ABSTRACT
It is commonplace to argue that parliamentary institutions in Western liberal democracies are undergoing systematic erosion-and that traditional models of representative government, let alone representative democracy, are no longer accurately descriptive, if ever they were, of the complex form of modern government. Indeed, it is now fashionable to talk of governance rather than government. Whereas the model of ‘representative government’ mapped out fairly simple, serial flows of power between the represented and their representatives, the defining characteristics of ‘governance’ is the differentiation of the ‘represented’ and the complexity of their relations with the institutions of government. As Andersen and Burns argue:
Modern governance is increasingly divided into semi-autonomous, specialised segments or sectors; that is, it is multi-polar with the interpenetration of state agencies and agents of civil society. In everyday policy-making, there is no single centre. The complex differentiation of society is reflected in the differentiation and complexity of governance, the differentiation of representation, the differentiation of systems of knowledge and expertise, and the spectrum of values and lifestyles of ordinary citizens.
