Representing the People: A Survey Among Members of Statewide and Substate Parliaments
Kris Deschouwer · Sam Depauw
May 2014 · OUP Oxford
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About this ebook
Modern democracy is organized as a representative democracy in which those representing the people are elected to office. Political parties play a crucial role in this. They select the candidates, form or oppose governments, and organize the work of the representatives in parliament. This model of democracy is however being criticized. Parties are hardly trusted and voters have become volatile. How, then, do elected representatives of the people see and fulfil their role? To study this a survey was organized among the members of statewide and sub-state parliaments in fifteen countries. Members of seventy-three parliamentary assemblies were asked how they perceive their representative role, what they do to keep in touch with voters, how they behave and vote in parliament and how they will try to get re-elected. One of the ways in which candidates and elected members of parliament might react to the changing conditions in which they have to represent the people is by stressing more personal characteristics as opposed to the party label and party ideology. Representation might then become more a matter of personal choice. The results of the survey presented in this book do however confirm quite strongly that representation is very much shaped by the political institutions in which it is performed. Representation differs between countries, between different electoral systems, between statewide and regional parliaments, and depends strongly on the party to which a member of parliament belongs. Representation depends not as much on who the representatives are, as on where they are.
About the author
Kris Deschouwer's research has focussed on political parties, elections, and the governance of divided societies. He is the central co-ordinator of the research programme PartiRep on political participation and representation. One of the projects of this PartiRep programme was the survey among members of parliament on which this book is based. He is Professor of Politics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Sam Depauw's research concentrates on legislative and electoral studies. He has published extensively on political representation and party discipline in West European Politics, the Journal of Legislative Studies, Acta Politica, and Party Politics. He is Assistant Professor and Post-doctoral Researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
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