Concluding Discussion: Bridging Representative and Direct Democracies

Abstract

In representative democracy, participation by the people is realized through the election of representatives. Therefore, representative democracy is truly democratic if the elected actually represent the public interest. However, electoral campaigns, especially under audience democracy, manipulate public opinion, resulting in a low representativeness of the government elected. To improve the situation, an alternative election procedure is imagined, which redirects attention from candidates as personalities to their abilities as representatives. Electoral ballots are proposed to include questions about the voter’s position on key issues in candidate manifestos (Introduce nationwide minimum wage? Yes/No; Relax protection against employee dismissals? Yes/No, etc.). The procedure envisages evaluating the candidates by the degree to which their profiles match with that of the electorate as a single body, implementing the idea of public determination. In contrast to voting based on individual choices, the candidates receive no votes. The embedded referendum on a sample of issues serves as a direct democracy (statistical) test of the candidates, thereby introducing to election random ‘democratic’ elements. Our proposal attempts to bridge direct and representative democracies, overcome the oligarchical nature of election, and make election meet democratic objectives better. For illustration, the method is used to redistribute seats in the German Bundestag with a considerable gain in its representativeness.