This article discusses the relationship between political representation and cartelization. Proponents of the cartel party theory argue as if cartelization and political representation were opposites: insofar as political parties empirically approximate the cartel party type, they will also, so the argument goes, distance themselves from normatively entrenched ideas and ideals about representation. The article questions and critiques this view. Drawing on Hanna Pitkin’s view of political representation as acting in the interests of the represented in a responsive manner, I discuss the difficulties in teasing out what it means to represent and be represented according to the cartel party theory. The article concludes that the proponents of the cartel party theory have not provided any convincing reasons for assuming that representation and cartelization are necessarily opposites, but also that our entrenched understanding of political representation offers little guidance as to the nature of this relationship.