Äänestäjien edustusta koskevat odotukset

Authors

• Åsa Bengtsson
• Hanna Wass

Abstract

This article continues a recently renewed interest towards empirical investigation of representational roles from citizen perspective. Based on the Finnish election study 2007 (FSD2138, N=1,422), we firstly analyse voters’ preferences for the different scopes of representation, i.e. electoral district, party, voters and MPs’ own views, and for various representational styles most often discussed in the literature, i.e. resemblance, delegation and trustee model. Secondly, these views are accounted for the social and political background of the respondents. The results show that geographical representation, i.e. electoral district, is considered as the primary focus of representation especially among those living in the district with high effective threshold. Both the delegate and trustee styles of representation are almost equally popular. Moreover, especially underrepresented groups such as women, people with lower educational attainment and a lower subjective class position prefer more social resemblance between representatives and constituency.