Varieties of local participation: a large-scale survey-experiment on how executive politicians perceive the legitimacy of different participatory arrangements

It is often argued that democracy is increasingly taking on a hybrid form. Therein, the representative part is complemented with participatory mechanisms and practices. This holds in particular at the level allegedly closest to the citizens. Local authorities have realized that they can no longer solve various complex problems on their own. Therefore, other actors, such as citizens and civil society, are given wider and deeper opportunities to participate in the policy-making process. This phenomenon is also present in local politics in Flanders (Belgium), the context of our research. Our study takes the hitherto understudied perspective of local executive politicians, as crucial stakeholders spanning representative and participatory democracy. It aims to examine how to assess the attitudes of these executives towards different participatory arrangements. The research was conducted by means of a large-scale survey-experiment among mayors and aldermen. The study used a vignette that focused on a redevelopment case of a municipal building. This vignette was followed by different ways to decide upon the case. First, there was an arrangement with a classic representative model in which the local authority took the initiative and decided (baseline condition). Furthermore, six participatory arrangements were included varying on two important dimensions. To introduce these six participatory arrangements to the respondents, we employed a mixed-factorial design in which we included two different types of initiator (government vs. citizens) as the between-groups factor and three different types of citizen involvement (consultative vs. co-productive and vs. (co-)decisive arrangements) as the within-subjects (repeated measures) factor. During the survey-experiment, respondents were always first presented the baseline condition (classic scenario), which was followed by three participatory arrangements (which were either government- or citizen-initiated). The order in which these three participatory arrangements were presented to participants was randomized. In order to let respondents assess the different arrangements, statements were offered to determine how legitimate and favorable perceived the different arrangements (outcome variables). These statements have been formulated around the perceived input, throughput and output legitimacy of the arrangements. In addition to the various scenarios and legitimacy assessments, this study also addressed a number of potential moderating variables. These variables can be grouped into three categories: municipality (e.g. population density), party (e.g. party membership) and individual level (e.g. ideological self-orientation). This will help to determine the contingencies of participatory attitudes. Furthermore, the study is part of an interdisciplinary project that focuses on four key local actors. This allows us to compare our insights with similar findings for other executive actors such as local administrators.