The Concept of Constituency Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- PART I CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS: ON CONSTITUENCY AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
- PART II HISTORICAL JUSTIFICATIONS: ON THE ORIGINS OF TERRITORIAL CONSTITUENCIES IN THE UNITED STATES
- PART III NORMATIVE APPLICATIONS: ON LEGITIMATE REPRESENTATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- PART I CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS: ON CONSTITUENCY AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
- PART II HISTORICAL JUSTIFICATIONS: ON THE ORIGINS OF TERRITORIAL CONSTITUENCIES IN THE UNITED STATES
- PART III NORMATIVE APPLICATIONS: ON LEGITIMATE REPRESENTATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN
- Index
Summary
Democracy is the only form of government that allows people to rule themselves. Ironically, political representation enables modern democracies to exclude virtually everyone from the institutions that govern them. The concept of constituency defines how, in any particular nation, the excluded are legitimately reconstituted prior to, or simultaneously as, they select their representatives who will rule them. The electoral constituency, then, is the quintessential institution of official exclusion, for it defines how it is the excluded get reconstituted for their only formal roles as members of a modern democracy.
Democratic government in its direct or representative form has been around for thousands of years. Yet given the thousands of sovereign cities and states that have laid proper claim to its name, there has been a remarkably small set of institutions by which democracies have actually been governed. Thomas Pogge recently put it this way:
It cannot be said that experience and reflection have produced convergence upon this [set of institutions]. Most of the other possibilities have never been tried or discussed. Indeed, many could not have been tried or discussed because they are becoming feasible only now, in the dawning information age. It is not good reasons that keep practice and reflection within the narrow sector, but habit and entrenchment. We are deeply accustomed to the conventional forms of democracy.
It is likely that our limited exposure to these “conventional forms of democracy” has dulled our imagination of what could be.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Concept of ConstituencyPolitical Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design, pp. xi - xviiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005