Political participation, mass protest and representative democracy

The decision by the British government and Parliament in March 2003 to go to war against Iraq, despite serious public disquiet and unprecedented mass demonstrations, has renewed debate about the proper relationship between elected representatives and their constituents. The article shows that the arguments in favour of the decisional autonomy of representatives, advanced by Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill and much cited since, are more restrictive than they at first appear and could not be used to justify parliamentary independence in this case. A set of original criteria is then developed to distinguish between different examples of organised public opinion and collective protest in respect of their 'normative weight', and some key instances of popular protest under New Labour are assessed against these criteria. The article concludes by assessing the political implications of parliament's ignoring of public opinion in the decision over war against Iraq.