Elections to Town, Parish and Community Councils in England and Wales, 1998-2000

The project aimed to develop understanding of what participation is occurring in rural community governance in England and Wales, paying particular attention to the factors influencing the nature, type and level of participation for issues of democracy and accountability in rural governance. In order to achieve this aim, the project encompassed the following objectives:<br> <li>to construct a database of parish, town and community council election statistics which will provide a national picture of participation in elective community governance across rural England and Wales;</li><br> <li>to produce a descriptive representation of the nature and scale of voluntary participatory activity in rural community governance across England and Wales using ten surrogate indicators;</li><br> <li>to analyse how and why participation occurs in particular geographic settings through the use of intensive case study research to construct detailed qualitative accounts of participation in selected communities (the qualitative research is not held at the UK Data Archive);</li><br> <li>to employ findings from the above research to develop an integrated theoretical framework for the analysis of the multiple nature of participation in rural communities and its implications for wider rural governance;</li><br> <li>to employ the research findings in the context of policy initiatives to encourage participation in order to produce a series of 'best-practice' statements for use by public and voluntary sector agencies.</li>