From Initiator to Resistor? Cross-National Evidence on the Role Conceptions of Local Councillors in Participatory Initiatives

Local councillors are often considered as the cornerstones of place-bound representative democracy. With the latter nowadays denoted as in crisis, democratic innovations that widen and deepen citizen involvement in decision-making come to the fore as a means to cure the representative malaise. These have been particularly prevalent at the local level taking shape in specific participatory initiatives. Also in this hybrid mode of local democracy however, elected representatives remain pivotal gatekeepers. Participatory initiatives can either weaken of strengthen their position and councillors are likely to (critically) engage with these novel modes of decision-making. Extant research already depicted their attitudes towards such innovations, from general notions of local democracy to specific assessments of decisional methods or instruments. However, if and how this democratic transformation also affects their own role has been much less systematically studied, especially from a cross-national perspective. This paper aims to address that gap. By scrutinizing the conceptions of councillors, it considers roles as coherent sets of norms thought to apply to the holders of a specific position. The study thereby addresses three questions: to what extent 1) do local councillors identify with specific role images in participatory initiatives (RQ1); 2) do these images in such initiatives cluster in more generic sets (RQ2) and 3) can differences in these images and sets be explained by interests, ideas or institutions? Role images (RQ1) and sets (RQ2) are theoretically elaborated upon by integrating contributions on elected representatives in democratic innovations and political leadership in network governance. Councillors can consider themselves (consistently or not) as initiator, participant, connector, responder, institutionalizer or resistor of or in participatory initiatives. Variation therein (RQ3) may be accounted for by councillors’ strategic positions (interests), normative convictions (ideas) or the systemic conditions (institutions) of their mandate. To explore the answers to these questions empirically, the paper draws on the data from the comparative project on the ‘Return of the Councillor’. This cross-national endeavour follows upon a seminal precursor conducted about a decade ago covering the position and the role of council(l)(or)(s) in contemporary local governance in Europe. The current wave covers 28 countries providing a unique large-N set of about 25 000 local councillors. The (online) survey (carried out in the different settings from the second half of 2023 to the first of 2024) included a range of statements probing into the agreement of the respondents with the images mentioned (upon which a principal component analysis can be performed to determine sets). Meanwhile, the questionnaire also encloses items to estimate the impact of interests, ideas and institutions on role images and sets in participatory initiatives, at the same time enabling controls for the individual profile and municipal context of the local councillors.