Trustees, Delegates, and Responsiveness in Comparative Perspective. (May 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bowler, Shaun
• Other Names: Essaiasson Peter guest-editor.; Wlezien Christopher guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Comparative political studies. Volume 50:Number 6(2017:May)
• Page Start: 766
• Page End: 793
• Publication Date: 2017-05
• Subjects: representation -- trustee -- delegate; Political science -- Periodicals; 320.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414015626447
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0010-4140

Abstract

A large body of aggregate-level work shows that government policies do indeed respond to citizen preferences. But whether citizens recognize that government is responsive is another question entirely. Indeed, a prior question is whether or not citizens value responsiveness in the way that academic research assumes they should in the first place. Using comparative data from the European Social Survey, this article examines how citizens see government responsiveness. We show that several key assumptions of the aggregate-level literature are met at the individual level. But we also present results that show that attitudes toward representation and responsiveness are colored, sometimes in quite surprising ways, by winner–loser effects. In a finding that stands in some contrast to the normative literature on the topic, we show that these sorts of short-term attitudes help shape preferences for models of representation. In particular, we show that the distinction between delegates and trustees is a conceptual distinction that has limits in helping us to understand citizen preferences for representation.