Sovereignty of the people? Public opinion and constitutional change in Britain Event

Contemporary elite and academic discourse often problematizes the descriptive and substantive representation of citizens through the lens of gender and ethnicity. For example, there are multiple surveys that have evaluated whether there is a public appetite for measures to improve the descriptive representation of women. However, there is also a resurgent interest in social class and regional/local identities that provides a further challenge to the current political class’s claims to be ‘representatives’ of the people. How the sovereignty of the people should be expressed through the collective voice of MPs in parliament has been contested at least since Burke made his famous speech to the Electors at Bristol; MPs must negotiate where to situate themselves between the two poles of political representation (centre and periphery) and choose to act as either delegates or trustees. These issues are increasingly salient in the context of a fragmenting party system where there is mounting pressure on MPs to perform their representative role by focusing more of their attention on the interests of their constituency. I will use surveys of public opinion to explore how these tensions are ‘voiced’ by the people.