direct representation - IPPR · Introduction The problem faced by contemporary democracy is horribly simple: governments have come to believe that the public don’t know how to speak;

DIRECT REPRESENTATIONTOWARDS A CONVERSATIONAL DEMOCRACY

STEPHEN COLEMANex

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© IPPR 2005

About the author iv

Acknowledgements iv

Foreword by Matthew Taylor v

Introduction 1

Democracy and the disappearing demos 1

Rethinking representation 3

Connectedness and contact 4

Reasons for disconnection 7

Rethinking representation – the case for ‘direct representation’ 8

Direct and representative democracy 8

Representation, not just representativeness 10

Direct representation in practice 10

New technologies of democratic connection 12

Conclusion: more than just connecting 15

Bibliography 16

Contents

iv DIRECT REPRESENTATION | IPPR

About the author

Stephen Coleman is Cisco Professor of e-Democracy at the Oxford Internet Institute and fellow of JesusCollege, Oxford.

With thanks to Jay Blumler, Ben Rogers and Matthew Taylor for their wise advice and supportive encour-agement, to Nadya Powell for research assistance, and to yougov for providing such a wealth of usefuldata.

Acknowledgements

In this important pamphlet, Stephen Colemanaddresses the problem of disconnection betweenrepresentatives and represented in our political sys-tem.

There are many ways of responding to a failingrelationship, most of them unlikely to make thingsbetter. We can blame each other. Plenty of thisgoes on; there is an easy and well-rehearsed pop-ulist attack on politicians. Conversely, while fewpoliticians would be so unwise as to criticise theelectorate, arguably, much modern political prac-tice is predicated upon a pessimistic view of theelectorate’s intelligence and motivations. Anothertactic is to avoid the difficult issues by thinking upsome device that could breathe new life into therelationship. While innovations like all-postal bal-lots or electronic voting are important, ministershave been right not to claim they are a magic cureto tackling the underlying malaise

To get to the heart of the matter we must under-stand that both sides to the democratic relation-ship often feel undervalued. As Stephen’s surveyevidence shows, the expectations the electoratehave of politicians are way out of kilter with whatmost politicians, especially those burdened withgovernance, feel able to offer. We are invited toexplore the characteristics of the connection thepublic wants with its representatives: closeness,mutuality, coherence, empathy, and then to con-sider the challenge for a constituency MP in offer-ing this quality of connection to eighty thousandvery differing, very busy voters, all with high expec-tations and limited patience.

But the rebuilding of the relationship is notsimply about politicians improving their per-formance. If MPs try to make the public happy asmere consumers, they are surely doomed to fail-ure. Indeed, as the survey shows, voters differ onefrom another in the type of relationship theywant. The people must be engaged in a way thatallows them to move beyond being the resentfulobject of democratic decision, instead, becomingits active subject.

While not every politician can express the chal-lenge they face in the elegant (only occasionallyabstruse) language of this pamphlet, there arethose who have already begun to adjust to the real-ity Stephen describes. Speak to many MPs, and cer-tainly most of the Labour MPs elected in the lastdecade, and you will hear the many ways they have

sought to close the distance with their electorate.For some, it has been the shift from a reliance onsurgeries and one-to-one canvassing to new formsof outreach, from coffee mornings to the carefulbuilding up of new networks among those leastlikely to be involved in traditional politics. Othershave been highly innovative; the MP who usesmobile-phone-text polling to consult the voters onpossible subjects for an Early Day Motion, andthen sends them the extract from Hansard to showthe result. Or the MP who has visited every schooland college sixth form in his constituency to hostpolicy workshops, and now, as a result of the inter-est generated, sponsors a newsletter on local andnational political issues written, edited and distrib-uted by the sixth formers themselves.

When the Labour Party launched the BigConversation it was a novel experience for some ofour senior politicians, but for many others it wasmerely scaling up existing good practice. What hasbeen remarkable about the Big Conversation hasbeen how such a simple format – members of thepublic sitting with experts and politicians to dis-cuss issues in depth, before feeding back views andrecommendations – can so transform the experi-ence for both sides. Hear the cabinet minister whoremarked with amazement ’two hours in a roomwith ordinary people discussing a difficult topicand nobody shouted at me!’, or the factory workerexpressing similar astonishment ‘for the first timea politician was really asking me what I thought’.

The challenge of the Big Conversation is how toscale up a qualitative engagement with a smallnumber of people, into a legitimate contributionto national policy-making. In part, this is a techni-cal challenge. It is a mundane, but vital, truth ofpublic engagement that great intentions must bematched by sound techniques. Stephen Coleman isright to urge a more sophisticated and ambitioususe of ICT as a way of modernising and refreshingthe representative relationship.

In a memorable line, Stephen writes that ‘thechallenge for democratic politicians is to be seen asordinary enough to be representative, while extraor-dinary enough to be representatives’. Expressed inthese terms it might seem that politicians are facedwith demands that simply cannot be reconciled. Butthe message of this pamphlet is not one of despairor resignation. Think again of the analogy of a rela-tionship in trouble: both partners feel that the other

STEPHEN COLEMAN v

Forewordby Matthew Taylor

wants more from them, it is only after calm reflec-tion that an apparent problem about commitmentturns out to be one of understanding.

What is revealed by the Big Conversation, andby similar deliberative forms, is that the publicdo not expect politicians simply to do what theyare told – Coleman’s ‘ventriloquist’s dummy’. Nordo politicians want, or expect, a public that issimply acquiescent in the face of its elected repre-sentatives’ higher status or greater knowledge.Whatever they might want on any single issue,what the people feel they deserve from their rep-resentatives is to be listened to, to be understood,and to be treated with respect. Conversely, whilepoliticians might wish that they were enthusiasti-

cally supported or even loved, what they need is apublic that is willing – in Coleman’s word – to‘empathise’ with the tough choices, the compro-mises, the hard-won concessions and many frus-trations that are the day-to-day grind of politicalrepresentation. A political system that encouragesrespect and empathy, and through so doingreconnects representative and represented; ideal-istic it may sound, but Stephen Coleman pointsus to the right starting point for the long journeyof democratic renewal.

