ABSTRACT
The concept of representation is inextricably linked with the concepts of legitimacy and legitimation, and, as we saw in Chapter 1, representative assemblies provide the characteristic political institutions of legitimation in modern liberal democracies. Indeed, they have been identified ‘as the most effective device for reconciling the requirements of popular control and political equality with the exigencies of time and the conditions of the modern territorial state’ (Beetham 1992a: 41). Their ‘effectiveness’ is linked in turn to the nature of the ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ of the process of representation. On the input side, direct elections are an integral part of the legitimation process providing simultaneously: the decision makers themselves; authorisation for decision making, and; information upon popular preferences. In addition, the periodic nature of elections also provides incentives for representatives to remain informed about popular preferences in between times. Equally, however, what representative assemblies ‘do’ is as of much importance as what they ‘are’ (in terms of their composition and origins). On the ‘output’ side, therefore, representatives, as authorised decision makers, have the capacity to bind those in whose name they act. In these circumstances, it is of some significance to individual citizens, so bound, that their representatives act responsively to them and responsibly on their behalf. Finding ways of ensuring this policy-responsiveness subsequently has been one of the prime concerns of representation both in theory and practice over the past two centuries.
