**Representative democracy** (also **indirect democracy**,
**representative government** or **psephocracy**) is a type of
[democracy](democracy "wikilink") founded on the principle of elected
officials representing a group of people, as opposed to direct
democracy. These should not be confused with directly democratic
[libertarian socialist](Libertarian_Socialism "wikilink")
[confederations](Confederation "wikilink"), in which 'representative's
(called delegates for the sake of simplicity) are subject to recall,
short-terms and only represent a small interest.

## History

*See Also: [Timeline of Representative
Democracy](Timeline_of_Representative_Democracy "wikilink")*

The development of representative democracy has been a long and unstable
process, and that have been constant waves of representative governments
forming as well as backslides into more authoritarian governments.

## Criticism

### Authoritarian Criticisms

Sociologist [Robert Michels](Robert_Michels "wikilink") argued that all
democratic institutions suffer from an [Iron Law of
Oligarchy](Iron_Law_of_Oligarchy "wikilink"), which states that power
tends to be concentrated over time in ANY democratic organisations,
effectively dooming democracy to always be a failure.