyowner. Andrew Jackson was perhaps the most vociferous of the lots of voices that disputed the ability of a permanent bureaucracy to represent the changing circumstances of the constituencies. As a rule, administrative officials have been apart from the people, educated differently, behaving differently, & even dressing & eating differently. Expressive representation of the community has never characterized a highly integrated bureaucracy.

The individual case is incorporated in to the principle by the favourite techniques of unilateral decisions or hearing of the interested parties. It is no wonder, thinking about these conditions, that assaults on bureaucracy are so frequent & bitter. For administration, in its purest from, is gravely handicapped in expressing the community folk ways of the combination of practical, tangible values that meet on the bargaining level of representation. The application of laws & policies to individual cases produces a situation in which the aim, authoritative, & impersonal elements in representation are enhanced.

Consequently, the type of representation offered by a pure bureaucracy is reminiscent of medieval "absorptive" representation. The Prince represents the whole body of State, wrote John of Salisbury in 1159, but is responsible to God or His representatives on Earth. The constituents' lot is that of W.H. Auden's "Unknown Citizen".
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
 against whom there was no official complaint,
& all the reports of his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of the elderly school word, he was saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
\.\..
Was he free ? Was he happy? The query is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, they ought to definitely have heard.

The symbolic function, the legislative function, the administrative function -- all have been described & emphasized in political writings as function of the state. It is no novelty, therefore, to state that whatever agreement exists between representative & represented, between the functionaries & the public, may be regarded as composed of expressive, legislative, & administrative factors. Representation may be sought & studied wherever these functions appear - in the executive, in the courts, & in the national & local legislatures. They may expect to find that the goals of the groups that hold power or that contend for power will be revealed by the particular kinds of governmental arrangements that those groups defend or demand.

Such groups would be not only the contemporary major ideological divisions - the Democrats, the Fascists, & the Communists. They also would be subdivisions of the society, each with a aim to reach & each with ideas about what representation is & the way it ought to best be achieved. The battles of rich & poor, of religious sects & political sects, of urban & rural populations, have often centered about the means of ensuring representation.


Still, there's general tendencies of thought & practice to be found. The struggle of the groups over representation can be reduced to a pattern. To isolate clusters of ideas on representation to discover their genealogy & document their birth, to trace their relatives history, to point out where some weakened & others grew strong, & where some elements married in to other groups & other elements died out: these are the tasks before us now. Only after these tasks are completed may they attempt a forecast of things to come. It is to that practical finish that the last pages of this book address themselves

To show how & why these groups held differing views of representation is a major task of the present work. To introduce the groups appropriately, they have described the arena in which they must struggle. Our preliminary review has shown the principle of representation to be broader & deeper than ordinarily conceived. Representation stretches beyond the boundaries of any representative institution. It's its origins in the necessity for a specialized presentation of the community by public functionaries. It becomes more complex as the method of social communication between the community & its specialized representatives attains depth & develops regularized procedures. The method of social choice exacts sure characteristics from the representatives in the name of the community. Constituencies, formal & casual, are derived from the population. They are based on combinations of characteristics or values - geographical, economic, religious, & so forth. These constituencies influence the character of representation. Elderly arrangements are changed & new procedures for deriving constituencies are devised from time to time, so that the issue of defining the representative conditions of the population at a specific moment becomes complicated. A number of the arrangements are in dispute while others are ignored, accepted, or even revered. In no period are the institutions all consistent; & only never is there consistency in the ideas of men about representation.