Changing Perceptions Between Citizens and Their Elected Representatives

America’s cherished system of self-government is based on the principle of representative democracy in which the election of legislators by the citizenry is the defining element, but how this principle plays out in practice depends chiefly on the relationships of legislators to their constituents. What that relationship means and why it should be accepted as legitimate has changed over time. 

This Kettering Foundation occasional paper by Joseph F. Freeman reviews these changes in the meaning of representation as they are reflected in classic works on American democracy, with a view to illuminating some of our present discontent with government.