To suggest that there are clear-cut moral stands on every, or even most issues, is probably not right. It’s possible to agree on principle and disagree on process, or timing, or priorities. There are different cost-benefit equations at work all the time. That’s the first thing.

The second matter is the question of who owns policy: The voters or the politicians? Yeah, sure, at election time it’s clearly the voters, but then there’s all that time between those elections.

There are 2 views of management theory and they both have some merit. One is that you hire the manager (politician) based upon their knowledge and judgement and you trust them to make decisions based upon that (wisdom). You take the good with the bad on this one because sometimes that manager is going to disagree with you. However I believe that textbook management theory generally says this is the better management technique.

The other theory is that you hire a manager to directly represent you. They do not make policy, they implement it. In this system if a policy mistake is made you should logically own that mistake, not the manager. Textbook management theory generally frowns on this system because it’s something of a micromanagement environment. However some organizations successfully implement this system.

I have heard several posters here claim that representing their constituents wishes is the politician’s sole duty, but do we really want that? Are we sure we know what the voters wishes are on every issue? We can measure it to be sure but then we risk becoming a poll-driven society and there are lots of people who decry that as a failure of backbone and spirit.

I’d suggest that a “responsible cynicism” might be arrived at if you detected flip-flopping between the two different management systems, with no apparent goal except achieving personal gains.

My concern is that most citizens who are cynical don’t care how policy they don’t agree with was arrived at. They disagree with the policy and get jaded with all politicians. Under these circumstances, who is the greater negative force, the political class or the citizens? Who was it who said that the people get the government they deserve?

There’s a real problem with the political world I think, and that’s the notion that literally everything is negotiable. I suspect that most people would like to have a politician with some center, some stable core that is not negotiable. Yet if that belief system is too “large” then you’ll have an inflexible leader who may refuse deals that would benefit themselves and their constituents. And I suspect that a political animal for whom everything is negotiable, can have a long and fruitful career, bending to every wind of change that comes along.

I don’t know about the US, but in Germany, the constitution states that a member of
Parliament has his conscience as the SOLE arbiter on how to vote. That is, of the three
choices (what the representative prefers, what the majority of those who voted for him
prefer, what would be best for the majority of those who elected him), one is singled out as
the SOLE determinant of how a representative should vote.

I don’t agree with that. It’s a typical case of a law which was well meant when it was
written, but isn’t a good choice today. One rarely knows one’s representative personally. As
the name says, a representative’s job is to represent. Just because he got elected doesn’t
mean he should be able to do what he wants; he has a job. (A strict interpretation of the
rule could be that a representative could vote opposite to what he promised during the
campaign, or randomly, or by listening to Sean Carroll—anything he can justify as
“dictated by his conscience”.) The obvious choice is that a representative should vote for
what the majority of those who elected him would vote for. In general, I think this is true,
but one of the reasons we have representatives, and indeed division of labour generally,
is that the issues are often complex. I would prefer to vote for someone I trust (whether or
not I know him personally) and hope that he acts in my best interests, even if it might be
contrary to what I would personally choose on the spur of the moment (perhaps not knowing
the complexity of the issues involved). When the representative feels that A is best for
those who voted for him, but knows that most of those would vote for B, he should explain
why A is better than B.

This conjures up the image of a representative as someone who votes according to some
algorithm. In practice, few representatives will often vote against their own beliefs, since
even if they see themselves as true representatives, part of politics is arguing for a certain
point of view, and this is difficult if one doesn’t in fact hold that point of view.

In practice, in Germany (and presumably in many other countries, but probably not in
two-party systems where the role of the party is minimal), representatives vote according
to the position of the party (which I agree with, since I voted for a party, and not for
someone I don’t even know personally), from their point of view because they know that if
they adopt the “I vote solely according to my conscience” stance the party will not choose
them as a candidate in the next election. Only in exceptional cases, when there is no clear
party position and/or where the division in opinion cuts across party lines, do the parties
formally say “vote your conscience”.

Quite frankly, I don’t think politicians are that much different from the average person.
We’re all likely to behave differently when it’s our ox being gored.

Maybe we should pass a Constitutional Amendment that changes the name from the House of Representatives to the House of Masters????

“That’s why there is a minimum Congressional district size but not a maximum.
Actually it is the other way around. The US Census determines a total number of citizens in the US,”

Spyder,

You misunderstand me. Congress’ size is determined by law Congress can change. That doesn’t really reflect on whether they should vote their conscience or the people’s will. My point was that the Constitution sets a minimum district size (no smaller than 30,000 people) but not a maximum size. The reason was to increase the independence of the representative from the people, so that he could vote his will.

@Arrow,

No, there is no explicit definition.

I think Obama touched upon this theme in his “The Audacity of Hope”.

For the record: Senators do not, have not, and will not, represent people. They represent their states, solely in the interest of other states, as a means to create a measure of justice in the exercise of legislative power between those states with large populations and those with much smaller ones. Thus the reason there are two Senators from every state. Now, a US Senator is a very powerful human being in the scale of world political power. One would hope (wishful thinking) that Senators actually assumed the mantle of the role to which they aspired. This is not the case; as the costs of campaigns increase, the 100 Senators become more beholden to the specific interests of those who fund their campaigns. Only a very few people actually have the requisite disposable wealth to do so, and thus receive the full attention of each Senator.

Suppose, for example you are from Texas, which houses the international headquarters of the oil industry. One can be pretty damn sure (check out Opensource.org if you doubt) that Texas Senators represent what is best for oil and energy, no matter what that may mean to the citizens of the State.

That’s why there is a minimum Congressional district size but not a maximum.
Actually it is the other way around. The US Census determines a total number of citizens in the US, which is divided by 435 (not including the exception of those territories whose constituent populations receive non-voting representation in Congress). The outcome of that number is the “size of districts” given the norm, which is subtracted by the number of states that have less than that number of citizens per district {norm} (thus the minimum district size equals the number of citizens within each state that fall below the original quotient), and the remaining sum is then again divided by the remaining number of available representatives. That determines the total number of representatives by number of states allotted. Congress then sets the apportionment for number of districts across the states that dramatically exceed the quotient of the second equation. Because of the Constitutionally mandated limit of 435 voting representatives, some states (such as CA) will have much higher number of people per district than other states with lower populations.

This why the next 2010 election is so damned important at the state level, in that it determines the legislative bent along the political spectrum as to who gets to define the gerrymandering of those precious Congressional districts. Once Congress notifies the states as to how many representatives they will have in the 2012 Congress, the states have about a year to redesign and realign the districts according to the wishes of the controlling political party.

And you thought physics was complicated.