Abstract

Abstract:

With the United States being a representative democracy, one would expect that the process of representation and democracy are adequately fulfilled for constituents, yet, the U.S. has various “dents” to these ideals that are quite visible. By “dents”, I mean faults within the institutions and processes of the U.S. I chose this path for my research due to the vastly polarized political climate that the U.S. has seen in within recent years. Said polarization has brought about an attempt to take over the nation’s Capital building on January 6th, along with the decades-long bouts between the two parties has shown me that this is not a phenomenon of representational democracies but one specific to the U.S. For this research, I largely follow Hanna F. Pitkin’s book, The Concept of Representation, to help build an encompassing understanding of representation, and what it could or should look like through different models. I use Benjamin Constant’s ideas in Paris, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns speech, to portray the ways that subjects of a modern representative democracy are less active in the polis than those in ancient society. Finally, I will be using Brian Frederick’s book, Congressional Representation & Constituents: The Case for Increasing the U.S. House of Representatives, to show the lack of communication between representatives and constituents. The first chapter lays out Pitkin’s forms of representation and then for the second chapter I conduct my own conceptual analysis of different political concepts that make up democracy including legitimacy, equality, and obligation. Finally, I use content from both the first two chapters to construct a critique of the U.S. House of Representatives and advocate for an expansion of seats in the House. What I have found from all of this is that constituents and representatives ought to be more connected with each other to improve decision making with policies that reflect the will of the people.

Advisor

Weber, Désirée

Department

Political Science

Disciplines

Political Theory

Keywords

Representation, Democracy

Publication Date

2022

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2022 Matthew Galletti