The relationship between local councillors’ representative style and their support for participatory democracy

IF 2.4 2区社会学 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Party Politics Pub Date : 2024-07-15 DOI:10.1177/13540688241261954

Nina De Smedt, Tessa Haesevoets, Kristof Steyvers, Bram Wauters

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Abstract

The last few decades governments have operated in a challenging environment which increasingly calls for extended citizen participation. The aim of the article is to demonstrate that representative and participatory democracy are not two distinct realities, but that politicians’ opinions about their representative roles are associated with their attitudes about participatory democracy. To this end, the present paper links representative styles (partisan-delegate-trustee) with support for (1) the amount of citizen participation and (2) the type of citizen participation. Elected politicians traditionally perceive their representative roles either as ‘partisan’ (party-driven), ‘delegate’ (voter-driven) or ‘trustee’ (driven by their own judgement). We conducted a large-scale survey among Flemish (Belgium) local councillors ( N = 791). We show the biggest differences in support being between ‘delegates’ and ‘partisans’. The first group seems to be more receptive to (far-reaching) citizen participation and we explain that by their general orientation towards citizens.

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地方议员的代表风格与他们对参与式民主的支持之间的关系

过去几十年来，政府一直在一个充满挑战的环境中运行，越来越需要扩大公民参与。本文旨在证明代议制民主和参与式民主并非两种截然不同的现实，而是政治家对其代议制角色的看法与他们对参与式民主的态度相关联。为此，本文将代表风格（党派-代表-受托人）与对（1）公民参与数量和（2）公民参与类型的支持联系起来。民选政治家传统上认为自己的代表角色是 "党派"（由政党驱动）、"代表"（由选民驱动）或 "受托人"（由自己的判断驱动）。我们在比利时佛兰德地方议员中开展了一项大规模调查（N = 791）。我们发现，"代表 "和 "游击队员 "之间的支持率差异最大。第一类人似乎更容易接受（影响深远的）公民参与，我们用他们对公民的总体取向来解释这一点。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Party Politics POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

5.50

自引率

11.10%

发文量

137

期刊介绍： Political parties are intrinsic to every democratic political system, and with the dramatic changes that regularly sweep the political landscape, the study of their function and form is one of the most dynamic areas within contemporary scholarship. Party Politics is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of this integral component within political science. This major international journal provides a forum for the analysis of political parties, including their historical development, structure, policy programmes, ideology, electoral and campaign strategies, and their role within the various national and international political systems of which they are a part.