Matthew Taylor works in Downing Street but is writingin a personal capacity

Introduction

The problem faced by contemporary democracy ishorribly simple: governments have come to believethat the public don’t know how to speak; the pub-lic has come to believe that governments don’tknow how to listen. Faced with apparently ‘apa-thetic’ citizens, the political class complains aboutthe difficulty of governing in a vacuum. Convincedthat the political class is not interested in them,the public is increasingly pursuing a conversationin which politicians are outsiders.

It is ironic. Two centuries ago, democracy wasregarded as a subversive aspiration. The disenfran-chised majority clamoured for the right to partici-pate, and the political elite resisted their claims‘because their reason is weak; because when oncearoused, their passions are ungoverned; because theywant information; because the smallness of theproperty, which they individually possess, rendersthem less attentive to the measures they adopt inaffairs of moment’ (Burke,1871). Now the roles arereversed. The demos are voting with their feet, boredand demoralised by the institutions and processes of‘politics as usual’, while angst-ridden political elitesare desperate to re-engage them. In the words of thethen Leader of the House of Commons:

We … who constitute the ‘political class’ conductpolitics in a way that turns off our voters, read-ers, listeners and viewers … Too many peoplebelieve that government is something that isdone to them. Westminster must stop giving theimpression of being a private club and insteadgive the public a greater sense of ownership.(Hain, 2003)

This pamphlet argues that the problem we have is,in great part, one of representation – people don’tfeel they are being properly represented – and thatwe need to move to a richer, more conversationalform of representation: direct representation. As Ishall put forward, democracy works best whenvoters and representatives connect: exchangingviews, accounting for themselves to each other,and, ideally, sharing a common world. Textbookhistories of democracy tend to draw a sharp con-trast between modern representative democracyand the direct, or participatory, democracy of theancient world, while contemporary, academic,

political theorists tend to equate representativedemocracy with formal mechanisms of representa-tion – they are more interested in voting systemsthan in the way that citizens and representativesinteract, or fail to interact. But modern representa-tive democracy has always been shot through with‘direct’ or participatory elements; the public hasengaged, not just through voting, but at publicmeetings, in representatives’ surgeries, through thepostbag, on the doorstep, or in the many forumsoffered by, first, the printed press, and, later, radioand TV. As the public becomes less deferential,and new means of two-way electronic communi-cation evolve, citizens want more of this sort ofdirect exchange with their representatives. Theywant to be heard by politicians and have opportu-nities to converse with them. They want to beunderstood by them and to understand them.Much of the current dissatisfaction with our polit-ical system can be traced to its failure to supplythis sort of understanding.

Democracy and the disappearing demos

The withdrawal of the public from the audito-rium of democratic politics is a striking globaltrend, both in established and new democracies.The manifestations of disengagement can be seenboth in people’s political behaviour and attitudes.

The most conspicuous trend is the fall in thenumber of people choosing to cast a vote in elec-tions. In the UK’s 2001 and 2005 GeneralElections, four out of ten eligible electors, risingto over six out of ten of 18-25-year-olds, chosenot to vote. In the UK’s 2004 European and localelections, despite the use of all-postal votingacross four regions of the UK, most eligible elec-tors did not vote. Voting is a central and highlypublicised moment of democratic participation,which, in the past, galvanised otherwise passivecitizens on the basis of democratic duty and par-tisan loyalty. The decline in voter turnout, to thepoint where only a minority of eligible votersparticipate in many local and supranational elec-tions, places at risk the legitimacy of governmenton the basis of majority authorisation. Rallingsand Thrasher, in their study Public Opinion and the2004 Elections, commented upon the public’s‘deep-rooted and widespread scepticism and

STEPHEN COLEMAN 1

Direct representation

about the impact of voting per se ... Most are notadvocates for voting, and some even seem toregard their own propensity to vote as a strangepersonal quirk – a result of having the impor-tance of voting drummed into them as a child.’(Rallings and Thrasher, 2003)

As the principal mediating channels betweencitizens and governing institutions(Schattschneider 1942; Lawson 1980; Luther andMuller-Rommel 2002), political parties are haem-orrhaging members and loyal supporters, and areincreasingly looking like eccentric associations ofthe elderly and the obsessed. Only one per cent ofUK citizens have actively supported a party’s gen-eral- or local-election campaign (ElectoralCommission, 2004: p. 33). In 1964, almost one intwo (forty-four per cent) UK voters identified witha political party; in 2003, only fourteen per centidentified with any party. Even the most passive actof the information-gathering citizen, watchingpolitical news and analysis on television, is indecline. In a speech to the Royal Television Societyin 2001, Richard Sambrook, then Director of BBCNews, observed that:

News viewing – across all channels – is nowdown twenty-five per cent for the under-45s.There’s a generation growing older which justdoesn’t sit down and watch news as their par-ents did. I see that as a time bomb. A demo-graphic wave sweeping up through all of ouraudiences. If we don’t do something, in ten yearsit’ll be the under-55s, and then the under-65s,who don’t watch.

This decline in public political engagement is bestunderstood in the context of radical changes in pub-lic attitudes towards democratic institutions andactors, specifically attitudes of trust and efficacy.

In the past, most people deferred to governinginstitutions, giving them more or less unthinkingallegiance in return for the state’s paternalistic bene-faction. In the last half-century, however, the publichas become better educated, more confident andless deferential to remote authorities. Seventy percent of the UK population say that they do not trustpoliticians (Electoral Commission, p.63). Littlemore than a quarter (twenty-seven per cent) say thatthey tend to trust Parliament, while less than a quar-ter (twenty-four per cent) trust Government, and

only one in five (twenty per cent) trust theEuropean Parliament. The UK population has par-ticularly low levels of trust for political bodies andinstitutions compared to the EU average.

Figure 1

Compared with others who are commonlyencountered by the public, trust in politicians totell the truth is particularly low:

Figure 2

2 DIRECT REPRESENTATION | IPPR

Now I will read you a list of different types of people. For eachwould you tell me if you generally trust them to tell the truth,or not?

