The Councillor: Governor, Governing, Governance and the Complexity of Citizen Engagement
| Author | Colin Copus |
| Published date | 01 November 2010 |
| Date | 01 November 2010 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2010.00423.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Councillor: Governor, Governing,
Governance and the Complexity of
Citizen Engagementbjpi_423569..589
Colin Copus
Citizen participation in local government has the potential to augment local political efficacy, that
is, the expectation among citizens of being able to wield effective political action. Locally, political
efficacy is a product of the way councillors respond to citizen engagement and the attitudes they have
to the means available to citizens to engage in politics and about what drives that engagement.
Political efficacy is linked to councillors’ willingness to transmit citizen attitudes to others in the
governance network and to the way in which they perceive their role as a councillor and political
representative. The article reports the findings of elite research which examined how councillors
reconcile their role as an elected representative with citizen engagement and whether such engage-
ment provides councillors with a way to influence governance networks.
Keywords: councillors; citizens; governance; parties
Introduction
Attempts to assess the efficacy of public participation and political protest have
taken into account whether those conducting action believe it to be effective in
influencing political decisions (Young 1985). Yet,approaching political efficacy from
the perspective of those less powerful than the holders of political office has the
potential to distort our understanding of the political processes and to cloud our
appreciation of how public participation operates within a representative democ-
racy. Such distortion occurs because those citizens attempting to influence coun-
cillors may view the effectiveness and legitimacy of political action very differently
from how councillors do so. David Wilson (1999) highlights councillors’ concern
that their decision-making role will be ‘usurped’ by public participation and this
concern conditions much of their response to citizen engagement. Wilson’s argu-
ment makes it necessary for us to explore the way councillors understand public
engagement, which, in turn, will help cast a judgement on the outcomes of the
government’s exhortations to councils to engage more closely with citizens. Such
understanding will also enable us to establish the strength of representative democ-
racy in the face of participative pressure and whether or not the vote is indeed
‘absolute trumps’ (Phillips 1994).
In assessing local political efficacy three dimensions of citizen engagement emerge
for exploration: first, the views councillors have about the principle of public
participation set within a representative democracy and what they consider the
proper balance between citizen participation and their own role; secondly, coun-
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2010.00423.x BJPIR: 2010 VOL 12, 569–589
© 2010 The Author.British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2010
Political Studies Association
cillors’ views about the legitimacy and acceptability of the mechanisms available for
citizen engagement; and thirdly, what councillors think about the effectiveness of
methods citizens employ to influence local representative democracy; in other
words, will the methods citizens employ have a demonstrable impact on the
activities of councillors? It is the understanding of these attitudes and how coun-
cillors deal with any set of political circumstances that helps us explore local
political efficacy. Councillors may be subject to a range of participatory actions and
those which they find acceptable and unacceptable will have to be balanced against
effectiveness. It is the contention that ‘legitimate’ and ‘acceptable’ methods of
participation will meet with a warmer response than those that are deemed ‘ille-
gitimate’ and ‘unacceptable’. That is not to say that methods deemed illegitimate do
not generate a response from councillors, but, where they do, it is conditioned by
other, acceptable methods also being employed.
The council and councillors do not inhabit centre stage in the locality, but face a
struggle for engagement themselves in a complex series of governance networks as
well as facing challenges from their own neighbourhoods (see Sorensen and Torfing
2007; Lowndes and Sullivan 2008). The shift from local government to local
governance places an additional burden on councillors who must react to citizens’
views with regard to their own council and transmit (should they so choose) those
views to the complex multilayered network within which they confront higher-
level players (Stoker 2004). Councillors, by virtue of holding an elected office, have
a legitimacy and moral leverage lacking to most of those with whom they must now
work within the complexity of modern governance (Saward 2003).
The article explores the link between local political efficacy and the attitudes
councillors hold towards citizen engagement in local politics. The first section
examines what is known of political efficacy within the context of representative
local democracy held against what we know about the role of the councillor as a
representative. The modernisation of local government is explained to set the
context for the rest of the article. The second section explores the attitudes coun-
cillors display to aspects of representation and democracy and assesses the impact of
those attitudes on citizen engagement in the political processes. The third section
examines the distinctions councillors draw between the effectiveness, in terms of
influencing local politics, of a range of ways in which citizens can engage. The
fourth looks at whether or not councillors act as conduits for local opinion into the
wider governance network. The article employs Heinz Eulau et al.’s (1959) ‘del-
egate, trustee and politico’ typologies as a framework within which to examine how
councillors, operating in governance networks, conduct their representative activi-
ties. That framework provides a clear and concise tool by which to make sense of
how attitudinal predilections display themselves in political activity. The article
concludes by considering how elite perceptions and behaviour can influence the
sense of local political efficacy and whether or not councillors are developing their
representative role in wider political networks.
The Local Political Arena
Councillors look towards the demands of their party for public loyalty, discipline
and unified action and towards the demands for representation, responsiveness and
570 COLIN COPUS
© 2010 The Author.British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2010 Political Studies Association
BJPIR, 2010, 12(4)
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