For example, the British Parliament was no longer seen as representing estates, corporations, and vested interests but was rather perceived as standing for actual human beings. The movement abolishing the so-called “rotten boroughs”—electoral districts of small population controlled by a single person or family—that culminated in the Reform Act of 1832 (one of three major Reform Bills in the 19th century in Britain that expanded the size of the electorate) was a direct consequence of this individualistic conception of representation.
