POLD50H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Representative Democracy, Presidential System, Responsible Government
8 May 2016
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Lecture 4 theory and practice of responsible government. Basically, you do what your constituents tell you to do: trustee model. Job of the representative is to do what is in the interest of the constituents regardless of whether they know it is in their interests or not. You go and do what is in the best interest of your constituents: mirror model. You want representatives to look like the people they are representing. Example you want women in parliament because there are lots of women in society. You want them represented so that they mirror the society. The executive and the legislature: parliamentary vs. presidential system. Both have a separation of powers executive, legislative, judicial. Canada also has a cabinet - you have a cabinet comprised of mps from the house of commons, who advice the queen (executive), but in reality, they tell the executive what to do. Basically, cabinet controls the executive part of government.
