Analysing policy actors’ preferences for different modes of governing in local government 

by Bram Verschuere

Many (local) governments worldwide experiment with citizen participation in policy decision-making. Engaging citizens is assumed to be an answer to the real or perceived crisis of representative democracy. There is, however, no consensus about the extent to which the key actors in democracy – elected politicians, civil servants and lay citizens – perceive participatory policy decision-making as legitimate. We know that elected politicians may be more hesitant than citizens, because the shift from representative to participatory democracy involves a shift in decision-making power. But we also know that within the different groups of democratic actors, there is no consensus as to the value and virtue of increased citizen participation: some politicians are more in favour than others. A similar dissensus can be observed among civil servants and among citizens.  

In our recently published article in Policy & Politics, we investigate the existence of ‘multi-actor clusters’: groups of people defined by a shared stance towards citizen participation, irrespective of their formal institutional role in local democracy. Based on data from a vignette survey with 4000+ respondents in Flemish local government (politicians, civil servants and citizens), we find five distinct clusters. Two of these clusters – together comprising more than half of the respondents – prefer participatory over representative policy decision-making. We also find respondents of every type in these two clusters: citizens and council members, but also civil servants and (to a lesser extent) executive politicians. Of the remaining three clusters, one cluster is clearly in favour of representative decision-making. While the other two clusters comprise respondents that either favour and accept or reject all forms of political decision-making (representative and participatory alike). 

In addition to these findings, we investigated whether the preference for participatory decision-making is determined by people’s ideological views and/or by contextual variables. We found that context does not really matter, contrary to earlier research. So in local communities with a (perceived) lack of governing capacity or with a (perceived) low democratic quality – for which increased citizen participation might be considered as a solution – politicians, civil servants and citizens are not significantly more in favour of participatory decision-making, compared to local communities with higher levels of governing capacity and/or democratic quality. We did find, however, a relationship with individuals’ ideological position: respondents with high scores on Left Wing Authoritarianism (being anti-elite and willing to break the power status quo) and low scores on Social Dominance Orientation (willing to decrease the differences in status between different social groups, championing intergroup equality) tend to prefer participatory over representative policy decision-making. 

Our research thus warrants a more complex and contextualised understanding of what citizen participation means and is, beyond the often assumed dichotomy between representative and participatory democracy, in several ways: 

• A majority of the respondents were positive about participatory policy making and preferred this form over representative policy making.  

• This preference for participatory policy making is not necessarily related to actors’ formal roles in democracy. We see a presence of citizens, but also politicians and civil servants in the clusters that favour participation over representation. 

• However, we observed increasing polarisation about the legitimacy of the traditional representative mode of policy decision making. A substantial share of respondents prefer representative democracy over participatory democracy. So for some people, representative democracy remains in good health, while for others it suffers from malaise. 

• The context in which democratic actors work or live is a poor predictor of their preferred policy decision-making modes. This finding does not corroborate the assumption that citizen participation is seen as a way to compensate for the (allegedly larger) democratic deficit or the poor policy-making capacity of local government.  

• There is a relationship between the ideology of democratic actors and their preference for participatory decision making. This may provide support  for a ‘value position’ thesis: personal ideological and normative stances are a good predictor for whether people favour citizen participation as a (more) legitimate way to make policy decisions. 

From a practitioners’ perspective, one should be aware that, on the one hand some citizens, politicians and civil servants favour increased citizen participation in policy decision making. On the other hand, one should be careful with framing or advertising citizen participation as a solution for decreasing democratic legitimacy or lack of governing capacity. After all, the extent to which citizens, civil servants and politicians perceive democratic innovation via participatory decision making as legitimate is also driven by their specific ideological positions. Moreover, a considerable number of democratic actors are still hesitant about increased citizen participation. For them, the legitimacy of policy decision making may increase only if citizen participation is clearly positioned in the larger scheme of representative democracy. 

You can read the original research in  Policy & Politics  at:Verschuere, B., Roets, A., Steyvers, K., Wauters, B., Berkvens, L., De Smedt, N., Goutry, W., Pittoors, G., Van Severen, R., & Haesevoets, T. (2024). Analysing policy actors’ preferences for different modes of governing in local government. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000048

If you enjoyed this blog post, you may also be interested to read:Liu, Y., Araral, E., & Wu, J. (2024). Policy responsiveness and its administrative organisation in China. Policy & Politics, 52(3), 360-383 from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000015

Parry, L. J., Curato, N., & Dryzek, J. S. (2024). Governance of deliberative mini-publics: emerging consensus and divergent views. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000043

Seibicke, H. (2024). Investigating stakeholder rationales for participating in collaborative interactions at the policy–science nexus. Policy & Politics, 52(3), 477-500 from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000010