Fluent Essays

It is an open book assignment; I should use 2-4 sources from the core reading or recommended reading or the lecture, however I am not allowed to use any source from outside. Also, no need for in text citations.We are advised to write a thesis statement that is one sentence long as our introduction and a one sentence conclusion. As in essays, you should make an argument, define concepts, refer to case studies and research to substantiate your argument, and provide critical analysis. You are showing the skills required for ‘critical analysis’ when you recognize the complexity of key concepts and provide evidence for your ideas and interpretations.Recommended reading:https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50543903 core_reading___read_pp._216_219____representation__elections__and_voting_____chapter_9_..pdf exam_format.pptx lecture___voting_behaviour.pptx Unformatted Attachment Preview CHAPTER 9 Representation, Elections and Voting ‘If voting changed anything they’d abolish it.’ Anarchist slogan Copyright © 2013. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved. PREVIEW KEY ISSUES Elections are often thought of as the heart of the political process. Perhaps no questions in politics are as crucial as ‘Do we elect the politicians who rule over us?’, and ‘Under what rules are these elections held?’ Elections are seen as nothing less than democracy in practice. They are a means through which the people can control their government, ultimately by ‘kicking the rascals out’. Central to this notion is the principle of representation. Put simply, representation portrays politicians as servants of the people, and invests them with a responsibility to act for or on behalf of those who elect them. When democracy, in the classical sense of direct and continuous popular participation, is regarded as hopelessly impractical, representation may be the closest we can come to achieving government by the people. There is, nevertheless, considerable disagreement about what representation means and how it can be achieved in practice. Although it is widely accepted that elections play a pivotal role in the process of representative democracy, electoral systems are many and various and debate has long raged over which system is the ‘best’. Not only do different systems have different strengths or advantages, but there is no consensus over the criteria that should be used for assessing them. Finally, elections need voters, but there is little agreement about why voters vote as they do, and especially about the extent to which their behaviour is rationally-based, as opposed to being influenced by underlying psychological, social or ideological forces.     What is representation? How can one person ‘represent’ another? How can representation be achieved in practice? What do elections do? What are their functions? How do electoral systems differ? What are their strengths and weaknesses?  What do election results mean?  Why do people vote as they do? How can voting behaviour be explained? Heywood, Andrew. Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=1812814. Created from kcl on 2020-05-21 09:59:39. R E P R E S E N TAT I O N , E L E C T I O N S A N D VO T I N G CONCEPT Representation Copyright © 2013. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved. Representation is, broadly, a relationship through which an individual or group stands for, or acts on behalf of, a larger body of people. Representation differs from democracy in that, while the former acknowledges a distinction between government and the governed, the latter, at least in its classical form, aspires to abolish this distinction and establish popular self-government. Representative democracy (see p. 92) may nevertheless constitute a limited and indirect form of democratic rule, provided that the representation links government and the governed in such a way that the people’s views are articulated, or their interests secured. 197 REPRESENTATION The issue of representation has generated deep and recurrent political controversy. Even the absolute monarchs of old were expected to rule by seeking the advice of the ‘estates of the realm’ (the major landed interests, the clergy, and so on). In this sense, the English Civil War of the seventeenth century, fought between King and Parliament, broke out as a result of an attempt to deny representation to key groups and interests. Similarly, debate about the spread of democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries centred largely on the question of who should be represented. Should representation be restricted to those who have the competence, education and, perhaps, leisure to act wisely and think seriously about politics (variously seen as men, the propertied, or particular racial or ethnic groups), or should representation be extended to all adult citizens? Such questions have now largely been resolved through the widespread acceptance of the principle of political equality (see p. 90), at least in the formal sense of universal suffrage and ‘one person, one vote’. Plural voting, for example, was abolished in the UK in 1949, women were enfranchised in one canton in Switzerland in 1971, and racial criteria for voting were swept away in South Africa in 1994. However, this approach to representation is simplistic, in that it equates representation with elections and voting, politicians being seen as ‘representatives’ merely because they have been elected. This ignores more difficult questions about how one person can be said to represent another, and what it is that he or she represents. Is it the views of the represented, their best interests, the groups from which they come, or what? Theories of representation There is no single, agreed theory of representation. Rather, there are a number of competing theories, each of which is based on particular ideological and political assumptions. For example, does representative government imply that government ‘knows better’ than the people, that government has somehow ‘been instructed’ by the people what to do and how to behave; or that the government ‘looks like’ the people, in that it broadly reflects their characteristics or features? Such questions are not of academic interest alone. Particular models of representation dictate very different behaviour on the part of representatives. For instance, should elected politicians be bound by policies and positions outlined during an election and endorsed by the voters, or is it their job to lead public opinion and thereby help to define the public interest? Moreover, it is not uncommon for more than one principle of representation to operate within the same political system, suggesting, perhaps, that no single model is sufficient in itself to secure representative government. Four principal models of representation have been advanced:     trusteeship delegation the mandate resemblance. Heywood, Andrew. Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=1812814. Created from kcl on 2020-05-21 09:59:39. 198 POLITICS John Stuart Mill (1806–73) UK philosopher, economist and politician. Mill was subject to an intense and austere regime of education by his father, the utilitarian theorist James Mill (1773–1836). This resulted in a mental collapse at the age of 20, after which he developed a more human philosophy influenced by Coleridge and the German Idealists. His major writings, including On Liberty (1859), Considerations on Representative Government (1861) and The Subjection of Women (1869), had a powerful influence on the development of liberal thought. In many ways, Mill’s work straddles the divide between classical and modern liberalism. His distrust of state intervention was firmly rooted in nineteenth-century principles, but his emphasis on the quality of individual life (reflected in a commitment to ‘individuality’) looked forward to later developments. Trustee model A trustee is a person who acts on behalf of others, using his or her superior knowledge, better education or greater experience. The classic expression of representation as trusteeship is found in Edmund Burke’s (see p. 36) speech to the electors of Bristol in 1774: Copyright © 2013. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament . . . Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion (Burke, 1975).  Trustee: A person who is vested with formal (and usually legal) responsibilities for another’s property or affairs. For Burke, the essence of representation was to serve one’s constituents by the exercise of ‘mature judgement’ and ‘enlightened conscience’. In short, representation is a moral duty: those with the good fortune to possess education and understanding should act in the interests of those who are less fortunate. This view had strongly elitist implications, since it stresses that, once elected, representatives should think for themselves and exercise independent judgement on the grounds that the mass of people do not know their own best interests. A similar view was advanced by John Stuart Mill in the form of the liberal theory of representation. This was based on the assumption that, although all individuals have a right to be represented, not all political opinions are of equal value. Mill therefore proposed a system of plural voting in which four or five votes would be allocated to holders of learned diplomas or degrees, two or three to skilled or managerial workers, and a single vote to ordinary workers. He also argued that rational voters would support politicians who could act wisely on their behalf, rather than those who merely reflected the voters’ own views. Trustee representation thus portrays professional politicians as representatives, insofar as they are members of an educated elite. It is based on the belief that knowledge and understanding are unequally distributed in society, in the sense that not all citizens know what is best for them. This Burkean notion of representation has also attracted severe criticism, however. For instance, it appears to have clearly antidemocratic implications. If Heywood, Andrew. Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=1812814. Created from kcl on 2020-05-21 09:59:39. R E P R E S E N TAT I O N , E L E C T I O N S A N D VO T I N G 199 Thomas Paine (1737–1809) Copyright © 2013. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved. UK-born writer and revolutionary. Paine was brought up in a Quaker family and spent his early years as an undistinguished artisan. He went to America in 1774 and fought for the colonists in the War of Independence. He returned to England in 1789, but, after being indicted for treason, fled to France as a supporter of the republican cause, where he narrowly escaped the guillotine during the Terror. Paine’s radicalism fused a commitment to political liberty with a deep faith in popular sovereignty, providing inspiration for both liberal republicanism and socialist egalitarianism. He was an important figure in revolutionary politics in the USA, the UK and France. His most important writings include Common Sense ([1776] 1987), The Rights of Man (1791/92) and The Age of Reason (1794).  Altruism: A concern for the welfare of others, based on either enlightened self-interest, or a recognition of a common humanity.  Delegate: A person who is chosen to act for another on the basis of clear guidance and instruction; delegates do not think for themselves.  Initiative: A type of referendum through which the public is able to raise legislative proposals.  Recall: A process whereby the electorate can call unsatisfactory public officials to account and ultimately remove them. politicians should think for themselves because the public is ignorant, poorly educated or deluded, then surely it is a mistake to allow the public to elect their representatives in the first place. Second, the link between representation and education is questionable. Whereas education may certainly be of value in aiding the understanding of intricate political and economic problems, it is far less clear that it helps politicians to make correct moral judgements about the interests of others. There is little evidence, for example, to support Burke’s and Mill’s belief that education breeds altruism and gives people a broader sense of social responsibility. Finally, there is the fear traditionally expressed by radical democrats such as Thomas Paine that, if politicians are allowed to exercise their own judgement, they will simply use that latitude to pursue their own selfish interests. In this way, representation could simply become a substitute for democracy. In his pamphlet Common Sense ( [1776] 1987), Paine came close to the rival ideal of delegate representation in insisting that ‘the elected should never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors’. Delegate model A delegate is a person who acts as a conduit conveying the views of others, while having little or no capacity to exercise his or her own judgement or preferences. Examples include sales representatives and ambassadors, neither of whom are, strictly speaking, authorized to think for themselves. Similarly, a trade-union official who attends a conference with instructions on how to vote and what to say is acting as a delegate, not as a Burkean representative. Those who favour this model of representation as delegation usually support mechanisms that ensure that politicians are bound as closely as possible to the views of the represented. These include what Paine referred to as ‘frequent interchange’ between representatives and their constituents in the form of regular elections and short terms in office. In addition, radical democrats have advocated the use of initiatives and the right of recall as means of giving the public more control over politicians. Although delegation stops short of direct democracy, its supporters nevertheless usually favour the use of referendums (see p. 201) to supplement the representative process. Heywood, Andrew. Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=1812814. Created from kcl on 2020-05-21 09:59:39. 200 POLITICS CONCEPT Mandate Copyright © 2013. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved. A mandate is an instruction or command from a higher body that demands compliance. The idea of a policy mandate arises from the claim on behalf of a winning party in an election that its manifesto promises have been endorsed, giving it authority to translate these into a programme of government. The doctrine of the mandate thus implies that the party in power can only act within the mandate it has received. The more flexible notion of a governing mandate, or, for an individual leader, a personal mandate, has sometimes been advanced, but it is difficult to see how this in any way restricts politicians once they are in power.  Popular sovereignty: The principle that there is no higher authority than the will of the people (the basis of the classical concept of democracy).  Manifesto: A document outlining (in more or less detail) the policies or programme a party proposes to pursue if elected to power. The virtue of what has been called ‘delegated representation’ is that it provides broader opportunities for popular participation and serves to check the self-serving inclinations of professional politicians. It thus comes as close as is possible in representative government to realizing the ideal of popular sovereignty. Its disadvantages are, nevertheless, also clear. In the first place, in ensuring that representatives are bound to the interests of their constituents, it tends to breed narrowness and foster conflict. This is precisely what Burke feared would occur if members of the legislature acted as ambassadors who took instructions from their constituents, rather than as representatives of the nation. As he put it, ‘Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole’. A second drawback is that, because professional politicians are not trusted to exercise their own judgement, delegation limits the scope for leadership (see p. 300) and statesmanship. Politicians are forced to reflect the views of their constituents or even pander to them, and are thus not able to mobilize the people by providing vision and inspiration. Mandate model Both the trustee model and the delegate model were developed before the emergence of modern political parties, and therefore view representatives as essentially independent actors. However, individual candidates are now rarely elected mainly on the basis of their personal qualities and talents; more commonly, they are seen, to a greater or lesser extent, as foot soldiers for a party, and are supported because of its public image or programme of policies. New theories of representation have therefore emerged. The most influential of these is the socalled ‘doctrine of the mandate’. This is based on the idea that, in winning an election, a party gains a popular mandate that authorizes it to carry out whatever policies or programmes it outlined during the election campaign. As it is the party, rather than individual politicians, that is the agent of representation, the mandate model provides a clear justification for party unity and party discipline. In effect, politicians serve their constituents not by thinking for themselves or acting as a channel to convey their views, but by remaining loyal to their party and its policies. The strength of the mandate doctrine is that it takes account of the undoubted practical importance of party labels and party policies. Moreover, it provides a means of imposing some kind of meaning on election results, as well as a way of keeping politicians to their word. Nevertheless, the doctrine has also stimulated fierce criticism. First, it is based on a highly questionable model of voting behaviour, insofar as it suggests that voters select parties on the grounds of policies and issues. Voters are not always the rational and well-informed creatures that this model suggests. They can be influenced by a range of ‘irrational’ factors, such as the personalities of leaders, the images of parties, habitual allegiances and social conditioning. Second, even if voters are influenced by policies, it is likely that they will be attracted by certain manifesto commitments, but be less interested in, or perhaps opposed to, others. A vote for a party cannot therefore be taken to be an endorsement of its entire manifesto or, indeed, of any single election promise. Third, the doctrine imposes a straitjacket. It limits government policies to those positions and proposals that the party took up during the election, and leaves no Heywood, Andrew. Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=1812814. Created from kcl on 2020-05-21 09:59:39. R E P R E S E N TAT I O N , E L E C T I O N S A N D VO T I N G 201 Focus on . . . Referendums: for or against? A referendum is a vote in which the electorate can express a view on a particular issue of public policy. It differs from an election in that the latter is essentially a means of filling a public office and does not provide a direct or reliable method of influencing the content of policy. The referendum is therefore a device of direct democracy (see p. 92). It is typically used not to replace representative institutions, but to supplement them. Referendums may be either advisory or binding; they may also raise issues for discussion (initiatives), or be used to decide policy questions (propositions or plebiscites). Amongst the advantages of referendums are the following:  Copyright © 2013. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved. They check the power of elected governments, ensuring that they stay in line with public opinion.  They promote political participation, thus helping to create a more educated and better-informed electorate.  They strengthen legitimacy by providing the public with a way of expressing their views about specific issues.  They provide a means either of settling major constitutional questions, or of gauging public opinion on issues not raised in elections because major parties agree on them. The disadvantages of referendums include the follo ... Purchase answer to see full attachment