European Network on Local Election Studies
Jo Saglie and Signe Bock Segaard
Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway
We would like to suggest that cooperation between local election studies in different European countries should be institutionalized, building on the work that resulted in The Routledge Handbook of Local Elections and Voting in Europe. The overall goal for such a European Network on Local Election Studies (ENLES) should be to facilitate research collaboration and empirical comparative research on local elections.
The main task of ENLES, at least as a first step, would be to collect information on local election surveys in different countries and also collect the questionnaires from these surveys. English translations of the questions would be an advantage, but not a requirement. A list of surveys, together with all the questionnaires, could then be made available at the website https://localelections.eu/ (the website for the Routledge Handbook).
The website with information on the different local election studies and contact information to relevant researchers and institutions can be used as a resource for researchers who want to carry out comparative studies. This platform would make it easier to find out whether comparable questions already have been asked in different European countries, and, if so, if this could be used for comparative publications.
A potential – long-term – aim for such a network of local election surveys could be to work out and implement a limited number of identical survey questions for future local election studies in different countries. E.g., about themes as 1) local political trust, 2) attitudes to bases for local representation (gender, age, ethnicity and geography) and 3) reasons to vote in local elections. In addition to this, it may also be relevant to include some specific explanatory variables, e.g., local affiliation and interest in local politics. The work done by the CSES for national election studies would be a source of inspiration, although our ambitions will be more limited, at least in this early phase.
The ENLES is an initiative that originates from the Norwegian Local Election Studies, funded by the Research Council of Norway and led from the Institute for Social Research by Jo Saglie and Signe Bock Segaard. Information about and an invitation to participate in the initiative should be distributed to the members of the ECPR Standing Group on Local Government and Politics, as well as the country experts who participated in the Routledge Handbook.
We propose that an informal working group, consisting of Adam Gendźwiłł (University of Warsaw), Ulrik Kjær (University of Southern Denmark), Kristof Steyvers (Ghent University), and ourselves; Jo
Saglie and Signe Bock Segaard (Institute for Social Research), is in charge of the network in this early phase. If the initiative is successful, a more institutionalized steering committee can be developed.