The Link Between Representation and Participation: Accounting for Local Councillors’ Styles of Representation and Attitudes Towards Participation in Catalonia

Despite the apparent contradiction between representation and democracy (Pitkin, 2004), it is often emphasised that representative and participatory models of democracy are not necessarily opposites, but instead complements operating in synergy (Plotke, 1999; Fung, 2006). Indeed, many democratic innovations are frequently driven by governments and administrations, making political representatives key actors in the promotion of more democratic governance. However, some styles of representation, more than others, may view participation as an opportunity to strengthen democracy and aim to facilitate it. Recently, several empirical contributions have examined the attitudes of local councillors towards participatory processes, either by linking it with their representative styles or by analysing what councillors may be looking for when promoting participatory governance and democratic innovations (De Smedt et al., 2024; Klausen et al., 2023; Bucaite-Vilke et al., 2025; Goutry et al., 2024). Thus, do some styles of representation favour the expansion of participatory processes? Our study tries to answer this question by assessing local councillors’ support for democratic innovations in Catalonia, analysing the association between their representative styles and attitudes towards participatory processes. We focus on different representative styles, understood as various ways about how councillors conceived themselves in the political process, ranging from classical models such as trustees and delegates, to renewed roles as democratic facilitators (Denters, 2017). We also take into account alternative ways of measuring representative styles, that are sourced from contemporary political theory nuances (Rehfeld, 2009; Wolkenstein & Wratil, 2021), being additionally attentive to the particularities of the municipal contexts in which councillors develop these attitudes. Methodologically, we rely on a mixed-methods approach that combines survey data of a representative stratified sample of local councillors, and non-structured interviews with councillors with responsibilities in public participation in local government, as well as municipal-level data on the degree of institutionalisation of participation in their respective local contexts (such as the degree of consensus on participation or the existence of administrative structures, bodies and regulations).