This chapter addresses the various concepts of political representation, such as substantive, descriptive, and symbolic. It then examines which institutions foster different types of representation. It presents two different visions of democracy: proportional and majoritarian. It considers what they imply for congruence and responsiveness. The chapter delves deeper into descriptive representation by looking at the representation of women across legislatures. When considering symbolic representation it looks at action taken by members of parliament. The chapter asks the basic question: to what extent, and in what ways, does a political system represent its citizens?
Chapter
7. Representation
Chapter
11. Electoral systems and representation
Orit Kedar
This chapter focuses on elections and representation. The first part focuses on electoral systems. It first presents the building blocks of electoral systems. Drawing on these building blocks, it then discusses the underlying principles of the two main families of electoral systems, namely majoritarian and proportional representation, and presents key variants within each family. The chapter then proceeds to discuss how different features of electoral systems affect the behaviour of both voters and politicians. The second part of the chapter addresses representation. It first lays out four different aspects of representation, followed by an elaboration on one particularly central aspect—substantive representation, which addresses the way representatives and government act for voters. Finally, the chapter’s third part analyses the trade-offs embedded in different electoral systems and discusses how different electoral systems promote some aspects of representation as well as other democratic values, and compromise others.