Tell Not tell Don’t the truth the truth know

Base: All (2,004) % % %

Doctors 92 5 3

Teachers 89 7 5

Television newsreaders 70 20 10

Professors 80 9 11

Judges 75 16 8

Clergyman/priests 75 17 8

Scientists 69 19 12

The police 63 28 10

The ordinary man/ 55 29 17woman in the street

Pollsters 49 30 21

Civil servants 51 37 13

Trades union officials 39 44 17

Business leaders 30 58 13

Journalists 20 72 8

Politicians generally 22 71 7

Government ministers 23 70 8

The most serious attitudinal deficit relates to effi-cacy: people’s sense of how much they can, orcannot, influence the world around them.Although most UK citizens (seventy-five percent) want to have a say in how the country isrun, forty per cent disagree that ‘when peoplelike me get involved in politics, they really canchange the way that the UK is run’ (ElectoralCommission, p. 61). In my 2003 study of BigBrother viewers and non-viewers, sixty-nine percent of both groups agreed that ‘Any views Iexpress will make little difference to how Britainis governed’, and seventy per cent agreed that‘The people who govern this country are notlikely to be interested in my opinions.’ (Coleman2003) Similarly, a 1999 survey by the US Councilfor Excellence in Government found that almosttwo thirds (sixty-four per cent) of Americansagreed with the statement, ‘I feel distant and dis-connected from government.’ ( Council forExcellence in Government, 1999)

Rethinking representation

What is driving this decline of confidence in ourpolitical system and active political engagement?A number of causes are often cited: the relativedecline in the power of political institutions (con-temporary government, as is often said, is toosmall to control big events, too big to controlsmall ones); the emergence of a less ideological,more consensual form of politics, meaning thatpolitical disputes are less engaging and their out-comes less momentous than they used to be; andthe development of a more individualist, con-sumerist culture, which has eroded collectivepolitical identities – or what political scientistscall the ‘salience’ of political issues in most peo-ple’s lives. And there is no doubt that these arereal causes that help explain citizenship disen-gagement. But might not one, important driver ofdecline be the failure of our representative systemto forge meaningful connections between politi-cians and citizens – to make people feel properlyrepresented?1

To answer the question, an online survey wascommissioned from the online polling organisa-tion yougov, of a representative sample of 2,273UK citizens.2

We began by asking our representative samplehow connected they felt to Parliament. Bearing outour suspicions about the poor state of the repre-sentative relationship, seventy-two per cent of thesample reported feeling ‘disconnected’ fromParliament, with nearly half (forty-six per cent)feeling ‘very disconnected’. Over half of 35-44-year-olds (fifty-two per cent) and nearly half of 45-64-year-olds felt ‘very disconnected’ from Parliament.

When asked about the kinds of contact theyhad had with their MP in the past year, nearly half(forty-eight per cent) claimed that they had read aletter or leaflet from their MP. A quarter claimed tohave seen their MP on television, twenty per centto have written to their MP, sixteen per cent tohave visited their MP’s web site, twelve per cent tohave met their MP face-to-face and eleven per centto have listened to their MP making a speech.Almost four out of ten respondents (thirty-nineper cent) claimed to have had no contact of anykind with their MP.

In an order to put these findings into perspec-tive, we also asked respondents how ‘in touch’ theyfelt with their local doctor and next-door neigh-bour, as well as with their local councillor andMPs. Councillors and, to an even greater extent,MPs, came well below the others. On a scale ofzero to ten, with zero indicating total disconnec-tion and ten indicating intimate connection, overhalf (fifty-four per cent) rated their level of connec-tion to their next-door neighbour at a point ofseven or above. Perceptions of connection to localGPs were not far behind, with fifty-two per centreaching seven-plus. But only eleven per cent feltconnected to councillors, and a pathetic seven percent felt connected to their MP. Looking at the bot-tom end of the scale, taking zero to three to indi-cate a perception of significant disconnection,next-door neighbours were so evaluated by eight-een per cent of the sample, GPs by almost one infour (twenty-four per cent), councillors by seventy-seven per cent and MPs by seventy-nine per cent.

STEPHEN COLEMAN 3

1 Representation is a much-neglected concept; there is surprisingly little investigation of it, of either a theoretical or empirical kind. There is no entry for'representation' in either of the following: Blakeley and Bryson, Contemporary Political Concepts; Bellamy and Mason Political Concepts. 2 The value of using an online survey is that secondary questions could be asked of respondents, seeking qualitative explanations for their initial responses. Thefirst, quantitative survey, comprising seven questions, was conducted between 11 and 13 September 2003.

In sum, only three out of forty respondents feltwell connected to their MPs, while thirty-two outof forty felt significantly disconnected.

We also asked respondents how connectedthey felt to their local religious representatives. It isa sad reflection of the state of relations betweenthe public and their political representatives that,even in our very secular, non-church-going society,people reported feeling about as connected to theirMPs and councillors as they did to the clergy intheir local church, synagogue, temple or mosque.Only one in ten felt connected to a clergyman atseven-plus, slightly behind councillors (eleven percent), but ahead of MPs, at seven per cent. Whereseventy-nine per cent felt significantly discon-nected from their MP (scoring lower than four onthe connectedness scale), and fifty per cent feltzero connection, the figures were eighty-one percent low connection and sixty-two per cent zeroconnection with local clergy.

Figure 3

Reasons for disconnection

What is driving these widely held, negative percep-tions of citizen-representative connection? Toanswer this, we went back to survey respondentsand asked them to complete two sentences: ‘I

don’t feel connected to my political representativebecause ...’ and ‘A connected political representa-tive should ...’.3

Respondents chose between eight broad traitsthat they reported made them feel disconnectedfrom their representatives. We have translated theseinto eight types of disconnected representative.

The unknown representative

A significant minority (about one in five respon-dents) did not know who their MP was.Considering that thirty-nine per cent of respon-dents had had no contact with their MP (mediatedor otherwise) in the previous year, it is not surpris-ing that about half of that number could not iden-tify their MP:

I don’t know who they are and they make noattempt to rectify this.

I don’t even know who he/she is! We have onlylived here four months, but we have not had anynewsletters or correspondence from any politicalrepresentative.

The invisible representative

Some respondents complained about their MP’slack of visible presence: ‘He isn’t very “visible”,hardly hear anything about him.’ Respondentsseemed to perceive unseen representatives as beingephemeral, faceless, ghostly figures, who could notbe trusted:

Even though he only lives up the road, I havenever ever seen him.

I don’t even know who is representing me politi-cally and I don’t know anyone who does. Theydon’t seem to want to be known.

