Conceptions of political representation in mass publics

Traditional models of political representation are motivated by normative or prescriptive concerns. The constructivist turn in research about representative democracy, however, started to take note of the subjective dimension of political representation, i.e. how political agents think about this key feature of democracy, and how they aim to affect respective developments. To advance research about this question, this paper focuses on the extent to which mass publics value descriptive forms of representation vis-à-vis alternative forms of representation such as partisan or geographic representation. The paper aims to further explore group specific patterns in this regard, explain variance, and gauge possible implications for substantive representation and the development of representative democracy. Empirically, the paper draws from a new survey conducted in Germany, Switzerland and the UK designed, among others, to explore the subjective dimension of representative government.