Representation refers to an elected leader’s looking out for his or her constituents while carrying out the duties of the office. Four different models seek to explain how elected officials should represent their constituents or why elected officials make the decisions that they do:
- trustee model, which posits that representatives feel at liberty to act in the way they believe is best for their constituents (i.e., they make decisions based on their own best judgment)
- delegate model, which posits that representatives feel compelled to act on the specifically stated wishes of their constituents (i.e., they make decisions based on constituent preferences)
- politico model, which posits that representatives act as either trustee or delegate, based on rational political calculations about who is best served, the constituency or the nation; and
- partisan model, which posits that representatives make decisions following the preferences of the political parties, which are often in a unique position to exert influence over elected officials due in part to the provision of campaign resources (including money, volunteers, and party identification on the ballot)
Direct Link: Representatives as delegates, trustees, and politicos
How Do We Promote Good Representation?
According to substantive representation, representatives are accountable to constituents through elections. Elections are viewed as a mechanism of correspondence between representatives’ opinions and those of their constituents through which good representation and governance are promoted. For substantive representation to be effective, various factors need to be present:
- reasonably sized constituencies
- high voter turnout
- effective mechanisms for identifying constituent beliefs and preferences
- electoral districts that are drawn fairly
According to descriptive representation, the extent to which representatives share the racial, ethnic, religious, and educational backgrounds of their constituents affects how well they represent those constituents. In other words, sociological similarity matters. The concept of descriptive representation did not emerge until the 1900s, in large part because only a small portion of the U.S. population was granted suffrage, or the right to vote.
Direct Link: BESE Explains: Representation in Politics
There are several reasons that descriptive representation has improved in national government:
- Suffrage has been expanded through the passage of constitutional amendments and the removal of barriers that prevented eligible voters from being able to exercise their right to vote (we’ll learn more about these when we discuss civil rights later this semester)
- Various groups seeking to promote the descriptive representation of specific minority groups in government have emerged
- Many states have created majority-minority districts, or gerrymandered electoral districts organized around the goal of enhancing the votes of minority groups