RoC
Local councilors in Europe II or RETURN OF THE COUNCILLORS

I am the coordinator of the Italian team.
The RoC research group focuses on the activities and perceptions of municipal councilors in almost 30 European countries.

RoC is the successor of a previous network of European scholars, which, over the last few decades, conducted comparative research on the attitudes and behavior of some key actors in and around local government. They scrutinized chief executives, mayors, councilors, and local state-society relations in about 20 to 30 countries (The European Mayor; Political Leaders and Changing Local Democracy; Local Councilors).

The RoC network is updating their previous work on local councilors, published as the other with Palgrave.

Councillors are the essence of local representative democracy, linking ordinary citizens and decision-makers in municipal arenas. In a cross-national perspective, and taking in countries from across Europe, the research aims to analyze the recruitment patterns, career, party associations, role perceptions, and attitudes to democracy, representation, and participation of local councilors.

Matters such as gender, parties, institutions, municipal reform, functions in governance networks, and councilor influence will be considered using data collected in an international survey, covering members of the local political elite in more than 25 countries.