After the election and its promises, nothing’schanged. I voted, but have actually forgotten hisname, as I haven’t seen nor heard of him since.

The distant representative

Many respondents used the language of remote-ness or distance to explain why they felt discon-

3 The 2,273 respondents to the initial survey were contacted by email. 1,783 responded to the invitation and posted a total of 23,642 words to complete the firstsentence and 25,821 to complete the second sentence.

STEPHEN COLEMAN 5

Connectedness and contact

Confirming the findings of other surveys, our poll showed a significant correspondence betweenhaving had contact with MPs and feeling connected to them. People who had met their MP inperson were five times more likely to feel connected to them than those who had not; those whohad visited their MP’s website were nearly three times as likely to feel connected. Ninety-fourper cent of respondents who had no contact with their MP in the past year felt disconnected,compared with sixty-one per cent of the overall sample.

A key finding was that the vast majority (eighty per cent) of people who felt disconnected fromParliament reported that they had not voted in the previous general election. Ninety-eight percent of those who felt very connected, and eighty-nine per cent of those who felt slightly con-nected, reported voting, whereas over half (fifty-two per cent) of the very disconnected had notvoted. Non-voters were far less likely to have had contact with their MPs than voters.

Having found such astrong correlationbetween contact and con-nectedness, it is hard toestablish what, if any,causal forces are at work.Does having contact leadto a sense of connection,or does having a sense ofconnection lead to mak-ing contact? Or are theyboth expressions ofsomething else? It seemslikely that there is a two-

way process at work. While people whofeel connected to their representativesare more likely to make contact withthem, or make themselves availablefor contact, having had contact withrepresentatives will probably makepeople feel more connected andimprove their confidence in them. Thiswould be in keeping with researchshowing that confidence in a publicservice tends to increase after peoplehave had contact with it, such as peo-ple who have been in hospital orattended government trainingschemes. Is seems likely then, that ifrepresentatives could make greatercontact with the people they are meantto represent, people’s confidence inthem would increase.

nected from their representatives. Representativesare expected to be rooted, reachable and touch-able:

He never walks around our town. We have to gosomewhere once every month for a surgery ofabout two hours.

They are not seen very often round here. Theydon’t seem to like mixing with the public.

They have no local presence, and make no obvi-ous effort to communicate with their con-stituents.

A London politician, not a local politician.

The alien representative

Respondents repeatedly complained that their MPscame from a different world – an alien planet. Theprevalence of this metaphor was striking, perhapsreflecting a perception of representatives as ‘out-siders’ – a class apart – with life histories thatmade them incapable of registering and reflectingeveryday experiences:

They live in a totally different world to the manon the street.

They are disconnected from the real world.

He lives in a different world from me.

He is too remote and not on the same wave-length as the people generally.

They haven’t a clue about the real world. Theysay they do, but I feel it is just lip service.

I don’t think they are on the same planet. Theyhave no idea about normal life.

The partisan representative

Respondents commonly complained that their rep-resentatives were more attached to their parties thanthose they represent. In the minds of many respon-dents, there seemed to be a split between the workof representing and the rituals of high politics.Respondents wanted to be consulted and heard,rather than simply regarded as voting fodder:

He is a party loyalist, a careerist who toes theparty line, irrespective of whether it is appropri-ate to his constituency.

He does not refer to me for my opinion on anyquestion. Mainly he follows the party line.

The untrustworthy representative

In general, respondents distrusted the process ofrepresentation, rather than the character of repre-sentatives. But there were strongly expressed excep-tions:

I regard my MP as a self-serving opportunist,who is interested in power for power’s sake,and will do and say anything to secure hisposition.

I can’t trust any politician/party to treat me likean adult, and tell me the truth. There is somuch secrecy and behind-the-scenes trade-offs.

He is a publicity machine – not a politician.

I do not trust politicians in general, even thosewho entered politics for the best of motives.

The arrogant representative

A widespread complaint from respondents wasthat their MPs did not care about who they reallywere and how or what they thought – they weredisrespectful and overweening.

I have been seduced with the belief/idea thatwhat I think and feel will have an influenceover decision-making when it doesn’t. My viewshave been canvassed so many times, yet noregard is taken of them at all.

She seems more at home in the Today pro-gramme studio than the constituency. She has ahuge majority, and I suspect she takes us forgranted.

They treat us as if we were invisible, and dowhat they want, not what the people they repre-sent want.

The MP for here looks down his nose at us lowermortals.


The irrelevant representative

Finally, a significant minority of respondentsconsidered their MP to have little or no relevanceto their lives. Unlike the respondents who didnot know who their MP was, these knew theirMP in the way that a childless couple mightknow the local school, or a vegetarian mightknow the local butcher shop. They were uncon-vinced that they had any need to be representedpolitically.

They don’t play a part in my life.

I have never had any reason to ask the assis-tance or advice from my MP or councillor.

Looking at these reasons for feeling discon-nected, a number of points stand out. First,scarcely any of our citizens appear hostile to rep-resentation, as such, and want to see it replacedby direct democracy – they seem to accept it as afact of life. They also respect representatives’independence; hardly any respondent criticisedtheir representative for failing to reflect, pre-cisely, the policies he, or she, favoured. Second,respondents complained about failures of ‘con-nection’ rather than failures of ‘delivery’: aboutrepresentatives’ refusal to listen, communicate orcare, rather than their inability to produce betteroutcomes.

Connectedness – the ingredients

So much for the anatomy of disconnection; butwhat does the public want from representatives?In order to find out, we used semantic analysissoftware to track the key words and phrases usedwhen our respondents completed the statement,‘A connected political representative should ...’.The findings mirror the reasons the public gavefor feeling disconnected.4 Very few respondentsexpected representatives simply to mirror theirviews, and most wanted their representatives to‘understand/listen’, ‘be available’ and ‘communi-cate’.

Figure 4

Similarly, an analysis of terms used to describe thedesired qualities of representatives revealed thatintegrity was by far the most desired characteristic,followed by ordinariness. These soft, personal or‘affective’ virtues were rated as ‘much more impor-tant’ than more formal or procedural virtues ofaccountability, and fairness or lack of prejudice.

