Municipal Representation Style and Focus: Evidence from Canadian Mayors and Councillors

ABSTRACT

The comparably small scope of municipal politics creates a unique setting within which elected officials act as representatives. Here, we explore how mayors and councillors in Canadian cities do so by addressing and explaining variation in their representational style and focus. Across three studies, we explore how these elected officials allocate their time and aspire to allocate their time between different representational activities and who they attempt to represent. We do so using data from a new survey of Canadian mayors and councillors. Canadian mayors and councillors tend to prioritise policy representation over other types of representation and aspire to spend further time on policy-related matters. Further, mayors and councillors, despite some variation, tend to prioritise representation of their cities as wholes. A number of institutional and individual-level factors help to explain variation in these responses.

KEYWORDS:

• Representation
• cities
• representational style
• representational focus
• Canada

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The role and influence of political parties in shaping municipal-level politics differs between countries, with parties still playing an important role in several European states (see Razin, 2013). Parties can play an important role in structuring local politics, but can also negatively affect the quality of local democracy by demanding the allegiance of mayors and councillors which may bring them into conflict with their constituents (e.g. Copus, 2004). While some municipalities in Canada have established political parties, these are neither the norm, nor are they near as institutionalized as parties at the provincial or federal level in the rare cases that they exist (see e.g. Sproule-Jones, 2008). For this reason, we do not focus upon party connections in this study. Nevertheless, we explore the possibility that running for elected office as a candidate for a party or on a slate affects subsequent representational perceptions and activities.

2 There is also increased nuance regarding representational styles among US legislators (see e.g. Grimmer, 2013).

3 We group borough councillors in Quebec with ward councillors. Regional councillors in Ontario who are elected in wards are considered ward councillors here; those who are elected in city-wide districts are considered at-large councillors. Deputy mayors who are elected to the position are grouped with mayors. None of these coding decisions have substantively important effects on the results that we report below.

4 Of course, the causal direction of the ‘Years in office’ relationship could go either direction. Greater experience may increase the prioritization of communication, or higher prioritization of communication could cause longer careers.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, 890-2018-0019].

Notes on contributors

Kelly Blidook

Kelly Blidook is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Memorial University.

Royce Koop

Royce Koop is professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba.

Jack Lucas

Jack Lucas is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary.