When your member of parliament votes on legislation, they claim to speak for you. But did you actually authorize that specific vote? Do you even know what they decided? This gap between the rhetoric of democratic representation and its messy reality reveals something uncomfortable: the entire system rests on philosophical foundations that don't quite hold together.

Yet somehow democracy functions. Millions accept decisions made by people they've never met, on issues they weren't consulted about, as legitimately their decisions. Understanding why requires examining the useful fictions that make representative government possible—and recognizing where those fictions break down.

The fundamental question is deceptively simple: how does casting a ballot transform a stranger into someone who can bind you to laws, spend your taxes, and declare war in your name? The standard answer—consent through voting—unravels quickly under scrutiny. You didn't consent to lose. You didn't consent to the specific policies your representative later supports. Many didn't vote at all.

Political theorist Hanna Pitkin identified this as the authorization view of representation: representatives act legitimately because voters granted them authority. But this treats elections as blank cheques. Between elections, representatives make thousands of decisions voters never specifically authorized. The authorization happens once; the actions happen continuously.

This isn't merely academic. When representatives vote against overwhelming constituent opinion—on issues from healthcare to military intervention—they invoke their 'judgment' or claim to serve constituents' 'real interests.' The authorization story provides no clear answer about whether this betrays or fulfills their mandate. We've agreed they can act for us without agreeing what that actually means.

Takeaway

Electoral authorization is a one-time event that supposedly justifies years of specific decisions voters never actually approved—a gap we rarely acknowledge.

If authorization can't fully legitimate representation, perhaps accountability can. Representatives answer to voters eventually—if they displease constituents, they lose office. This retrospective check supposedly keeps them honest. But accountability faces its own philosophical problems.

First, voters judge entire records, not individual decisions. A representative might vote against your interests on twenty issues but retain your support through party loyalty or performance on one salient topic. Second, information asymmetries are vast. Most constituents cannot evaluate complex legislation, creating accountability in name only. Third, and most fundamentally, aggregation problems make coherent representation of any district impossible.

Your constituency contains people with contradictory preferences. No representative can simultaneously represent pro-choice and pro-life voters, free traders and protectionists. The district as a unified entity with interests capable of representation doesn't actually exist. What gets 'represented' is always some constructed version of constituent preferences—shaped by which voices are loudest, which issues representatives prioritize, and whose interests count as legitimate.

Takeaway

Accountability requires voters to evaluate complex decisions with limited information about a representative who cannot coherently represent fundamentally divided constituencies.

Given these problems, political philosophers have developed competing models of what representation should mean. The delegate model says representatives should vote as constituents would—essentially transmitting preferences. The trustee model says representatives should exercise independent judgment for constituents' benefit, even against their stated wishes.

Both models fail. Pure delegation is impossible when constituents disagree or lack opinions on technical matters. Pure trusteeship seems to abandon democracy entirely—why elect anyone if their judgment simply replaces yours? Most representatives oscillate between models strategically, invoking whichever justifies their current position.

A third approach focuses on descriptive representation—the idea that legislatures should mirror the demographic composition of society. This addresses real problems: historically excluded groups may have interests that privileged representatives cannot fully understand. But it raises new puzzles. Must women represent women? Can a wealthy woman represent working-class women? Descriptive representation assumes group membership creates shared interests, which oversimplifies how identity and politics interact.

Takeaway

No model of representation fully solves the philosophical puzzle; each reveals different tensions between democracy's promises and its practical impossibilities.

Representative democracy works not because it solves these philosophical problems but because citizens accept its fictions as practically necessary. We act as if representatives speak for us, knowing they cannot perfectly do so. This willing suspension of philosophical disbelief enables governance at scale.

Recognizing these fictions doesn't mean abandoning democracy. It means approaching democratic institutions with appropriate humility—demanding accountability while acknowledging its limits, participating despite imperfect authorization, and remaining skeptical when anyone claims to simply 'represent the people.'