Issue Accountability in Non-Partisan Municipalities: A Case Study

Abstract

Issue accountability – the extent to which elected representatives are rewarded or punished by voters for their legislative actions in office – is fundamental to many conceptions of healthy democratic accountability. It is not clear, however, if this form of accountability is possible in non-partisan contexts, when constituents may have considerably more difficulty acquiring information about what their elected representatives have done. In this research note, we use data from council roll calls and a large public opinion survey to provide a case study of issue accountability in a large non-partisan city in Canada, assessing how citizens’ agreement with their elected representatives’ actions on seven high-profile policy issues is related to their satisfaction with their representatives’ performance. We find that most local residents are unaware of or incorrect about their councillors’ actions in office, even on issues that they consider important. However, we also find that issue alignment is very strongly related to performance satisfaction among citizens who do know how their councillors have acted in office. Our findings thus illustrate both the possibility of issue accountability in non-partisan municipal politics as well as its constraints.