The ‘demographic’ model of representation, discussed in chapter 6, requires elected bodies to reflect the social composition of the population from which they are drawn. This view was perfectly expressed by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist papers when he questioned whether a representative body composed of ‘landholders, merchants and men of the learned professions’ could legitimately speak for all the people: ‘It is said to be necessary, that all classes of citizens should have some of their own numbers in the representative body, in order that their feelings and interests may be better understood and attended to.’ Similar concerns are echoed today. In recent decades many have claimed that contemporary democracies are ‘unrepresentative’ since universal rights of citizenship have often failed to be translated into comparable gains at elite level. The salient political cleavages vary in different countries; for example, linguistic and regional divisions are critical in Belgium and Canada, race is important in the United States, while religion and ethnicity define the political communities in Pakistan and Northern Ireland. In Britain during the post-war period, the greatest concern was expressed about the growing proportion of MPs from the professional middle classes, at the expense of the traditional aristocracy and manual workers. Reflecting the changing politics of the 1980s, more recent debates have focused on the issues of race and gender.

The social composition of parliament raises symbolic as well as substantive issues.