The Birth of Representative Government

Abstract

In the Middle Ages various countries had representative institutions but it cannot be said that any country had a system of representative government. By this term is meant a system of national government in which representative institutions play a crucial role in the decision-making process, so that few nolitical changes of any importance can be made without the authority of the central legislative assembly. This form of government emerged in England in the seventeenth century, in America and France during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and in other European countries—largely under the influence of French ideas—in the nineteenth century.