How best to open up local democracy? A randomised experiment to encourage contested elections and greater representativeness in English parish councils

ABSTRACT

Interventions aimed at increasing the supply and representativeness of elected officials range from facilitative to the formally authorised. This paper reports on a field experiment aimed at testing the effect of facilitative approaches at the local level based on a collaboration between parish councils and the research team. We randomly allocated 818 parish council clerks across five counties in Southern England, either to receive information and the opportunity for member training for recruitment, or not to receive this contact. We investigated the effect of this intervention on political recruitment. Despite evidence of an effect on use of social media, our results suggest that there are significant institutional and structural barriers to participation in local politics that cannot easily be overcome using facilitative measures.

KEYWORDS:

• Parish councils
• elected officials
• experiment
• facilitation

Acknowledgements

This article is part of the Economic and Social Research Council project, Citizen Contribution to Local Public Services: Field Experiments in Institutions Incorporating Social Information, ES/J012424/1. We thank the council for its support. We are very grateful to the chief executives of the CALCs who worked with us to develop the experiment. They were very patient as we revised our research design in successive meetings. We especially thank Steven Lugg from Hampshire, who inspired us with his irrepressible enthusiasm about politics and research. We also greatly appreciate the help of the following people: Sofia Collignon Delmar for the literature review, Cassie Schwartz for randomising the data, Michael Elliott for assisting administering treatments, and other research assistants from the University of Southampton and UCL.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Approved by UCL’s Research Ethics Committee 3949/001, 18 July 2012, amended 27 August 2014.

2. CALCs are independent membership organisations providing representation, advice, training and support for parish and town councils in each County area of England. CALCs are affiliated to NALC, the National Association of Local Councils.

3. Peter John, University College London. (2016). Citizen contribution to local public services – Part 3. Data catalogue. UK Data Service. SN: 852,199, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-852199.

4. The survey was sent in mid-June 2015 and several reminders followed. The last reminder was sent at the end of June and data were gathered after that.

5. The pilot survey was sent at the end of May 2015.

6. This allowed us to cross validate findings from the survey. More specifically, we were able to see whether those parish councils which claimed to have put the item of widening recruitment, for instance, on their agenda actually did it, by looking at whether that item was transposed into the minutes.

7. For counties with a disproportionate number of parish councils that county was divided up between two research assistants.

8. Among those parish councils with available minutes 47% were in the control group and 53% in the treatment group.

9. Occasionally coders had to deal with scanned documents and in this case they had to check them manually.

10. Through this route we managed to obtain candidate gender data for 96% of parish councils.

11. We tested for the balance of the randomisation. We only have whether the council is warded or grouped, that is brought together for joint administration. There is some indication that there are more of these parishes in the treatment group with 22% in the treatment group and 18% in the control group, but the difference is not significant (test of difference in proportions, z = − 1.7, p = 0.09). Accordingly, we control for this in the regression analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/J012424/1].

Notes on contributors

Matt Ryan

Matt Ryan is a Lecturer in governance and public policy at the University of Southampton. His research focuses on democratic innovation and participation in politics, the policymaking process, and social science research methods. His most recent publications appear in European Journal of Political Research, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Journal of Public Deliberation and PS: Political Science and Politics.

Gerry Stoker

Gerry Stoker is Centenary Research Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia and Chair in Governance at the University of Southampton, UK. He has authored or edited 33 books and published over 100 refereed articles. He has been an engaged scholar throughout his career working with governments, think tanks, public servants, political parties and civic organisations in many different countries.

Peter John

Peter John is a Professor of Public Policy at King’s College London, UK. He is interested in how to involve citizens in public policy and in randomised controlled trials. His most recent books are Field Experiments in Political Science and Public Policy (Routledge 2017) and How Far to Nudge (Edward Elgar 2018).

Alice Moseley

Alice Moseley (PhD) is a Lecturer in politics at the University of Exeter, UK. Her main areas of research interest are in the fields of behavioural public policy and public administration, and civic engagement. Her articles appear in journals including Public Administration, British Journal of Political Science, Public Administration Review, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

Oliver James

Oliver James is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Exeter. His research topics are: politics of public services, citizen-provider relationships, organisational reform. Publications: (co-editor) Experiments in Public Management Research (Cambridge University Press, 2017), James, O. et al. 2016. ‘The Politics of Agency Death: Ministers and the Survival of Government Agencies’ British Journal of Political Science’, 46 (4), 763–784.

Liz Richardson

Liz Richardson is a Reader in politics at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research interests include: decentralised urban governance; public policy; citizen participation; and participatory research methods. Her work has appeared in a range of journals such as the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Social Science Quarterly, Social Policy and Administration, Politics and Governance, and Policy and Politics.

Matia Vannoni

Matia Vannoni is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, where he is researching the interaction between politics and bureaucracy in contemporary democracies. His work has featured in several journals, such as Policy Studies Journal, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, and Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.