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Representing in a substantive sense means acting in the interest of the represented, in a manner responsive to their wishes. This can be imagined and done in several ways, but the representative should never he an independent expert or a mere commissioner. At the political level, this definition of representation has several implications. First, the representative is neither his constituency's agent nor a national leader without local link: it is the interaction between local representatives that allows the creation of a national interest. Second, political representation is not an individual characteristic, but a feature of the system, which has to allow responsiveness. Finally, the diversity of valid views about representation does not imply that any government is representative: in order to speak about a government as representative, it must institutionalize its responsiveness to the people, primarily through free elections. However, this institutionalization is not enough: one must also keep in mind the ideal of representation in order to judge and continuously reform the institutions of representation. Adapted from the source document.

Political representation lies at the core of modern politics. Democracies, with their vast numbers of citizens, could not operate without representative institutions. Yet relations between the democratic ideal and the everyday practice of political representation have never been well defined and remain the subject of vigorous debate among historians, political theorists, lawyers, and citizens. In this volume, an eminent group of scholars move forward the debates about political representation on a number of fronts. Drawing on insights from political science, history, political theory, economics, and anthropology, the authors provide much-needed clarity to some of the most vexing questions about political representation. They also reveal new and enlightening perspectives on this fundamental political practice. Topics discussed include representation before democracy, political parties, minorities, electoral competition, and ideology. This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the ideal and the reality of political representation

Intro -- Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200-c. 1690) -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- Contributors and Editors -- An Introduction: Political Representation: Communities, Ideas and Institutions in Europe (c. 1200-c. 1690) -- Part 1: Top-down or Bottom-up? Princes, Communities and Representation -- 1 Assemblies of Estates and Parliamentarism in Late Medieval Europe -- 2 Political Representation and the Fiscal State in Late Medieval and Early Modern Castile -- 3 Forms of Political Representation in Late Medieval Northern Italy: Merits and Shortcomings of the City-State Paradigm (14th-early 16th Century) -- 4 Representation in Later Medieval and Early Modern Ireland -- 5 Speaking in the Name of: Collective Action, Claim-making, and the Development of Pre-modern Representative Institutions -- Part 2: Prelates, Nobles and Patricians: The Composition of the Representative Institutions -- 6 "The King wishes and commands?" Reassessing Political Assembly in Scotland, c.1286-1329 -- 7 Officers of State and Representation in the Pre-modern Scottish Parliament -- 8 The Nobility in the Estates of the Late Medieval Duchy of Brabant -- 9 Representation by Numbers: How Attendance and Experience Helped Holland to Control the Dutch States General (1626-1630) -- Part 3: Controlling the State: Ideas and Discourses -- 10 The Antwerp Clerk Jan van Boendale and the Creation of a Brabantine Ideology -- 11 Rituals of Unanimity and Balance: Deliberation in 15th- to 16thcentury Hainaut: A Fool's Game? -- 12 Speech Acts and Political Communication in the Estates General of Valois and Habsburg Burgundy c. 1370-1530: Towards a Shared Political Language -- 13 Parliament, War and the "Public Sphere" in Late Medieval England: The Experience of Lancastrian Kent

"Men's Political Representation" published on by Oxford University Press.

The century that began is marked by a political paradox. On the one hand, democracy appears to be more attractive than ever for people who are deprived diet. The Arab revolutions are part of a series that has seen many dictatorships collapse in profit in less formal institutions of the rule of law and representative government. In historical terms, there has never been much of democratic regimes in the world. No ideology seems today to be able to compete with democracy or even present itself as a comprehensive alternative. On the other hand, in the European and North American democracies, the election no longer seems sufficient to give decisions representatives real legitimacy in public opinion, and economic and social crisis opened since the crisis of financial capitalism has done that make the tense situation. Thus, the articles in this issue, which belong to different traditions or borrow elements from more than one of these traditions, give the representation of images at multiple times and precisely circumscribed. Adapted from the source document.

Using interview data from studies with voters and members of parliament, both in 1968/69 and in 1985, Swedish representational democracy is assessed. The analysis focuses on four linkage processes ‐ social representation. role representation, policy representation and anticipatory representation. The results are compared with Converse and Pierce's from their study of political representation in France. In their analysis they find the French system falling 'short of its potential for much of the electorate much of the time'. Heinz Eulau, in a review article of Converse and Pierce's book. goes one step further, branding the French democracy as elitist and run by unresponsive parties. Looking at the results from the Swedish studies, an Eulaucan conclusion seems a bit drastic, while a verdict of the kind Converse and Pierce delivered for France may be too lenient. Clearly, the Swedish system is far from any model of popular representation run from below. A more elitist model. with an emphasis on policy leadership on the part of the political parties, fits most of our results much better.

An essential feature of political representation is that a mediating assembly is set between the citizenry and political decision making. Representation involves indirect decision making or agency. Rational actor political theory often assumes representation in order to focus on problems of a principal–agent kind, but offers only relatively weak arguments for representation. We offer an alternative argument for representation that builds on our broader interpretation of rational actor political theory – an interpretation that emphasizes expressive considerations relative to instrumental considerations, and operates in a richer motivational setting. As well as providing an account of representation, we believe that our approach is capable of re-connecting rational actor political theory to many of the concerns of more traditional political theory.