Representative democracy is a form of democracy founded on the exercise of popular sovereignty by the people's representants. It is a theory of civics in which voters choose (in free, secret, multi-party elections) representatives to act in their interests, but not as their proxies—i.e., not necessarily according to their voters' wishes, but with enough authority to exercise initiative in the face of changing circumstances. Another form of representative democracy involves impartial selection of representatives through sortition.
A representative democracy can involve more powers given to the legislators than under a constitutional monarchy or participatory democracy, so almost all constitutions provide for an independent judiciary and other measures to balance representative power:
Representative government was invented in the sixteenth century when Deganawida established the League of the Five Nations of the Iroquois in what is now New York State. The Iroquois model of representative government influenced English philosophers, as well as Benjamin Franklin, and inspired the Americans and French to create representative democracies.
