If we understand by democratic representation the notion that “the actions of policy makers are supposed to be responsive to the wishes of the people” (Powell 2004, 205), the level of aggregation of the electoral supply can affect not only the nature of representation, but also the tradeoffs legislators face once in offi ce, a reality closely tied to the effectiveness of the political system overall. Far from thinking solely in terms of patterns of imperative mandates (Pitkin 1967), the degrees of consistency between citizens’ wishes and representatives’ behavior are also a function of what kinds of interests ought to be represented. If voters prioritize ideology, broad policy principles or primordial partisan attachments, nationalized patterns of competition would provide a relatively clear-cut way of fostering accountability. 1 On the contrary, when the processes of partisan competition tend to be more disaggregated, the judgment of success or failure of genuine representation may be more complicated for citizens. The argument is straightforward: representatives of a given territorial unit are no more than a small share of a whole collective body governed by majority rule, and their ability to affect the policy process is noticeably limited.