Heywood 2001. With all due respect to Plato, this creates a form of elitism in a situation where every man was suppose to be equal even in the 19th century. Talking about the 21st century there is no longer much difference in wealth and level of education between the representative and the represented, so the argument that the ordinary citizen's role is to be confined to just the election of representative whose views he happens to agree with or the fact that he is not educated enough to take hard and practical decision is far less now. The level of education as compared to that of the early centuries is quite different now as there is a vast increase in the number of people that has gone through to university. It is estimated that "the number of people that stayed in education beyond the age of 15 rose to seven fold between 1921 and 1991." Economist 9/11/ 1993.So it can be argued that people are better equipped to take those hard and practical decisions now than they were use to, if education is a criteria. .
Further more the question of proportionality also comes in when we are talking about representation, is every sphere of society been represented? The purpose of the election of these representative assemblies is to produce an elected representative that will accurately represent all shades of public opinion within the electorate, as the final justification of the representative form of democracy is that it is carrying out the wishes of the populace as expressed in an election. So can any representative assembly truly claim to be a representative of the public if the interest that is represented is not proportionate to that of the entire citizenry in term gender social class or ethnicity? This issue of proportional representation is not heard of in the direct set up, as every citizen can partake in the discussion and decion making without delegating their right to elected representatives.
