Conceptions of Democracy and Styles of Representation

There is a wide amount of research on styles of representation among representatives, distin-guishing between trustees, party delegates and voter delegates, but most studies focus on sys-tem, party, and career variables as determinants while individual attitudes towards democracy are rarely included. Like citizens, representatives can have different understandings of democ-racy that can be expected to affect their behavior as democratic actors. Thus, this paper ex-plores how conceptions of democracy – focusing on liberal and populist understandings – af-fect representatives’ styles of representation. The analyses are based on data from a survey of legislators in Germany and the United States. Indeed, the results show the conceptions of democracy playing a key role, particularly in the United States. While liberal elitist concep-tions make a trustee style more likely, populist conceptions appear to promote a voter delegate style.