With a vote on Syria looming, many Congressmen and Senators are likely scrambling to tally the opinions of their irate and (mostly) uninformed constituents. This may seem like a questionable way for enlightened leaders to decide how to vote, but it is part of a process that has reverberated through the annals of American political culture ever since the Patriots used “No taxation without representation” as their battle cry: constituents elect their representatives, the representatives legislate according to the interests of their constituents, and constituents vote errant representatives out of office. It’s a simple dynamic, one that ensures accountability and speaks to essence of democracy.
But it is a dynamic that is arguably stifling the creativity, innovation and bipartisanship of our elected leaders. And paradoxically, WE THE PEOPLE perpetuate this process, even though we detest its results: we all like that our representative votes for this tax cut we needed, or that environmental regulation we wanted, but both sides of the political aisle also agree that our legislatures on the whole are not actually doing anything productive—Congress’s approval rating is at a laughable 10%, an all-time low. So, what will it be—should we leave our representatives free to be leaders/trustees, or should we continue to chain them to our whims and demand that they be our loyal delegates? Is the leadership/trustee model just the first step to oligarchy? Is the delegate model necessarily even more democratic?
In more general terms, what is the proper relationship between constituents and their elected representatives and how can we apply this relationship to the unique constraints of American society and culture? Does the answer to this question depend on whether we are talking about the federal government, versus state or local government? Should the Seventeenth Amendment be repealed? How would the leadership/trustee model even work, and would it necessarily solve our problems of gridlock and polarization? Ahh, so many questions and so much relevance to current events!
