Australian Electoral Reform and Two Concepts of Representation

The most distinctive Australian contribution to institutional design is the construction of electoral systems. Before Federation, remote colonies were an ideal seedbed for radical ideas on representation. Those ideas appealed to a microcosmic concept of representation. Since Federation, politicians have mostly stressed the rival (and partly incompatible) principal-agent concept of representation. I analyse the work of E. J. Nanson (1850--1936; Professor of Mathematics, University of Melbourne, 1875--1922) in this context. Nanson was one of only two anglophones in the 19th century to understand social choice theory (the other being Lewis Carroll). His fundamental papers were written in what was then one of the smallest and most isolated anglophone universities in the world. Nanson’s failure to influence Australian institutional design at the foundation of the Commonwealth, and the subsequent adoption of Nanson’s recommendations for Senate elections, both throw light on the incompatible conceptions of representation. So does the 1983 amendment of Senate procedures.