Representation, Participation and Democracy: Addressing Declining Voter Turnout in Elections

Abstract

Citizen participation in political decision making is a fundamental tenet of democracy. It enables citizens to exercise control over decisions that affect them. In large modern democracies the most important form of participation occurs at the national level in the selection of representatives to the legislature through periodic elections. Without such participation, the legislature lacks legitimacy. Declining voter turnout rates therefore poses a problem for the legitimacy of the legislature in modern representative democracies. In this paper I study two democratic theories: representative democracy and participatory democracy. I focus on the theories of Joseph Schumpeter, Jeremy Waldron, Nadia Urbinati and Carole Pateman. I outline each theory and assess how each one responds to the problem of declining voter turnout in national elections on modern western democracies. Schumpeter’s theory highlights the procedural importance of elections but offers no insight for supporting my thesis for arresting declining voter turnout rates. I argue that Waldron and Urbinati provide a compelling defence of representative democracy, and in particular the representative legislature. Their normative account emphasises the importance of addressing declining voters turnout rates. Next, I describe some devices to improve participation in national elections. Pateman’s theory of participatory democracy offers ideas to address declining voting patterns. Her argument for participation above and beyond periodic exercise of the vote in national elections has merit. I believe that participation theory is complementary to representative democratic theory. I conclude that representative democratic theory and practice may have to look beyond mechanisms employed at the national level and focused on the legislature in order to respond to declining voter participation.