Concept

Representative democracy

Overview

Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy or electoral democracy, is a type of democracy where elected delegates represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of representative democracy: for example, the United Kingdom (a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy), Germany (a federal parliamentary republic), France (a unitary semi-presidential republic), and the United States (a federal presidential republic). Unlike liberal democracy, a representative democracy may have de facto multiparty, free and fair elections, but may not have a fully developed rule of law and additional individual and minority rights beyond the electoral sphere.

Representative democracy places power in the hands of elected representatives. Political parties often become central to this form of democracy if electoral systems require or encourage voters to vote for political parties or for candidates associated with political parties (as opposed to voting for individual representatives). Some political theorists (including Robert Dahl, Gregory Houston, and Ian Liebenberg) have described representative democracy as polyarchy.

Representative democracy can be organized in different ways including both parliamentary and presidential systems of government. Elected representatives typically form a legislature (such as a parliament or congress), which may be composed of a single chamber (unicameral), two chambers (bicameral), or more than two chambers (multicameral). Where two or more chambers exist, their members are often elected in different ways.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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This public person, so formed by the union of all other persons, formerly took the name of _city_,[1] and now takes that of _Republic_ or _body politic_; it is called by its members _State_ when passive, _Sovereign_ when active, and _Power_ when compared with others like itself. Those who are associated in it take collectively the name of _people_, and severally are called _citizens_, as sharing in the sovereign…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
States what Representative democracy is; the author is tied to Representative democracy in the knowledge graph.
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Chapter VII--Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only. It has been seen that the dangers incident to a representative democracy are of two kinds: danger of a low grade of intelligence in the representative body, and in the popular opinion which controls it; and danger of class legislation on the part of the numerical majority, these being all composed of the same…
John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government
States what Representative democracy is; names Representative democracy.
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In other words, every officer of the public, whether he represents it as a voter or as a stated official, has a dual capacity. From this fact the most serious problem of government arises. We commonly speak of some governments as representative in contrast with others which are not. By our hypothesis all governments are representative in that they purport to stand for the interests which a public has in the behavior…
John Dewey, The public and its problems
States what Representative democracy is.
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Representative democracy

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