Recent studies have demonstrated that legislators enter parliament with different pre-parliamentary party careers. This paper suggests that the nature of these pre-parliamentary careers has changed over time with important implications for representation. Accordingly, we develop a heuristic consisting of three ideal typical pre-parliamentary party careers – party local, party functionary and party civilian – and generate expectations about the representational focus associated with each type. Our theoretical arguments are tested empirically on a new and unique dataset that links the pre-parliamentary party careers of Danish MPs elected in the 1960s and 2010s to their policy and constituency issue positions using an original mass survey and a candidate voting advice application. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, the analysis of these data demonstrates that the share of party locals has increased over time and that these MPs are more responsive to their constituents than other types of MPs.
