Parliament the Mirror of the Nation
eBook - PDF

Parliament the Mirror of the Nation

Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Parliament the Mirror of the Nation

Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian Britain

About this book

The notion of 'representative democracy' seems unquestionably familiar today, but how did the Victorian era - the epoch when the modern democratic state was made - understand democracy, parliamentary representation, and diversity? In the famous nineteenth-century debates about representation and parliamentary reform, two interlocked ideals were of the greatest importance: descriptive representation, that the House of Commons 'mirror' the diversity that marked society, and deliberation within the legislative assembly. These ideals presented a major obstacle to the acceptance of a democratic suffrage, which it was widely feared would produce an unrepresentative and un-deliberative House of Commons. Here, Gregory Conti examines how the Victorians conceived the representative and deliberative functions of the House of Commons and what it meant for parliament to be the 'mirror of the nation'. Combining historical analysis and political theory, he analyses the fascinating nineteenth-century debates among contending schools of thought over the norms and institutions of deliberative representative government, and explores the consequences of recovering this debate.

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Yes, you can access Parliament the Mirror of the Nation by Gregory Conti in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Political History & Theory. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title page
  3. Series page
  4. Title page
  5. Copyright page
  6. Contents
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Note on the Text
  9. List of Abbreviations
  10. Introduction
  11. Chapter 1 Diversity without Democracy: The Theory of the Variety of Suffrages: Part One: Institutions and Sociologies
  12. Chapter 2 Diversity without Democracy: The Theory of the Variety of Suffrages: Part Two: Values and Criticisms
  13. Chapter 3 Democracy, Diversity, and Contestability: Democracy against the Variety of Suffrages
  14. Chapter 4 Diversity with Democracy? Proportional Representation: Part One: Concepts and Techniques
  15. Chapter 5 Diversity with Democracy? Proportional Representation: Part Two: The Debate on PR’s Moral and Political Effects
  16. Conclusion
  17. Bibliography
  18. Index