Guardians of governance: Local politicians’ influence on participatory trajectories

This exploratory study contributes to understanding the intricate relationships between local politicians and participatory democracy, shedding light on the influence of politicians in participatory trajectories. It delves into how local politicians influence participatory trajectories’ design, process, and short-term outcomes. Moreover, we explore differences in how the executive, majority, and opposition councillors navigate citizen participation. We included three participatory cases that differ in several features and interviewed a diverse group of 34 Flemish (Belgian) local politicians (24) and civil servants (10). First, our findings reveal that mainly executive politicians act as guardians of influence in the design stages and on the short-term outcomes. However, in the ongoing process, individual political influence is absent. Second, we found differences in influence between politicians regarding government-initiated and bottom-up trajectories in the design stage. Opposition councillors only influence the short-term outcomes in top-down initiated referenda.