This paper develops an approach to the study of democratic policy-maki
ng where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens wh
o present themselves as candidates for public office. The approach has
a number of attractive features. First, it is a conceptualization of
a pure form of representative democracy in which government is by, as
well as of; the people. Second, the model is analytically tractable, b
eing able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very natu
rally. Third, it provides a vehicle for answering normative questions
about the performance of representative democracy.