Figure 5

These findings are very much in keeping with thoseof the UK People’s Panel (fifth wave, 2002), wherethe public also said that honesty, trustworthiness andability to communicate were more important thancompetence or efficiency in a public leader.

STEPHEN COLEMAN 7

4 Altogether, we analysed 25,821 words from 1,783 responses.

Figure 6

Rethinking representation – the case for ‘direct representation’

What should we make of these findings? Mostobviously, they bear out the suggestion that therepresentative political relationship in Britaintoday is in trouble. It is probably unrealistic tohope that politicians will ever rank with neigh-bours or GPs on the connectedness ratings, butthey should be able to do much better than atpresent. The public does not feel well represented.At the same time, the findings offer grounds forhope, for they clearly indicate that the public hasno quarrel with the representative relationship assuch, and suggest that citizens have a realistic viewof what can be expected from it: voters don’texpect their representatives to simply parrot theiropinions and attitudes, or to be omnipotent andomniscient – to deliver miracles. The media mighthold all politicians to superhuman standards, butvoters do not. They want them to listen, and toshow that they have listened, to behave withintegrity and account for themselves.

But if our findings suggest that the basis for asuccessful representative relationship exists, theyalso suggest profound alterations are required inthe way it works. The marriage is not over, but rep-resentatives need to change if they want to save it.

Most importantly, our survey suggests that weneed to pay much greater attention to the commu-nicative dimension of representation. Citizens of amature democracy want to be part of an ongoing

conversation – and not just a formal exchange ofviews either, but something that speaks to theiremotional needs to be to respected and treated asequals.

But paying more attention to the communica-tive element of representation won’t be easy, for itgoes against deep-seated ways of understandingrepresentation – ways that, in turn, shape the rep-resentative relationship itself. It challenges, in par-ticular, two dominant approaches to representa-tion: first, the approach that pits direct democracyagainst representative democracy; and, second, theapproach that sees representation as mimetic rep-resentativeness.

Direct and representative democracy

Thinking about representation tends to revolvearound two apparently opposed versions ofdemocracy – ancient and modern, direct and indi-rect, participatory and representative, Burkean andRousseauian. Of course, none of these terms isexactly synonymous with any other, but the out-lines of the contrast are clear enough. On the onehand, democracy as empowering people directly,and on the other, democracy as investing power inprofessional governors or politicians who representthe people. The history that goes with this is asfamiliar as the contrast itself. Ancient democracyoffered direct rule by the people. But the emer-gence of large, pluralistic nation states, along witha liberal, negative conception of freedom, resultedin a transition to representative forms of democ-racy. Direct rule was replaced by indirect gover-nance (Dahl,1989). This transition ushered in anenduring quarrel between those who sought torecover direct democracy by giving power back tothe people, or at least closely circumscribing theinitiative of representatives, and those who arguedthat representatives should be left to govern astheir judgement dictates.

A striking feature of this quarrel is that thetwo sides tend to share an understanding of rep-resentative democracy itself. They disagree aboutthe value of the thing, but not about its empiri-cal attributes. So both tend to understand repre-sentative democracy as a, democratically, veryetiolated affair: the right to depose or re-elect a


leader every several years or so. As JosephSchumpeter, a famous defender of indirectdemocracy, put it:

Democracy does not mean and cannot meanthat the people actually rule in any obvious senseof the terms ‘people’ and ‘rule.’ Democracymeans only that the people have the opportunityof accepting or refusing the men who are to rulethem. (Schumpeter, 1976)

Direct democrats, quoting Rousseau, contend thatcontemporary representative democracy is only a

parody of self-rule. Democracy is direct or it isnothing. The Burkeans and the Shumpetariansreply that representative democracy might not bevery democratic, but it is the closest approximationwe can get in the modern world to the real thing –and has some crucial advantages over it. It ensuresthat well-educated specialists, rather than the mob,are really in charge.

Yet for all its pedigree, the scheme that pitsdirect democracy against lofty representation ishardly compelling. It ignores the possibility of theoptions in between, of systems that, while preserv-ing the representative framework, ensure that,through dialogue, debate and argument, the publicretains a degree of authority over representatives,even between elections.

In fact, the Rousseauesque characterisation ofmodern representative government as no morethan the chance to elect a master every four yearswas always a caricature. A range of channels havegiven representatives and the represented oppor-tunities to connect with each other.Demonstrations, petitions, letters and pamphletshave allowed the public to express their view torepresentatives. Press conferences, TV and news-paper interviews, phone-ins, speeches and parlia-mentary debates have allowed representatives toexpress their views to the public. Public meetings,political parties, and MPs’ surgeries have allowedcitizens and representatives to exchange viewswith each other.

But it can’t be denied that the relationship hasnever been anything like an easy, equal one. Thepublic has generally be spoken at, rather thanwith. They weren’t simply ignored, but theyweren’t invited to join the club either. They werepatronised. Anyway, the old terms of exchange,while never satisfactory, have become increasinglyunacceptable. As people have become less deferen-tial, as society has become more diverse, and asnew means of two-way communication havedeveloped, so citizens are coming to demand aless distant, more direct, conversational form ofrepresentation. Representative techniques, basedon the broadcast-megaphone model, won’t pro-vide the requisite depth and richness of interactivecommunication in the age of the internet. Thepublic wants something closer to the full-blooded,two-way relationship we are calling direct repre-sentation.

STEPHEN COLEMAN 9

The ventriloquist and his dummy

Advocates of ‘direct’ and ‘representative’government have very different views as towhere power should lie.

The partisans of direct democracy see therepresentative as the ventriloquist’sdummy: an aggregate channel for all thecollective voices being represented. Asdemocratically represented citizens, ourtask is to control the representativedummy and slap it when it assumes totalk on its own. We are representedbecause our representative speaks as ifwe were speaking ourselves.

The advocates of ‘representative democ-racy’ see the representative as the ventrilo-quist and the people as the dummy. Therepresentative speaks, but in the people’sname. We are represented because ourrepresentatives speak for us, on our behalf.They are the trustees of our collective inter-ests. We do not elect them to do what wemight do ourselves; we elect them becausewe do not have the time – or maybe thecompetence – to make policy decisions forourselves constantly. The notion that it isthe people who speak is something of apretence – just as the notion that thedummy speaks is a pretence. It is the rep-resentative, like the ventriloquist, who isreally in charge.

