Political representation

Political representation is the activity of making citizens "present" in public policy-making processes when political actors act in the best interest of citizens. This definition of political representation is consistent with a wide variety of views on what representing implies and what the duties of representatives are. For example, representing may imply acting on the expressed wishes of citizens, but it may alternatively imply acting according to what the representatives themselves judge is in the best interests of citizens. And representatives may be viewed as individuals who have been authorized to act on the behalf of others, or may alternatively be viewed as those who will be held to account by those they are representing. Political representation can happen along different units such as social groups and area, and there are different types of representation such as substantive representation and descriptive representation. Under the accountability view, a representative is an individual who will be held to account. Representatives are held accountable if citizens can judge whether the representative is acting in their best interest and sanction the representative accordingly. The descriptive and symbolic views of political representation describe the ways in which political representatives "stand for" the people they represent. Descriptive representatives "stand for" to the extent that they resemble, in their descriptive characteristics (e.g. race, gender, class etc.), the people they represent. On the other hand, symbolic representatives "stand for" the people they represent as long as those people believe in or accept them as their representative. Hanna Fenichel Pitkin argues that these views of political representation give an inadequate account of political representation because they lack an account both of how representatives "act for" the represented and the normative criteria for judging representative's actions. Hence, Pitkin proposes a substantive view of representation.