The ‘Problem’ of Representational Transmission of Power

Abstract

The standard account of representative democracy, as noted in Chapter 1, identifies at the heart of the representative system a principal-agent, territorially based, relationship between individual voters and individual representatives. Over time, however, the standard account witnessed a pragmatic accommodation of collective principal-agent relationships between aggregates of electors and representatives organised around political associations — primarily political parties as electoral representative organisations, but also interest groups, civil society organisations, and social movements as non-electoral representative associations. In this accommodation, representation became mediated, with these political associations facilitating the ‘representational transmission of power’ between citizens and state decision-makers. And in this accommodation recognition was also made that ‘partial or partisan aggregations such as political groups or parties … are not optional or accidental in a representative democracy’ (Urbinati 2006: 134).