and so will lose their seat. This fear will affect their behaviour in favour of the electorate, but the electorate has had to hand over its personal power and the personal contribution to the formation of legislation. The role of the representative is therefore very important. Some representatives argue that their duty is only to do what their party or electors have instructed, others argue that once they have been voted in and have been handed the power, it is their duty to act according to their conscience. Edward Burke put this view forward, and the Burkian representation has often been called in to justify the behaviours of MPs.There are both points for and against representative democracy. On the one hand, we lose the influence of a direct democracy, it is difficult to know the publics opinion individually on every topic that will come up in government. Since the people’s individual views cannot be taken into consideration, some people feel that Luke’s third face of power could come into play. This is the manipulating of desires by those in power. People with power can persuade others that what is on offer is actually desired. So the power can be misused to create an element of elite oligarchy. As the representatives cannot refer back on every issue, they will have to use their own opinions. As these representatives will be educated, they may hold different views and opinions to the average person from the masses, so there is an element of exclusiveness again. This elitism goes further back, as parliament is not a microcosm; it is predominantly white, male, middle class educated men. Other races, sexes, and classes are greatly underrepresented, so their views cannot be out forward as well. Our system also means that we do not have delegates, who have to put forward our views specifically. The system only had free votes occasionally, the rest of the time the representatives are expected to toe the party l...
