&gt; How well does that representation actually fulfill the wishes of their constituency as a whole, let alone any individual voter?<p>Varies considerably between things which get lumped together as representative democracies, from very poorly in systems like the US&#x27;s which feature a strong duopoly, to very well in many modern multiparty systems. (More detail in, among other places, Lijphart&#x27;s <i>Patterns of Democracy</i>.)