Locke on representation in politics

‘the Image, Phantom, or Representative of the Commonwealth . . .’ (1;: ;51).’ This is how Locke in the Two Treatises describes a supreme executive who, as in the English system of government, has a share also in the legislative power. It is very unusual for Locke in his political writings to employ vocabulary which might be drawn from his epistemological writings and it is intriguing that he should do so when describing the qualities of political representation. Locke is sometimes considered a founding father, even an ideologist, of liberal political thought, in which the ideas of representative government play such a major part. Yet in the Two Treatises there is no explicit and sustained analysis of the notion of representation such as had already been found in Hobbes’s Leviathan. At another level, however, one could argue that a notion of representation is essential to the underlying structure of the argument of the Two Trentises. If one returns to the description of the executive as the ‘image, phantom, or representative of the Commonwealth’ one may discover that it is susceptible to several interpretations. Locke says that such a representative is ‘acted by the will of the Society’ and that ‘thus he has no Will, no Power, but that of the Law’. This usage is akin to what Hanna Pitkin has called ‘symbolic representation’.’ Bound by the framework of taw, the representative executive has no will of his own. He is a symbol of the community and its law. When he acts, what one perceives is an image of the community acting. It is not he whom one sees but a phantom. On another interpretation this passage might suggest a somewhat more positive notion of representation as ‘acting for’ the represented. The executive has no will of his own because he is the agent of the community or the law. As long as the executive acts in the manner directed by the legislative power he is the image and the representative of the community. When he acts in a manner contrary to the will of the legislative or beyond the bounds of his office he ceases to be a representative. He is no longer the image of the community. In both these interpretations of the passage the executive is the representative of the commonwealth because he acts on and reproduces the will of the legislative which is itself a representation of the will of the community and, indirectly, of the will of the individuals composing it. In what ways. however, does the legislative represent the community? How can it too be the image or phantom of the commonwealth’? In attempting to answer this question it might be intriguing to follow up the vocabulary Locke employs in this passage and