Representation, not just representativeness

This same disregard for the communicative aspectof representation is evident in another way ofthinking too: one that sees representation as anessentially mimetic relationship.

When academics, policy-makers and politiciansconcern themselves with representation, they tendto be preoccupied by the formal or practical char-acteristics of this or that representative system.

They debate which type of representative system(PR; alternative vote; single, transferable vote; firstpast the post) is fairest or most ‘representative’,and if, and how, representativeness should betraded off against other goods – stability say, or asmaller likelihood of corruption. They quarrelabout whether this or that boundary change, vot-ing process or counting technique is fair – orabout the right way of ensuring that representa-tives ‘match’ the population they are meant toserve. These concerns are important, but the preoc-cupation with them tends to obscure the centralityof the communicative, affective dimension of rep-resentation. As our survey suggests, the publicappreciate what the experts and the politiciansoften forget: that a system that scores high onqualities of formal representativeness might, never-theless, fail to represent, precisely because citizensand politicians fail to connect. The academics, pol-icy-makers and politicians are from Mars. The pub-lic are from Venus.

Direct representation in practice

I have argued that sharp distinctions betweendirect and representative democracy, and emphasesupon mechanistic, mimetic representativeness, areunhelpful if we are to achieve a democracy that isrepresentative, but not remote – in which represen-tatives listen to and acknowledge the authority ofthe people they represent, and account openly fortheir own beliefs and actions. What, though,would a closer, more conversational democraticrelationship mean in practice? Here, drawing onour survey, I suggest five things that the publicwant from their representatives.

First, the public wants to be heard. Recognisingthe bankruptcy of paternalistic modes of govern-ing, associated with the post-war welfare state, gov-ernment now professes its commitment to ‘con-sulting’ the public about issues and policies.Alongside established polling and survey tech-niques, many have made use of new democraticprocedures, such as citizens’ juries, standing citi-zens’ panels, online consultations, electronicallyfacilitated open-space events and town-hall meet-ings. On the whole, local government has a betterrecord on this than central government (Clark,2002). Parliament is only just beginning to make


Hanna Pitkin on representation

The two-way, communicative relationshipthat the public increasingly wants is,arguably, an essential feature of politicalrepresentation, properly understood. AsHanna Pitkin argued in a magisterial sur-vey, The Concept of Representation – oneof the few notable works on representationto have been written in modern times:

representing … means acting in theinterest of the represented, in amanner responsive to them. The rep-resentative must act independently;his action must involve discretionand judgment; he must be the onewho acts. The represented must alsobe (conceived as) capable of inde-pendent action and judgment, notmerely being taken care of. And,despite the resulting potential forconflict between representative andrepresented about what is to bedone, the conflict must not normallytake place. The representative mustact in such a way that there is noconflict, or if it occurs, an explana-tion is called for. He must not befound persistently at odds with thewishes of the represented withoutgood reason in terms of their inter-est, without a good explanation ofwhy their wishes are not in accordwith their interest. (Pitkin 1967)

any kind of systematic effort to consult and engagethe people it is supposed to represent. Too often,such consultations are undertaken for form’s sake,with government consulting, but not listening (seebox below). Representatives have a crucial rolehere: in promoting and encouraging consultation;in mediating between the consulted and govern-ment; and in accounting for themselves or for gov-ernment when it fails to act in line with the recom-mendations of those consulted.

Second, the public want a conversation, not ajust consultation. I suggested above that peoplewant to be heard. Government generally interpretsthis as meaning that they want to be consulted.But consultation does not go far enough.‘Consulting the public’ tends to mean invitingthem to respond to pre-established policy agendas,when the public want to be engaged in a two-wayconversation in which the public and representa-tives steer the content between them. On an every-

day level, the most common act of political partici-pation is talk about politics. According to theOxford Internet Survey, most British people (sixty-one per cent) say that they frequently (twenty-twoper cent) or every so often (thirty-nine per cent)discuss politics with friends or family. The BBCipolitical-discussion forums receive tens of thou-sands of messages each month; in the month ofthe Iraq war the BBCi news site received 350,000emails and postings from people wishing toexpress their views. But very few of these politicaltalkers ever have a discussion with the people theyelect to represent their interests and preferences. Itis as if there are two democracies: one operatinginformally and conversationally in homes, work-places, pubs and streets, and another deliberatingon behalf of everyone else in parliaments, councilsand government departments. There is remarkablylittle interaction or translation between these twodiscourses. Representatives need to develop ways

STEPHEN COLEMAN 11

Consulting but not listening

Governments that consult, it is sometimes argued, are more likely to be governments that listento, and learn from, the public. Although this might be true in theory, the historical record of gov-ernments consulting the public is not promising.

Evidence to the House of Commons Public Administration Committee inquiry into new forms ofpublic participation, based on a survey of 332 UK local authorities, found that twenty per centconsidered that the consultations they had run had very little impact on decisions, and twentyper cent that they merely confirmed decisions that were already made (Lowndes et al, 2001. In a2002 survey of local authorities by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, one in four authori-ties reported that exercises in public participation were only ‘occasional influential’ upon deci-sion-making (ODPM 2002 p.45). In the NHS, despite the extensive efforts to establish patient andpublic involvement (PPI), a report by the Commission for Health Improvement found that ‘PPI isnot yet having a major impact on policy and practice. This is despite a plethora of PPI initiatives.It is almost as if there is a brick wall between the activities going on and any changes on theground that happen as a result.’ (Commission for Health Improvement, 2003, p..11) In the firstsix months after its formation at the beginning of 2004, Ofcom completed thirty-three consulta-tions, which attracted an average of thirty-five responses to each. A recent DTI consultation on‘managing the nuclear legacy’ received sixty-three responses, including several from environ-mental pressure groups and several that referred to ‘consultation fatigue and expressed scepti-cism about the value of consultation, which can involve a lot of effort for little result. Many con-sultees made the point that the value of participation in the first phase will be judged againstevidence that their views are being taken properly into account. (D (Department of Trade andIndustry, 2003), As the public increasingly experiences consultation-fatigue and frustration withthe futility of being consulted to no effect, consultative governance risks being regarded as littlemore than a participatory ritual.

of joining these conversations up. Sometimes thisdoes occur. It can happen on the doorstep, duringcanvassing, in MPs’ surgeries, or in open-spaceevents, citizens’ panels, ‘Question Time’-style pub-lic meetings and when representatives take part ine-facilitated conversations. But, too often, the pub-lic feels that such political discussion is stage-man-aged. Some topics can be talked about, some can’t.Mobilising, listening to, learning from, mappingand responding to public talk are all underdevel-oped skills among contemporary representatives.As well as leading and reflecting public opinion,contemporary politicians need to be skilled facili-tators, capable of recognising, encouraging andsummarising the diverse and disparate voices ofthe increasingly confident and articulate public.

