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| The Locality Effect:
Local Government and Citizen Participation Dr Melvin Wingfield |
The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its major Democracy and Participation programme. The research team comprises of Dr. Lawrence Pratchett, Professor Vivien Lowndes, Dr. Melvin Wingfield and Tom Butcher of the Department of Public Policy at De Montfort University and Professor Gerry Stoker of the Department of Government at the University of Manchester. Local political participation is currently in the spotlight for a number of reasons. There are a number of current initiatives, from central government and elsewhere, which encourage, and in some cases depend on, the participation of citizens in the broad task of local governance. At the same time declining electoral turnout in the United Kingdom is a matter of current concern. Our research seeks to increase understanding of variations in local political participation between different areas. In particular it concentrates on how political participation is affected by the local authority and the nature of the community. The research adopts a case study method, looking at local political participation in 8 English local authority districts. It is planned that we will carry out approximately 30 face to face interviews and 5 focus groups in each of the case study areas. This fieldwork will take place between the Summer of 2001 and the Autumn of 2002. Interviewees will be drawn from: - Local authority officers with corporate or specific responsibility for democratic renewal / participation / voluntary sector liaison, officers with frontline experience of participation initiatives, officers with partnership responsibilities linked to consultation. - Leading officers and members in big voluntary/community organisations and a selection of smaller, more local and/or specialised community organisations). - Local politicians. - Officers and board members of relevant partner organisations. - Local activists and other individuals of relevance identified through the fieldwork. In addition to interview and focus group data the project will utilise documents and survey data from the Citizen's Audit currently being collected at the University of Sheffield. Each case study will seek to identify the institutional processes that influence political participation in that area. This will involve both mapping overall political participation and a specific focus on critical incidents. |
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