From the beginning, research on representative democracy took account of the self-perception and the political behaviour resulting from this perception of parliamentarians and, to a lesser degree, of electoral candidates. In this context, the distinction between trustees, party’s delegates, and voters’ delegates proofed to be a powerful analytic tool. But why do certain politicians opt for one style of representation while others opt for a different style? Explanatory approaches range from mere individual characteristics to macro phenomena like electoral systems or political culture. Especially the effect of the latter cannot be tested easily. Fortunately, the 2009 European Election Candidate Study provides a convincing source of information to do so. Covering 27 countries and about 1350 electoral candidates of more than 200 parties for one and the same election, it enables a comparative test of explanatory approaches from different analytic levels to shed light on the variation in the representational style of politicians. Amongst other things, we test the effects of electoral systems (preferential voting, district magnitude), party (size, organizational characteristics) and individual characteristics (political socialisation and experience, competition during the nomination process).
The results of a multi-level regression model suggest that, indeed, various factors located on different analytic levels determine the choice of a specific style. A genuine conclusion which can be drawn is that institutional and organizational structures provide different incentives for the choice of representational styles.
