Remaking Heaven in Small-scale Democracy: A Randomised Experiment to Encourage Contested Elections and Greater Representativeness in English Local Councils

A variety of institutional measures have been suggested for improving social representation in electoral politics. Here we examine the effect of one approach to achieve greater representativeness among members of the lowest tier of electoral democracy in England, the parish and town council levels, which are often perceived as being unrepresentative demographically and governed by self-recruiting small elites. Using a field experiment that randomly allocates 978 parish council contacts across five counties in Southern England either to receive information and the opportunity for member training, or not to receive this, we investigate the effect of these treatments on the process and outcomes of recruitment. We consider whether these methods improve the social representation of parishes.