This paper develops a new approach to the study of democratic policy making where politicians are selected by the people from those citizens who present themselves as candidates for public office. Participation in the policy making process is, therefore, derived endogenously. 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, being able to handle multidimensional issue and policy spaces very naturally. Third, it provides a vehicle for answering questions about the achievements of representative democracy. We study, in particular, whether representative democracy produces efficient outcomes.