This paper focuses on how party characteristics explain styles of representation emphasised within parties. Style of representation is measured at the party level as the proportion of representatives within parties who are trustees, partisans or delegates. Based on the assumption that the main difference between those three styles is the source used for decision making, where trustees use their own judgment as a source, partisans the party policy and delegates the voters, it is reasonable to assume that there are partly different incentives for each style. My findings support that one of the main explanatory factor for the proportion of trustees within parties is how often parties have been represented in government. For the proportion of partisans the parties’ leadership control over nomination and the socialization effect of parties seems to matter. For delegates I show that the higher the proportion of party identifiers among party voters, the higher is the proportion of delegates within parties.
