Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Political Theory and the History of Ideas Journal, grade: 76, Queen Mary University of London (Department of Politics and International Relations), language: English, abstract: This essay will deal with the question whether the people can be considered to rule in a representative democracy. While our representatives are only accountable to a limited extent, a democracy is supposed to be based on the idea of the sovereignty of the people. Therefore, representative democracy has to be compared to its challenger, direct democracy, to conclude whether a representative democracy is an adequate political system.