Towards “a Full Representative System Approach”: Insights from the Systemic Turn in Democratic Theory

Abstract

In the wake of a trail of innovation sparked, nearly thirty years ago, by the so-called democratic rediscovery of representation, the past decade has seen increasingly explicit attempts to re-conceive of representative democracy beyond the dyadic and static terms that classic accounts entailed. Highlighting, instead, the systemic and dynamic character of representative practices (Castiglione and Warren 2013; Castiglione 2020; Rey 2023), these efforts have lead today to straightforward calls to take what Jane Mansbridge has recently termed a “full representative system approach” (Mansbridge 2025). This panel brings together five papers that respond to this challenge from complementary empirical and theoretical perspectives. Collectively, they seek to specify what it means to analyse representative democracy as a system, how such systems are structured, and how they should be evaluated normatively. Some contributions interrogate the institutional architecture of representative systems. Fossum develops the concept of compound representation, showing how representation in federal and multi-level polities operates through multiple, partially autonomous channels whose authorization and accountability relations cannot be captured by unitary models. Rinne and Geissel shift attention to the demand side of representative systems, advancing the notion of institutional congruence and demonstrating empirically how alignment between citizens’ institutional preferences and perceived institutional performance affects political well-being and democratic repair. Other papers extend systemic analysis beyond formal institutions. Gentile Fusillo and Steeds theorize representation from the representative standpoint, conceptualizing representative democracy as a system of interlocking relationships—including relations among representatives, with bureaucratic and intermediary actors, and with the media—that structure contemporary representative practice. Sánchez-Mazas examines citizens’ assemblies as meta-deliberative interventions, arguing that their democratic value lies in their capacity to reflexively problematize and reform representative systems as a whole, particularly by institutionalizing the representation of marginalized perspectives. Finally, Rey addresses the empirical–normative divide in systemic representation theory, critically reassessing policy responsiveness as a normative standard and arguing for a deliberative and inclusion-sensitive account of systemic responsiveness.

Title	Details
Democratic Self-Diagnosis: Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Lessons	View Paper Details
A Neglected Driver for Repairing Democracy – Congruence Between Citizens’ Institutional Preferences and Institutions	View Paper Details
Compound Representation	View Paper Details
Addressing the Empirical–Normative Divide in Systemic Representation Theory	View Paper Details
Designing a Meta-Deliberative System: The Case of the Geneva Citizens' Assembly for Democracy	View Paper Details