The representative model of democracy rests on the principle of representatives acting in the interest of the represented. Elected with the mandate to act on behalf of their constituents, representatives are expected to take responsibility for acting for and supporting public purposes. As Pitkin states, “the representative must be the one who acts.” However, this imperative is arguably under transition. Scholars point to a development of ‘responsibilisation’ where the duty to act is transferred to autonomous, non-elected actors, including individual citizens, corporations, and civil society groups, expected to tackle societal issues, such as environmental degradation and poverty. With this, new responsibility structures emerge, raising important questions to the representative relationship and representative democracy writ large. New responsibility arrangements might result in a “gap” between representatives and represented in terms of how, and to whom responsibility is ascribed. Such a gap may in turn alter the very nexus grounding the authority of representative democracy – the relationship between representatives and represented. Focusing on the examples of three societal issues, the climate crisis, declining school results, and poverty, this quantitative study contributes to the representation literature by investigating what actors in society are ascribed the most responsibility for tackling these issues, and by exploring whether there is a gap in how responsibility is ascribed among representatives and represented. Data is collected through citizen panels and politician panels in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg as part the POLPOP-project, based in Antwerp, Belgium.