Role of the Representative

Your local MLA promised a road repair in the campaign, and now a bill comes up that would raise taxes to fund something entirely different but arguably more important for the constituency. Should the MLA vote exactly as constituents would want on this new issue, or use their own judgment on what actually serves them? This is the oldest live question about what a representative is for.

In two minutes

There are two classical answers to what a representative should do — the delegate theory, where they must follow the wishes and instructions of those who elected them, and the trustee theory, associated with Edmund Burke, where they exercise independent judgment in the constituents' interest even against their stated wishes — with most real representatives operating somewhere between the two.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Political Science – I: Political Theory and Political Organisation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.