The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design

Extract

The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design. By Andrew Rehfeld. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 280p. $75.00.

Most democratic theorists do not spend much time defining, let alone discussing, the concept of constituency. They assume that what is crucial to democratic institutions is the manner in which votes are distributed (equally and justly), not how democratic institutions define and draw electoral constituencies. Andrew Rehfeld's insightful and important book challenges these assumptions. For Rehfeld, democratic theorists need to think about constituency because constituencies are “the quintessential institution of official exclusion”: How democratic institutions define constituencies determines whose interests are catered to and whose interests are ignored.