Third, the public wants an ongoing, rather thanepisodic, conversation. Of course, the publicunderstands that politicians are going to pay moreattention to what they have to say at election time,but it is clear from our survey that people resentthe perceived absence of politicians between elec-tions. Modern government is, of necessity, a large,remote and faceless machine. A key function ofrepresentatives is to humanise governance, repre-senting it to people, and people to it, in humaneand accessible terms.

Fourth, the public don’t want to have to endurepartisan, adversarial argument on every issue. Theywant to join a conversation, not take part in arhetorical version of Gladiators. There are real ten-sions here. The pressures of electoral politics com-pel politicians to claim more for their own policiesthan they merit, and to traduce those of theiropponents. At the same time, the public is increas-ingly turned off by yah-boo politics. They wanttheir representatives to be honest, admit to faultsin themselves, acknowledge where they have beenproved wrong, and be honest about the challengesthat we all face.

Fifth, and finally, the public want representa-tives who account for themselves. They don’t, aswe have seen, expect representatives simply to playthe role of delegate or ventriloquist’s dummy. Theyappreciate that representing an electorate entailscompromise and trade-offs, and that representa-tives need room to exercise their own judgementand, on occasion, follow their own conscience. Butthey do want representatives, as far as possible, toabide by their promises, meet their commitments,

and explain why they conduct themselves in theway that they do. The dominant academic modelof representation regards elections as the definingaspect of accountability, but from the perspectiveof direct representation, the representative has anongoing obligation to give account and hearaccounts.

New technologies of democratic connection

I have been arguing for the need to promote acloser, more conversational relationship betweencitizens and their representatives. This raises practi-cal questions: how should this be done?; what sortof channels or forums would be most effective inbringing voters and politicians together and boost-ing the former’s confidence in the latter? Theanswer, of course, is that there is no one, magicrecipe. No one technique or technology will suf-fice. All the evidence suggests that people valuepersonal contact: voters who have been canvassedpersonally are more likely to vote, just as citizenswho have been invited, by a letter addressedspecifically to them, to attend public meetings aremore likely to attend. Governments need tobecome much better at listening to, supportingand thanking those citizens who do get engaged(Rogers, 2004)

Digital information and communication tech-nologies (ICT) are well positioned to facilitate justthe sort of close, conversational relationship – arelation of direct representation – I have beenadvocating, and I turn to their potential now. It isup to both government and citizens to ensure thatthis vulnerable potential is realised (Blumler andColeman 2001). A narrow interpretation of directrepresentation as little more than the right to sendemails to MPs, watch webcasts of council meetingsand vote online is a far from enthralling prospect.Making it easier, quicker, cheaper, gee-whizzier todo all the things that have made traditional poli-tics dull and uninviting in the past, amounts toinstitutional preservation, rather than democratictransformation. Beyond such replicating practices,digital technologies do have transformative demo-cratic potential.

Broadcast technology allowed citizens, in theform of viewer and listener, immediate and vividaccess to the political process, but as spectators


rather than players. The broadcast agenda of dis-cussion has tended to be set by party communica-tion managers and senior media editors, bothlocked into a systemic process of mutual depend-ence and ultimate control over the production ofnews and debate. This has produced an ethos ofvirtual deliberation in which, rather like the eigh-teenth-century notion of virtual representation,where the rich voted on behalf of the poor, thepolitically well-connected debate policy questionson behalf of the disconnected.

With the rise of interactive media, the equationbetween communication and transmission is nolonger defensible as the best or only way of servingthe public interest (see Coleman, 2004). Liu andShrum define interactivity as ‘the degree to whichtwo or more communication parties can act oneach other, on the communication medium, andon the messages, and the degree to which suchinfluences are synchronised’ (Liu and Shrum,2002). In the context of representation, interactiv-ity opens up unprecedented opportunities formore inclusive public engagement in the delibera-tion of policy issues.

For example, the UK Parliament has run a seriesof online consultations, in which groups of citizenswith experience and expertise in relation to a specificpolicy area have been invited to enter an onlineforum for a period of one month, and share ideaswith one another and with MPs (see Coleman 2004).This has enabled MPs to broaden their agenda. Afteran online consultation on the draft CommunicationsBill, Brian White MP, a member of the committeescrutinising the legislation, stated that:

It helped us change the questions we were askingthe witnesses and made us focus on areas wewould not necessarily have thought of. It tendedeither to reinforce something that we alreadyknew or raised questions that we would not oth-erwise have asked.

Another committee member, Lord McNally, said:

It allowed us to get on the road, electronically.The alternative would have been to hold a seriesof public meetings around the country.

As important, were the responses from citizenswho participated in the online forum:

It was a lot easier for ordinary people to goonline than to get a big document on paper, readthrough it and then write a letter for a submis-sion to a government department. TheCommittee was receiving evidence largely from abig group of industrial interest groups, whichhad been following the consultations on commu-nications reform for five years. And it ends upbeing a very narrow group. But in the onlineforum, other voices were coming in, voices thatare not normally heard. It also gave a chance fora wider set of issues to be debated than thosethat the Committee itself had set out.

Throughout the consultation I was on alearning curve, listening to other people. Even ifI disagreed with them it was refreshing. Therewas a sense of rational debate taking place.

Most of the time Parliament is just a remoteidea. I like the fact that there is a little bit ofenergy around it and any relationship that mightflow from these small beginnings might beextremely valuable.

