the idea of representative democracy came from the roman republic.
where did the idea of representative democracy come from?
the roman republic
the roman republic was the first known government in the western world to have a representative government, despite taking the form of a direct government in the roman assemblies. the roman model of governance inspired many political thinkers over the centuries, and today's modern representative democracies imitate more the roman than the greek models because it was a state in which supreme power was held by the people and their elected representatives, and which had an elected or nominated leader. representative democracy is a form of democracy in which people vote for representatives who then vote on policy initiatives as opposed to a direct democracy, a form of democracy in which people vote on policy initiatives directly. a european medieval tradition of selecting representatives from the various estates (classes, but not as we know them today) to advise/control monarchs led to relatively wide familiarity with representative systems inspired by roman systems.
representative democracy
the second part of the book is dedicated to the invention of the representative model. shaped by forces as varied as the rebirth of towns, the rise (in northern spain) of the first parliaments, and the conflicts unleashed by self-governing councils and religious dissent within the christian church, democracy came to be understood as representative democracy in this second phase. contrary to what other sources have often suggested, keane points out that the oldest roots of that democratic model are in fact undemocratic. the first parliament was not english, but spanish. keane locates the birth of representative parliaments in the cloisters of san isidoro church, in león, northern spain - the site where king alfonso ix convened the first cortes in 1188 ce. yet it took several centuries before the term representation began to be used in conjunction with democracy. the birthplace of talk of 'representative democracy' – unknown to the greeks - was late-eighteenth century france, england and the new american republic. to find a common accepted definition of the word and of the actual meaning of representation (who was entitled to represent whom and what had to be done when representatives disregarded those whom they were supposed to represent ) was by no means an easy task to accomplish. much ink and blood was spilled. the representative model of democracy as we know it is for keane the result of many and different power conflicts, many of them bitterly fought in opposition to ruling groups, whether they were church hierarchies, landowners or imperial monarchies, often in the name of "the people". the concept of the sovereign "people" was one of the most contested in this second phase. the bitter controversies over who "the people" were, along with the common belief of the time that good government was government by representatives, characterised this era of representative democracy, an era which also saw the birth of an abundance of democracy-related neologisms, such as social democracy, liberal democracy and christian democracy. often contrasted with monarchy, representative democracy was praised as a way of governing better by openly airing differences of opinion – not only among the represented themselves, but also between representatives and those whom they are supposed to represent while encouraging the rotation of leadership guided by merit.
the life and death of democracy