Title: Representative Democracy and the Concept Of Representation: Do They Have A Legitimizing or Checking Function?
Abstract:The notion of representative democracy has been an influential and relatively dominant understanding of democracy throughout the twentieth century. A growing body of scholarly literature has therefore...The notion of representative democracy has been an influential and relatively dominant understanding of democracy throughout the twentieth century. A growing body of scholarly literature has therefore emerged focusing on representative democracy, its institutions, and the following decision-making procedures: elections, voting, and the roles and functions of representatives. Given especially the functions of representative democracy, Jonathan R. Macey raises a crucial question of whether democracy should “serve either to legitimize or to check government”. This study aims to answer this question by examining both the concept of representation and the oft-cited definitions and understandings of representative democracy in the scholarly literature. This examination is undertaken with the perspective that democracy has two dimensions: normative and institutional dimensions. As a result of the examination, it has been revealed that while some oft-cited perspectives on the concept of representation and representative democracy regard democracy as a legitimizing factor, some regard that it has a checking function. While the legitimizing function of democracy stands as a more neutral attribution embedded in and can be shared by any understanding of (representative) democracy, the checking function has a liberal content with a normative quality.Read More