Political Science

Elections have been considered as a democratic practice, a system of establishing a government that is supposed to reflect the interests of the people.  However, the  degree of the effectiveness of representation has been subject to discussion this is to say that although elections are a means to provide channels that determine the prevailing essence of governance that will be established according to the expressed interest of the majority, how this translates into substantial policy representation elicits further discourse.

This paper evaluates three articles that address the issue of policy representation.  In an article by Dalton (1985), the author discussed the emergence of the party system as what seems like an effective electoral selection as a system applied by many Western democracies, the party system has become a venue of representation especially as these parties --- in an ideal scenario --- function on behalf of the interests of its supporters.  However, Dalton pointed out that when it comes to the actual performance of these parties once installed in the government, there are certain issues in which the gap between the policymakers and the public is more apparent.  The second article is Huber and Powells (1994) discussion on the congruence of the vision on liberal democracy between the policy-maker and the citizens.  This is a critical factor because the latter, albeit their representations based on principles, still have to function within the spectrum of politics, and cooperation with the other representatives from different parties are also considered to be crucial.  Last but not the least, McDonald, et al. (2004) highlight the median mandate, especially in terms of how citizens express their preferences of governance and how elections reflect the combination of emphasis on the issues that need to be addressed in the particular society.

Dalton Political Parties and Representation
Daltons articles lies in the theory that parties serve as the political linkages between the public and the political elite.  The differences in the opinion between the masses and the elite in the pressing issues need to be balanced by the parties, and it is the presence of the political legislator or the delegate that further secures this linkage.  In the article, Dalton examines these dynamics through the data resulting from the elections of the European Parliament however, the author stressed that the study was not interested in the Europarliament elections per se... (but to) compare the beliefs of top-level party elites and the party voters in cross-national terms (Dalton, 1985, 272).  In any case, the core of this article is how affective the citizen-elite agreement is, and how these differences determine the degree of representation, especially as the delegate usually comes from the political elite.

The measure of difference between mass public attitudes and the perceptions of the elite highlights how the social spectrum is made up of citizens with varying degrees of interests.  How the delegate or representative positions himself or herself in these dynamics do echo the level of political sophistication which combines with the ability to relate to the general public.  Overall, the article has a strong working concept that mostly serves as the fundamental element of the study this is to say that Dalton managed to present effectively and sufficiently the theories behind the dynamics of the public and the elite, and how these influence the level of representation in governance.  The author has established the importance of the agreement between the views of the citizens and the elite, thus providing a significant insight on how parties try to find the middle ground that will determine their ideological leanings and performance as representatives.

However, in application of this theoretical platform versus the actual sampling of the study (the data from the Europarliament elections), what would have made this study more effective is how Dalton would have actually compared the evaluation of these data from the elections and the results of actual party representation.  The strong suit of the article is that it weighs heavily more on establishing the role of the linkages, but the paper could have taken the study more and examined the years of governance resulting from that elections.  Given that the importance of measure is based on the agreement from an actual data, these theoretical foundations would make greater sense if the author had taken the study further and compare the relationship with the actual performance.  What the article mostly did was point out which issues the mass public and the elite had significant differences, but how these translates into representation was lacking in the discussion of the paper. Thus, it is easy to discuss the ideological leanings of the public, the elite and the representatives, but for such article and given the opportunity that the election resulted to some years of performance of the Europarliament resulting from that election, the study would have made greater impact if it just stepped beyond the concept of representation and actually looked at the linkages that was forged after that exercise of democracy.

Huber and Powell Congruence and Liberal Democracy
Huber and Powell focuses on liberal democracy and how congruence is a characteristic of democratic exercise.  This time, the authors highlight the difference between what potential conflicts in the idea of representation the publics preferences and how these preferences are actually represented by the policy-makers.  The authors thereby mentioned the visions of democracy the Majority Control vision and the Proportionate Influence Vision.  The former is a simplification of a general understanding of a working democracy, and that is to make sure what the majority wants will be implemented.  The latter, on one hand, defines democracy by means of finding a consensus that also takes into consideration the interests of the other citizens who do not necessarily belong to the greater majority.  These visions are then evaluated as a model of elections or a venue of congruence.  The authors stated the congruence prediction of the two visions in Majority Control the government is the policymaker and is close to the media voter whereas the Proportionate Influence needs to have a median legislator but average weight of all policymakers will be closer to the median voter (p. 302).  The study resulted to the Proportionate Influence Vision giving better venues of congruence but the authors also mentioned precautions especially as this could lead to the formation of a coalition government.

