ent movement and the local council committees in large
cities. The third form was inserted into some post-war
constitutions like the Italian (Article 75). Of these three
forms of direct democracy the second and third cannot
hope to substitute and, indeed, they never have substituted
the various forms of representative democracy practicable
in a democratic state; just as the various forms of
representative democracy have never pretended to substitute
and, in fact, never have substituted authoritarian forms of
exercising power as, for example, modes of bureaucratic
organization in those states which are called democratic.
Therefore on their own they cannot constitute a true and
proper alternative to the representative state: the second
because it is only applicable in small communities and
the third because it is applicable only in exceptional
circumstances of limited relevance. As for the first, with
the formation of large party organizations which sometimes
impose very strict voting discipline on the representatives
elected on their policies, the difference between a representative
with a mandate and one without becomes more
and more blurred. The deputy elected through a party
organization receives a mandate not from the electorate
but from the party which punishes the deputy by revoking
that mandate when he or she ignores discipline, which
becomes a functional replacement for the electorate's
imperative mandate.