Resumen de Conscientiousness of representatives and agreement with their party positions

Pirmin Bundi, Frederic Varone, Peter John Loewen, Christian Breunig

• Party unity is an important feature in contemporary democracies. Ideologicalloyalty, disciplinary measures implemented by party leaders and homogeneityof preferences among elected representatives lead them to act in unison. Thisstudy focuses on the last mechanism and assesses under which conditionsparty representatives agree on policy positions. It argues that the personalitytrait of conscientiousness is linked to how a representative agrees with herparty’s position and that this relationship is moderated by her knowledge ofdissent between party voters and representatives. This study use data from acomparative survey conducted among 866 representatives in Belgium,Canada, Germany and Switzerland, and among the party constituencies in thefour countries. Results show that conscientious representatives are more likelyto differ significantly from the position of their party peers if they spend moretime on constituency work and if their voters’ preferences are not congruentwith those of their fellow representatives.