Overall, Huber and Powells article presents a very well-rounded discussion on congruence and liberal democracy.  The thesis of the paper shows how the authors established a definition of democracy outside its common notions how democracy may be also served without just emphasising the needs of the majority but rather to find a balance between the majoritys preferences and also factoring in the concerns of the minority.  What comes to mind in this argument is how in reality, the concerns of the popular vote may not necessarily serve the best interest of the nation.  This explains why the authors pointed out that democracy is not just singular in dimension.  Furthermore, in order to integrate objectivity in the study, Huber and Powell also discussed the pros and cons of the resulting vision of congruence according to the tenets of a working liberal democracy in the context of representation (the Proportionate Influence Vision).  The article also concluded by mentioning how the results of the study could possibly be different should the political environment the study examined was different.  The authors admitted the shortcomings of the study and identified the factors that could make the study contrastive.

On the other hand Huber and Powells article could be further strengthened by citing examples in which the balance of citizen preference and policymaking could be contested.  As the article is mostly founded on a strong theoretical framework, the ideas could be further expounded by identifying certain policy issues that could use an application of the authors theoretical recommendations.  As the article mentioned the results of the study was general, and admittedly the authors found the shortcomings in the research design.  This shows how studies that are mostly founded on theory and concepts would gain more mileage through application, and the authors could easily find an conflicting issue in policy and governance, and present how the theoretical discussions of the study can actually lead to a set of possible solutions.

McDonald, et al. and the Median Mandate
McDonald, Mendes and Budge (2004) presents an interesting point in relation to Huber and Powells article how the popular mandate has been more influential to policymaking albeit the formation of a proportional representation system such as a coalition government.  This time, McDonald, et al. highlights the median mandate which lies in the median party in the parliament.    Thus, the authors proposed a specific set of roles of the median party which are basically instrumental to the definition of the legislative majority.  The authors then supported its thesis through collected data from 254 elections and 471 governments... (from) the first constitutionally authorised election after 1949 to the formation of any government in 1995 (p. 5).  Hence, to prove that the proposed median mandate would work, the authors relied on these data.  The framework of the median is based on the scale of votes according to the dynamics of the left and right.

The main strength of this article is the research design basically, as the authors had to prove the critical role of the median in a government consisted of polar opposites and other forms of opposition, the proposition of the median mandate already puts the centrists as the most valid choice in the elections.  By means of using actual election results, the authors showed how policies and policymaking are actually influenced by biases and distortions, in addition to the conflicts in the distribution of representation whether there is a pronounced majority or there are to parties that are neck-in-neck in control, the authors found that the median mandate functions in contemporary democracies.

However, what can be deemed problematic in the idea of the median mandate is that it already puts the centrist positioning as the most reasonable choice.  Although it seems that the median serves to balance conflicts, it does not necessarily mean that the interest of the people and the nation in general will be well served.  Hence, what can be criticised in this article, albeit the strengths in the research design, is the ideological element.  The authors proposed that in order to apply the median mandate the important step is to change the concept of the elections.  Such proposition can be considered problematic mostly because it somehow takes away the core element of democracy, and that is acknowledging the voice of the citizens.  The median tendencies of these contemporary societies can be mostly due to bargaining and politics, but nonetheless the median mandate is not a working solution for societies that need to implement change.

Conclusion
Based on the three reviewed articles, it can be gathered that the essentials of policymaking is based on how representation actually works.  These three articles present premises that aim to elucidate on how representation works and how representation can actually work for the interests of the society.  Overall, these articles present three distinctive facets on the discussion parties are representation, congruence and democracy, and the median mandate.  Interestingly, these three articles have their prevailing themes and the divergence can be found in the lenses that are used to examine the most workable policy representation.

Among the three Daltons article presents the more traditional lens the article is mostly academic or the article serves as a good reference when it comes to literature on parties and representation.  The lack assessment as to how theory was applied through the Europarliaments performance is the shortcoming to the article, and can definitely add more to the study, if not, present certain contradictions that can context the authors thesis.  Huber and Powells discussion on congruence can be regarded to have the most sensible explanation on the ideological practice of democracy, elections and policy-making yet the lack of example and application that would present their thesis as a working solution is the downside of the article.  Last but not the least, albeit having the strongest research design, McDonald, et als. work do not have substantial ideological explanation despite the presence of significant data.  As a result, their article ends up having a problematic proposition especially as the recommended actions are more conceptual in nature and not as solid as the methodology.