I’m not sure whether to vote you up for making a true statement about the declared intent of representative democracy, or vote you down for seeming to imply that representative democracy actually achieves anything of the sort.
There are 2 basic theories of representative democracy. One is what MBlume described. The other is that representatives should do whatever their constituents tell them to do. Most representatives in the US follow the latter, I think.
I’m not sure whether to vote you up for making a true statement about the declared intent of representative democracy, or vote you down for seeming to imply that representative democracy actually achieves anything of the sort.
I was speaking entirely of ideals—we fail hard at the execution.
There are 2 basic theories of representative democracy. One is what MBlume described. The other is that representatives should do whatever their constituents tell them to do. Most representatives in the US follow the latter, I think.