Between Parties and Voters: Candidates’ Role Conception in the Belgian Partitocracy

This chapter makes a unique contribution to the study of representational roles by extending the population of interest beyond elected legislators. It focuses on understanding how candidates conceive their role as representatives taking as vantage point the focus and the style of representation, the key dimensions in the classical literature on legislative roles. The authors show how candidates’ role conception is likely to be influenced by their own personal characteristics and ambitions for (re)selection and (re)election, as well as by their relationship with the party itself and voters. Ultimately, this chapter brings attention to candidates as individuals, in a context where parties are usually considered as the main actors in the representation process, and politicians mostly conceived as party agents.

Publication year:2019