Exploring Representational Style and Support for Democratic Innovations on Different Levels of Government

We find plenty research on politicians’ attitudes towards democratic innovations, which is important for many reasons – for example because politicians are gatekeepers. However, politicians are not a homogeneous group. De Smedt et al (2024), for example, investigate what impact different councillors’ representative role perceptions have on their support for participation at the local level. We follow up on this study by investigating this relationship at different levels of government. Most of the research on democratic innovations have been carried out at the local level, where most democratic innovations take place. However, to understand what characterise politicians’ attitudes at the local level it is fruitful to compare. In this paper we therefore pose the following research question: What impact does politicians’ representational style have on their support for democratic innovations at different levels of government? Representative style is measured as ‘partisan’ (party-driven), ‘delegate’ (voter-driven) or ‘trustee’ (driven by politicians’ own judgement) (e.g. Junius et al 2020; De Smedt et al 2024; Mongrain et al 2025). Support for democratic innovations are measured as politicians’ perception on different kinds of citizen involvement (based among others on Heinelt, 2013). The main hypothesis is that the closer politicians are to citizens (i.e. at the local level), the more voter-driven (delegate) and the more support for democratic innovations. The paper will be based on unique survey data from different levels of government in Norway. By comparing politicians from different levels of government, the paper will add as well to the literature on representational styles as the literature on politicians’ attitudes towards democratic innovations.