Ask any politician what they stand for and they will assure you that they represents the public’s interest. But what do they mean by that? What do the terms “representation”, “public” and “public interest” mean and how does one go about representing them?
Modern History of Representation
We often think that the ancient Greeks invented representation. But although they engaged in many activities we might consider to be part and parcel of representative government, the ancient Greeks did not have a word meaning “representation”.
The concept of representation (one person or one institution representing another person) began to emerge in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; in Church councils and the English Parliament. In the beginning, representing others was seen as a cumbersome duty. What religious leader wanted to trek countless miles to discuss the latest interpretation of the Bible? What knight or burger wanted to take time out from more pleasurable and profitable pursuits to meet with the King’s representatives? But over time, as Parliament came to be seen as a way to advocate for local interests and to curb the King’s power, representing the people in parliament came to be seen as more than a mere chore; gradually it came to be associated with personal freedom. And by the time of the American Revolution, “No Taxation without Representation” was a rallying cry for freedom.
But who was being represented? And how?
The Public
You would not know it from the almost fawning way it is used today, but the concept of the public, as the constituency whom the politicians are bound to represent and from whom they derive their authority is not an idea that was met with unalloyed joy. Indeed, for quite a long time the public was looked upon with more than a grain of suspicion.
Rousseau, the father of the Social Contract, wrote in The Origin of Civil Society that “as soon as a mob has become united into a body politic, any attack upon one of its members is an attack upon itself. … the Sovereign People, having no existence, outside that of the individuals who compose it can have no interests at variance with theirs.” In a similar vein, Tocqueville in Democracy in America lamented that a democratic public must of necessity be “a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.”
In Federalist Number 10, however, Madison contrasted the “public good” with the adverse effects of “private faction”. And certainly by the twentieth century, it was completely uncontroversial to write that “A government cannot be legitimate if it does not represent its people” (http://www.limitedgovernment.org/publications/pubs/briefs/pdfs/brf4-15.pdf ).
But the question which Madison articulated in Federalist Number 10 remains: what is the public interest and how does one represent it?
The Public Interest
Perhaps it is best to start with what the public interest is not. We, members of the public, are interested in many things. If popular TV shows like Entertainment Tonight are to be believed, we are very interested in celebrities; if the number of reviews on amazon.com are any indication, we are very interested in books. But we don’t expect our government to represent our favorite actor (or actress) or our favorite book. So if what we are interested in is not what constitutes the “public interest” what is it?
Perhaps the best way to define the public interest is to say that the public (or many members of the public) have a stake in a particular issue. That does not mean that these same members of the public are interested in it. The economy is a good example. I don’t know about you but I am far more interested in the book I am reading than in the interest rate banks charge one another. However, I recognize that I have a personal stake in that interest rate and do not have a stake in my book.
I therefore expect my representative to consult with those who understand the economy (as well as the psychology behind the economy) and try to fix it. I do not expect my representative to do anything to promote the book I am reading. (Although I recognize that the better the economy, the more books I will be able to buy.)
There are also public interests that do not have an identifiable constituency. A good example is world peace. Most of us would say we want world peace in general. However, most of us would also say that if that world peace comes at the price of something we value in particular (say the economy) then we would rather our representatives concentrate on the economy. We are thus telling our representatives that some public interests are more worthy of their representation than others.
Representing the Public Interest
When representatives act in our interest they do what we have either explicitly stated we want or what we ought to want for themselves. The “ought” in that sentence is tricky. It means that we, the public, don’t have to form an opinion about an issue before our representatives act on it but it does mean that when they find themselves in conflict with our expressed wishes they need to explain themselves to us.
And the commonly used justification of “You would agree with me if you only knew all the facts—but no, I’m not going to give you all the facts” is not a satisfactory excuse.
For representatives will be judged by whether they promoted the interests of their constituents. They have an obligation not merely to work out (in their own minds) what they think the public’s “objective interest” are; they have an obligation to listen. (We might have some ideas about that as well.) And our representatives have to recognize that they do not have all the answers. The good representatives thus know that humility and a certain chore-like quality are still part of representing the public.
There is a reason representation is still called a “task” after all!
