Representative System and Popular Sovereignty

Since the representative system emerged, it has quickly spread to various countries in the world and become an important part of the political system of different countries, in spite of different objective historical reasons for its emergence. However, the representative system is not necessarily equal to democracy. “Only when the representative system has succeeded in ensuring that the government acts in accordance with the will and demands of the people, is it justifiable to call it a representative democracy.” Therefore, the representative system is often criticized by people both in theory and in practice. Taking a survey of different views, we can find that the key problem lies in how to understand and deal with the relationship between the representative system and popular sovereignty.