Delegate, Trustee, or Personal: Preferences for Different Forms of Representation in America

Do voters have an intrinsic preference for democracy? Assessing attitudes toward trustee or delegate models of representation risks conflating intrinsic and instrumental orientations toward democracy. To clarify the gap between intrinsic and instrumental support for political representation, we use a survey experiment to investigate whether US voters want representatives to enact the individual voter’s own preferences, regardless of countervailing attitudes held by the representative themselves or by their constituents. We find considerable support for this third, personal model of representation. We argue that this poses two important questions for democratic theorists. First, how do citizens’ observed preferences for dictating outcomes challenge normative democratic principles of representation? Furthermore, if we rethink how citizens engage in democratic processes, how does it change our understanding of democracy’s intrinsic worth in the public?