Two Skepticism of the Mechanism of Representation

This chapter introduced in detail about the structure and mechanism of representation of people in the congress. The well-designed two houses model has achieved a very fair balance of each state in the congress which composed with the House of Representatives on the basis of population and the Senate on the basis of equal representation of states. For hundreds of years such system successfully maintain the stability of the government while new states joined the union. Although the book mentioned two downside of the mechanism, themis-representation of gender and minority racial groups and the greater voice of people from small states, the connection between the delegate in congress and constituents would push those in congress to listen and reflect the will of people in their districts.

The current congress also features with “ representation, but no responsibility”. The structure of the system functions to reflect the public opinion, but its job is not enforced or measured by responsibility in law. Once the congressman was elected, they don’t feel as much stress as they feel during election. Unlike the governor of a county or state, what congressman have done is much less transparent to the public so they have less motivation to completely follow the public’s will. There are two questions on the representation in congress derived from this perspective.

The first question is that due to such connection between congressman and local, are they going to vote for decision in congress more in favor of state interest rather than the national interests. Those elected congressmen are supposed to address the opinion of the people in his district, and also, the opinion of the relevant interest groups. For example, Senator Jesse Helms would represent the conservative movement and Henry Hyde would play against abortion. Sometimes the interest groups are even prior to the public since they could directly raise money to support the campaign of congressmen. In order to win the election and stay in office, congressmen are incentive to do what they promised to interest group and their supporters. If not, they may risk to be replaced by other candidate in the next round of election. It is illustrated in the roll-call votes in congress on particular issues. So when it comes to the scenario which national interest conflict with the benefit of their constituency, it is hard to see the congressmen would stand with the national interests. They are more likely to defend the interest of their people, or in other words, to defend their position in the congress. This paradox eventually becomes part of the reason of the inefficiency of congress. Thus the congress will reflect the divided opinion of the country but may fail to put common goods of the nation first.

A more controversial issue of the representation system is the consistence of what congressmen do and what people really want. As both stated above and in the textbook, because the congressmen tend to keep their promise to the people and fight for them in order to defend their positions, the public opinion, especially the needs of minority racial groups, will be represented by their delegates and senators. However, the problem is that to what extent the congressmen would carry out those opinion during their job. It shows that most of the congressmen generally have similar background with high education, business or law experience and good family environment. Is this uniform group of people able to represent the highly divided public. The public is normally divided into two sides when they face with critical issues. But they even don’t what would be the critical issue and what they may think about until it comes to them. So it is hard for the congressmen to keep track on the people’s will. Additionally, some people may have ambivalent attitude to one issue. For example, people may favor the policy to promote welfare system like education and healthcare which benefit their life, but they may turn to play against the increasing budget and power of government which actually aim to promote the welfare system. Under such real situation, the best option for congressmen is to adopt the compromise among people. They would annoy one side of group no matter what action they decide to make. It makes the priority of congressmen to appease different groups of people in their district rather than to carry out specific resolution to particular issues. This eventually reduce the efficiency of congress.

Even though it has been proved along the history that the representation system in congress in U.S has contributed to make the government one of the most stable in the modern world, it is still not perfect to represent all the people in the country and effectively solve their problem in the national level of government.

Lotte Elfering says:

November 19, 2017 at 5:05 pm

A good post, and I agree with most of your arguments. While I am in favor of having a legislature that is not bound to location, I do see its benefits in a country like the United States. Because the United States is such a big country, there are significant differences between the states. Because the states and the people that live within them, and thus their policy preferences, are so different, it is necessary to have representation from the different states in order to make Congress and the Senate more representative. Otherwise, it could occur that the population of smaller states and their interests are not represented at all, while they would need to be in order to make sure they are not left behind.

In theory, switching from local representation to a system where the person you vote for is not linked to your district would be a more equal system of representation, because every vote counts, instead of just the majority. However in practice this would potentially lead to both more representatives from the bigger states, and would increase the influence of career politicians even more, as it would no longer matter if they were all from Washington D.C., for example.

One important advantage of a representative system that is not bound to districts is one which we learned about earlier in the semester is the way minority rights are granted in the United States. Basically, minority rights are only given to them if the majority thinks it needs to give them. This would be prevented in a non-location bound system because the majorities would have enough voting power to vote someone that would represent them into office.

Altogether, I am saying I do not agree with the representative system in the United States, because it tends to ignore minorities and over-represent certain districts. However, I recognize why it was implemented and why it would be important to have such a system in a country that has so many different states, peoples and cultures within its borders.