Impressed by the potential of this sort of virtualpublic engagement in the legislative process, theHouse of Commons Modernisation SelectCommittee has called for ‘select committees andjoint committees considering draft legislation tomake online consultations a more regular aspect oftheir work.’ (House of Commons ModernisationCommittee, 2004, p.21)

Citizens are no longer content with the role ofjust being passive spectators. As the phenomenalpopularity of reality TV has shown, people want tobe (literally) in the picture and to have their judge-ments respected. One viewer of the UK Big Brotherseries, asked to comment on what politicianscould learn from the show, said:

I think that the main lesson that politiciansshould learn is that we believe what we see, notwhat they want us to hear. They would do betterto show us their values by the way they live thanto try to convince us by the use of spin … thatthings are different to the way we know they are.The main lesson they should learn is that wemake up our own minds on what we see, and ifwhat we see bears no resemblance to what theyare telling us, then we lose faith in them, we donot start believing them. (Coleman, 2003)

STEPHEN COLEMAN 13

Reality TV can be understood as a phenomenon ofmass-mediated public self-disclosure – an(arguably misplaced) attempt by the public to talkfor, and to, itself in its own voice. As relativelyinexpensive and increasingly convergent mediatechnologies have become accessible, and the rigiddivision between producer and audience evapo-rates, opportunities for self-representation, such as

blogging or making videos and distributing themby mobile phone, become more realistic. Theremarkably widespread phenomenon of bloggingcan be seen as its manifestation of digital self-rep-resentation. There are now millions of blogs, inwhich otherwise unknown citizens offer their per-spectives on the world and create a web of links tothe perspectives of others. Bloggers can rise from


Communicative overload

The internet shrinks social space and creates opportunities for dispersed individuals to meetand talk as if they were together. For representative democracy, this opens up the possibility ofa more frequent and direct interaction between people and politicians.

But what can seem like an opportunity for citizens can seem like a problem for representa-tives. Citizens look to ICT to offer closer relationships with those who speak for them, but rep-resentatives complain of being overloaded or bombarded. When addressing a political repre-sentative involved having to make physical contact – a visit to a weekly surgery or a letteraddressed to a physical office – the management of the relationship was largely controlled bypoliticians, via appointment systems and mail protocols. As representatives can be addressedat any time and in any place via mobile phone, text message or email, citizens experiencegreater communicative equality. Politicians’ websites become vulnerable to hackers; they canbe talked about by bloggers; and an email reply to a single constituent can be copied and dis-tributed to thousands within seconds. So far, most analyses of this new situation have empha-sised the discomfort of politicians in the face of communication overload. The US Congress hasgone as far as to support a research project intended to address the curse of overload by unso-licited communications. The Congress Online report on E-mail Overload in Congress: Managinga Communication Crisis states that ‘With individual House offices now receiving as many as8,000 e-mail messages per month, and Senate offices receiving as many as 55,000, the bur-dens on staff are viewed as unmanageable.’ (Congress Online, 2001a) Members of Congress,like elected legislators elsewhere, are in search of effective mail-filtering techniques and pro-tocols designed to protect them from unwanted communicators. From the citizens’ perspec-tive, the problem is one of non-response rather than overload. Another Congress Online study,entitled Constituents and Your Web Site: What Citizens Want to See on Congressional WebSites, reports on a series of focus groups in which citizens were asked what they want fromonline communication with their representatives:

Participants … wanted assurances that, once expressed, their views would be bothacknowledged and taken into account. Just as importantly, however, they expressed theirappreciation for Members who showed the courtesy to tell them when they did not agreewith them. (Congress Online, 2001b)

There are solutions to hand, but these depend upon cultural, as well as technological,changes. Representatives need to provide more opportunities for those they represent to con-tact them in efficient ways (using filtering and summation software), but also to contact oneanother. A key way to reduce the pressure on expert elites is to foster the power of grass-rootsknowledge-sharing networks, which allow people to represent themselves to one another

private obscurity to global fame, as happened toSalam Pax, the Baghdad blogger, in the monthsbefore and during the war on Iraq. Some politi-cians are establishing weblogs, but the degree ofopenness and flexibility represented by such dis-tributed co-operative working may, in the long-term, prove more than disciplined party structurescan cope with. Citizens tend to be more innovativeand sophisticated in their use of ICT than thepoliticians who represent them. The danger for thepolitical class is the emergence of a subterraneansphere of discourse from which they are excluded.Public communication could migrate, leaving the‘leaders’ behind. Direct representation provides anopportunity for the terms of political communica-tion to be renegotiated for the digital age.

Conclusion: more than just connecting

A central argument of this paper has been thatpolitical relationships between citizens and thestate are permeated by distance and disrespect,leaving democracy as an encounter between dis-trusting strangers. The democratic state needs todesign ways of acknowledging citizens, withoutthis seeming like an empty or disingenuous ges-ture.

This is far from a counsel of despair. As I havesuggested, the public has no complaints, even inthese more democratic, less deferential times,about the fundamentals of representation. Citizensdon’t want to go through the time-consuming

process of examining and voting upon every areaof policy and piece of new legislation. They do notexpect every decision to go their way, nor thatpoliticians will perform miracles. They do expect,however, ordinary levels of competence and effi-ciency, and to be engaged in the political conversa-tion as equals. And they want to know that theircontribution will be valued – that it will make adifference. In an age when blind civic duty couldbe relied upon, the consequence of civic actionshardly mattered – for the essence of duty is itsmoral indifference to outcomes. But now that thepublic is more critical (and authority should learnnot to resent this), it is vital to demonstrate clearand honest connections between individualactions and collective results, neighbourhoodinput and global output, and single-issue choicesand systemic effects.

In an age where authenticity and ordinarinessare valued more than prestige and expertise, thechallenge for democratic politicians is to be seenas ordinary enough to be representative, whileextraordinary enough to be representatives.

The current problem of democracy is not abouthow to re-engage citizens with the linear, hierarchi-cal and indirect processes of representation. Itwould be ironic indeed if the public were enthusedto trust and collude with a culture of representa-tion so at variance with moves towards more open,interactive, collaborative relations elsewhere. Thegreat challenge is not to change people so thatthey connect with politics, but to change politicsso it connects with the people.

STEPHEN COLEMAN 15

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Bibliography

Documents

direct representation - IPPR · Introduction The problem faced by contemporary democracy is horribly simple: governments have come to believe that the public don’t know how to speak;