@article{7e804a2e486641e59c27bc4eadeea0ec,
title = "How best to open up local democracy? A randomised experiment to encourage contested elections and greater representativeness in English parish councils",
abstract = "Interventions aimed at increasing the supply and representativeness of elected officials range from facilitative to the formally authorised. This paper reports on a field experiment aimed at testing the effect of facilitative approaches at the local level based on a collaboration between parish councils and the research team. We randomly allocated 818 parish council clerks across five counties in Southern England, either to receive information and the opportunity for member training for recruitment, or not to receive this contact. We investigated the effect of this intervention on political recruitment. Despite evidence of an effect on use of social media, our results suggest that there are significant institutional and structural barriers to participation in local politics that cannot easily be overcome using facilitative measures.",
keywords = "Parish councils, elected officials, experiment, facilitation",
author = "Matt Ryan and Gerry Stoker and Peter John and Alice Moseley and Oliver James and Liz Richardson and Matia Vannoni",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/J012424/1]. This article is part of the Economic and Social Research Council project, Citizen Contribution to Local Public Services: Field Experiments in Institutions Incorporating Social Information, ES/J012424/1. We thank the council for its support. We are very grateful to the chief executives of the CALCs who worked with us to develop the experiment. They were very patient as we revised our research design in successive meetings. We especially thank Steven Lugg from Hampshire, who inspired us with his irrepressible enthusiasm about politics and research. We also greatly appreciate the help of the following people: Sofia Collignon Delmar for the literature review, Cassie Schwartz for randomising the data, Michael Elliott for assisting administering treatments, and other research assistants from the University of Southampton and UCL. Funding Information: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/J012424/1]. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018, {\textcopyright} 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.",
year = "2018",
month = nov,
day = "2",
doi = "10.1080/03003930.2018.1473769",
language = "English",
volume = "44",
pages = "766--787",
journal = "Local Government Studies",
issn = "0300-3930",
publisher = "Routledge",
number = "6",
}