Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

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: 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; 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; 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); 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; 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.

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The dataset for this study was compiled as part of a wider project on 'Participation, Power and Rural Community Governance in England and Wales' (see Abstract section above). It records summary details of elections to town, parish and community councils in England and Wales in the 1998-2000 electoral cycle. Election returns were obtained from electoral officers in principal local authorities, with 219 authorities supplying usable data. Information is entered in the database by parish ward, of which there are 9,716 in total. Data are held on the ratio of candidates to seats, electorate size, voter turnout, gender of candidates, political affiliation of candidates, whether any initiatives had been undertaken to encourage nominations and whether any power of responsibilities had been delegated to the council by the relevant principal authority.

No sampling (total universe)

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