The political ideal of “democracy” remained associated with the city-states of ancient Greece for more than 2,000 years. The direct participation of citizens in public affairs was the only conceptualization of democracy, the idea that the government (kratos) is carried out by people (demonstrations). The Athenian polis at the height of its political and commercial expansion had only 150,000 inhabitants, and citizenship was a privilege. Only after the American and French revolutions, another, radically new vision was established, according to which a citizen of a modern state does not directly participate in public decisions, but delegates powers to a representative.

The first historical use of the phrase “representative democracy” is when Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United States, combined the two terms in a letter dated May 19, 1777. Then he committed the following lines to Governor Morris of New Jersey: “A representative democracy, in which the right to be elected is fixed and settled, and the exercise of legislative, executive, and judicial power is vested in elected persons, actually, not nominally elected by the people, will, in my opinion, be a regime of happiness, order, and stability“. Under the influence of the debate in France, the American spirit pragmatically sought a solution to the problem of institution building: how will the problems be solved in a modern nation-state with a large territory and a large population?

The concept of “political representation” today is, or at least seems to be, an easy term to understand. In a democratic regime, the views of citizens are represented in elections by political parties, then their interests are discussed in the legislative institute, and then the executive power implements them. Elections in a democracy filter socio-political preferences, and the change of power ensures that the interests of the entire society will be heard. This mechanism is complemented by other associative structures that pursue more clearly defined interests, such as trade unions, employers and non-governmental organizations. We have a simple two-part equation: the citizen and the representative. The latter may be a local representative, mayor or councillor, or may be a representative at the national level, in the chambers of the legislature. If the votes are counted, then the highest representative gets the position of president.

This theory, simple at the normative level, can be separated from the practice and perception of everyday politics. For example, a stratum of citizens may have environmental beliefs, but there may not be an environmental party. Besides, if elections are held once every four years, how do we ensure that the interests of the citizen are not forgotten in the interval between elections? These examples do not exhaust the difficulties of understanding political representation, one of the most problematic political concepts.

Etymologically, the term representation comes from the Latin resubmission, which means to make something absent present again or, in the fine arts, to embody an abstract quality in an object, courage in a sculpture. Originally, the term did not refer to people or political institutions. He did not understand that some people can act on behalf of others, that they can protect the interests of others. This quasi-political meaning appears only in the 13th and 14th centuries, when European monarchies begin to convene nobles and knights at the crown council. The first forms representation they belonged to the feudal order, because decisions about wars, succession and, above all, taxes, obliged the king to consult. When it came to war or money, monarchies simply depended on the nobility. Repeat presentation it was a feudal practice, but its modern meaning appeared only after the overthrow of European monarchies.

In the feudal period, there were representative institutions, but not representative power. The concept of representation played an important role in the contractualist theories that supplanted the concept of the divine right of kings to rule in the early modern period. Much later, during the French Revolution, a vision was formed that a representative institution could act on behalf of all citizens, on behalf of the nation. Starting in 1614, the French parliament was divided into three estates general, namely the clergy, the nobility and the rest of the citizens, the last being the third estate. In the unfolding of the revolution, a decisive moment is June 17, 1789, when the third estate changes its name to the National Assembly, meaning that the whole nation is represented here (which later also became the constituent assembly). This name change was instigated by Emmanuel Joseph Siez, apostate cleric and author of the famous text What is the 3rd state? The calculation of the French revolutionaries was simple; if the nobility and clergy represent 200,000 citizens, the remaining 25 million citizens are represented by the third estate, that is, the entire nation.

The founding fathers of the United States followed the debates on the continent with interest, and it is not surprising when they state that modern Europe “owes to the great principle of representation (Federalist, 14). The first article of the US Constitution uses the term representation in the very name of the legislative branch, the House of Representatives (House of Representatives), as the institution that housed the entire nation, while the Senate, much smaller in size, was supposed to represent the states at the federal level.

In the history of Romania, the first definition of the idea of ​​political representation belongs to Ion Campignan, the leader of the National Party of Wallachia, who in a political document entitled Act of union and independence (1838) thus described his mission in the Public Assembly: “to investigate whether the purpose of the constitution has been achieved, whether order, justice and economy prevail in all branches of government, whether public funds are used for the good of the state.According to Professor Christian Preda, Ion Campignanu’s text “marks the beginning of the history of Romanian representation”. Together with his constitutional project, A special act on the appointment of the sovereign of the Romanians (November 5/17, 1838) the ideals expressed by Ioan Campignanu would find their continuation in the Pasoptist Revolution, when he would be appointed for a short period as Minister of Justice. After being one of the close advisers of Pavel Kisselev, his real political career began with the mandate of Braila’s deputy in the Public Assembly in 1833 and ended with the position of Minister of Public Education (1854-1856).

If the lines of Ion Campignanu show us how the deputy understood the role of the representative in the legislature, the Icelandic Proclamation (June 9, 1848) is the first political document that requires representation the entire body of citizens. In paragraph 4, the Pashoptists who signed state that “A general meeting consisting of representatives of all social classes“. In the spring of 1848, anonymous leaflets began to spread in Moldavia and Wallachia, the most important of which was the text with the title What are traders? An artisan was understood to mean anyone engaged in trade or production, including peasants, and the thesis was that their socio-economic contribution justified a leading role in society, unlike boyars, who were considered unproductive. Thus, the belated echo of the ideas of the French Revolution set in motion the revolutionary energy of 1848. The Constitution of 1866 includes Art. 32 – “Legislative power is exercised collectively by the Lord and the national representation. The national representation is divided into two assemblies: the Senate and the Assembly of Deputies.” As Cristian Guinea notes in a volume recently published in Humanitas, after 1848 begins “the march of modern Romanian history towards the implementation of the Izla Proclamation.”

The concept of political representation remains polymorphic, multifaceted and subject to constant revision. In the first sense, political representation is closely related to the electoral process, to the initial authorization by which citizens delegate to a person the right to act on their behalf. When we talk about representation, it cannot be separated from the principle of responsibility – central to this vision is not the legitimacy of electoral competition, but the fact that representatives must fulfill their obligations to voters. The third meaning is symbolic representation, for example when we read in the current constitution that the president is the representative of the Romanian state. The change in the angle from which we look at representation is contained in the idea that society should be proportionally reflected in the legislature. This sense of representation justifies, for example, the idea that gender imbalances in the legislature can be calibrated through legislative instruments. In this understanding of representation, the parliament is considered as a true mirror of all social strata. The most important sense requires that the interests of those represented be genuinely promoted and protected in such a way that citizens do not object to what is being done in their name. This type of representation, called “substantial representation,” remains the ideal of liberal democracy.

Today we talk about the crisis of democracy, but it is difficult to localize the disease. Undoubtedly, the crisis is partly related to the mechanisms of political representation, which are sometimes far from the expectations of citizens. The first reason for this dissatisfaction is related to representation as a distortion of selection through elections, which leads to a feeling of disillusionment with the “political class”. The crisis of representation can also be understood through the suspension of the principle of responsibility. Mechanisms to hold decision-makers accountable do not always seem to work. The promotion of citizens’ interests, what we call substantive representation, seems to be the exception rather than the rule of the political game. There is another side to the binary relation of representation. The crisis of representation can also manifest itself through symptoms such as civic loyalty, absenteeism and apoliticism. Both sides of representative relations (citizen and representative) may contradict the ideals of a functioning democracy. – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro