Democracy versus representation in Gregory Conti's parliament mirror of the nation. Issue 1 (2nd January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Boyd, Richard
• Is Part Of: History of European ideas. Volume 49:Issue 1(2023)
• Page Start: 153
• Page End: 155
• Publication Date: 2023-01-02
• Subjects: Representative government -- mass democracy -- parliament; Europe -- Intellectual life -- Periodicals; Europe -- History -- Periodicals; 190.5
• DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2022.2064678
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0191-6599

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Representation in the Anglo-American tradition has often been conceived in terms of the "refine and filter" model commonly associated with The Federalist. Gregory Conti challenges this concept of representation by bringing to light an alternative tradition of "mirroring" that preoccupied nineteenth-century British thinkers who were intent on parliamentary reforms. While Conti's recovery of this "mirroring" tradition offers potentially useful insights for contemporary theorists of descriptive representation, it nonetheless hinges on an assumption that representative government is a qualitative matter of deliberation rather than the purely quantitative voting that has come to the forefront with the rise of mass democracy.