Ethical Obligations of Representatives
If representative roles are structured in part by institutional rules and inducements, they are also structured by the ethical duties of public office. Representatives are elected to do certain jobs, and their jobs come with obligations. The question of representative roles was famously conceived by Burke (1968), who argued that representatives should serve as trustees of the interests of those who elected them—“virtual representatives”—rather than serving as delegates. Representatives should not be bound by the preferences of constituents; they should use their autonomous judgment within the context of deliberative bodies to represent the public interest.