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Chapter 12

Representations,Elections and Voting

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‘If Voting Changed AnythingThey’d Abolish It’

Title of book by Ken Livingstone (1987)

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Representation•Representation, as a political principle, is a

relationship through which an individualor group stands for, or acts on behalf of, alarger body of people.

•Theories of representation•Trusteeship•Delegation•The mandate•Resemblance

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Trustee Model (全權委託模式)

•A trustee is a person who is vested with formalresponsibility for another’s property of affairs.

•Trustee representation thus portraysprofessional politicians as representativesinsofar as they are members of an educatedelite. It is based on the belief that knowledgeand understanding are unequally distributed insociety, in the sense that not all citizens knowwhat is best for them.

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Delegate Model (委任模式)•A delegate is a person who is chosen to act for

another on the basis of clear guidance orinstructions. In other words, a delegate isexpected to act as a conduit conveying the viewsof others, while having little or no capacity toexercise his or her own judgement or preferences.

•Initiative: a type of referendum through whichthe public is able to raise legislative proposals.

•Recall: a process whereby the electorate can callunsatisfactory public officials to account andultimately remove them.

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Mandate Model (託付模式)•Both the trustee model and delegate model

were developed before the emergence ofmodern political parties, and therefore viewrepresentatives as essentially independentactors.

•Mandate is based on the idea that, in winningan election, a party gains a popular mandatethat authorises it to carry out whatever policiesor programmes it outlined during the electioncampaign.

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•The strength of the mandate doctrine is thatit takes account of the undoubted practicalimportance of party labels and partypolicies.

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Resemblance Model (反應模式)

•The resemblance model suggests that onlypeople who come from a particular group, andhave shared the experiences of that group, canfully identify with its interests. This is thedifference between ‘putting oneself in the shoesof another’and having direct and personalexperience of what other people go through.

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Elections

•The representative process is intrinsicallylinked to elections and voting.

•Election may not be in themselves be asufficient condition for politicalrepresentation, but there is little doubt thatthey are a necessary condition.

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•Which offices or posts are subject to theelective principle?

•Who is entitled to vote, how widely is thefranchise drawn?

•How are votes cast?•Are elections competitive or non-competitive?

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Functions of elections•Recruiting politicians•Making governments•Providing representation•Influencing policy•Educating voters•Building legitimacy•Strengthening elites

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Electoral systems: debates and controversies

Electoral rules and systems vary across theworld:•Voters may be asked to choose between

candidates or between parties•Voters may either select a single candidate,

or vote preferentially, ranking thecandidates they wish to support in order.

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Cont.

•The electorate may or may not be groupedinto electoral units or constituencies.

•Constituencies may return a single member ora number of members.

•The level of support needed to elect acandidate varies from a plurality (the largestsingle number of votes or a ‘relative’majority)to an overall or ‘absolute’majority or a quotaof some kind.

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Majoritarian system•Larger parties typically win a higher

proportion of seats than the proportion ofvotes they gain in the election.

•This increases the chances of a single partygaining a parliamentary majority and beingable to govern on its own.

•E.g., in the UK, single-party government isvery firmly established despite the fact thatno party has achieved an electoral majoritysince 1935.

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Proportional system•Guarantee an equal or at least more equal,

relationship between the seats won by aparty and the votes gained in the election.

•Proportional representation: the principle ofPR is the principle that parties should berepresented in an assembly or parliament indirect proportion to their overall electoralstrength, their percentage or seats equallingtheir percentage of votes.

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Cont.

•Commonly used in continental Europe, PRsystems are concerned more with therepresentation of parties than of individualcandidates, and may be particularly suitablefor divided or plural societies.

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What do elections mean?•They provide the public with its clearest

formal opportunity to influence the politicalprocess, and also help, directly or indirectly,to determine who will hold governmentpower.

•Public interest: the public interest consistsof the general or collective interests of acommunity: which is good for society as awhole.

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Voting Behaviour

Short-term and long-term influences:•The state of the economy which reflects that

there is usually a link between a government’spopularity and economic variables such asunemployment, inflation and disposableincome.

•The personality and public standing of partyleaders because media exposure portraysleaders as the brand image of their party.

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Cont.

•The mass media may also be of long-termsignificance if biased or partisan coveragereflects structural, and thereforecontinuing, factors such as pressownership.

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Theories of Voting

•Party-identification Model- The earliest theory of voting behaviour is based on the

sense of psychological attachment that people have toparties.

- This model places heavy stress on early politicalsocialisation, seeing the family as the principal meansthrough which political loyalties are forged.

- Attitudes towards policies and leaders, and perceptionsabout group and personal interests, tend to bedeveloped on the basis of party identification.

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- One of the weakness is the growingevidence from a number of countries ofpartisan de-alignment. This indicates ageneral fall in party identification and adecline in habitual voting patterns.

- In the USA: independents up from 9 %(1920) to 30% (1980s); in the UK: 43%(1966) to 16% (1997).

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•Sociological Model- This model links voting behaviour to group

membership, suggesting that electors tend toadopt a voting pattern that reflects theeconomic and social position of the group towhich they belong.

- This model highlights the importance of asocial alignment, reflecting the variousdivisions and tensions within society. Themost significant of these divisions are class,gender, ethnicity, religion and region.

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Cont.

- This model has been attacked on thegrounds that, in focusing on socialgroups, it ignores the individual and therole of personal self-interest.

- Evidence of class de-alignment can befound in most western societies. E.g.,absolute class voting fell from 66%(1966) to 47% (1983) in the UK; UKLabour party received more votes fromnon-manual workers than from manualworkers.

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•Rational-choice Model- This model shift attention onto the individual

and away from socialisation and thebehaviour of social groups.

- Voting is seen as a rational act, in the sensethat individual electors are believed todecide their party preference on the basis ofpersonal self-interest.

- The weakness of rational-choice theories isthat they abstract the individual voter fromhis or her social and cultural context.

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•Dominant-ideology model- Radical theories of voting to highlight the degree to

which individual choices are shaped by a process ofideological manipulation and control.

- How groups and individuals interpret their positiondepends on how it has been presented to themthrough education, by the government, and above all,by the mass media.

- The weakness of the dominant-ideology model isthat, by overstating the process of socialconditioning, it takes individual calculation andpersonal autonomy out of the picture altogether.