Designing Diversity at the Local Level: Policy Interventions and Municipal Political Inclusion

Dear Colleagues,

Local and municipal governments are central arenas of political decision-making, yet they remain persistently unrepresentative of the populations they govern. Across municipal governments globally, women, ethnic minorities, and migrants continue to be underrepresented in political institutions. While formally subordinated to national and regional levels of government, local governments nonetheless constitute politically consequential arenas in which inclusion and exclusion are actively produced. Municipal politics are characterized by distinct electoral rules, party organizations, administrative capacities, and resource constraints, as well as by closer social proximity between representatives and constituents. These features shape political recruitment, representation, and everyday governance in ways that differ meaningfully from national politics. Paradoxically, despite their proximity to citizens’ everyday lives, local political institutions have not produced more equal representation of women and minority groups. Local politics is often viewed as more accessible to women due to its association with community-oriented policy domains, and to minority groups due to their demographic presence and embeddedness in local social networks. In addition, local political competition is generally perceived as less adversarial and less resource-intensive than national politics. However, these advantages have not translated into more equal representation, raising fundamental questions about the social and institutional mechanisms that sustain political inequality.

Recent research further suggests that the relationship between national and local levels of governance is itself undergoing transformation. Processes of globalization and transnational governance increasingly constrain the capacity of national governments to act as sole problem-solvers, while central states often struggle to provide timely or credible responses to complex challenges such as inequality, housing, migration, and public health crises. In this context, local governments have become increasingly visible and consequential political actors, tasked not only with implementing higher-level policies but also with actively designing and delivering policy responses under conditions of uncertainty. As a result, patterns of political underrepresentation at the municipal level carry increasingly significant implications for equality, welfare provision, and democratic legitimacy.

Against this backdrop, this Special Issue focuses on policy interventions aiming to increase diversity in municipal and local political institutions and examines how deliberate policy choices and institutional designs shape who enters, remains, and advances within local political arenas. These interventions may include candidate recruitment and training programs, party-level rules and incentives, electoral system design, financial regulations, work–family accommodations, administrative practices, and legal or procedural mechanisms intended to broaden access to political office. Beyond formal institutional arrangements, social and educational interventions may shape political inclusion by influencing political ambition, civic skills, and perceptions of political belonging. Programs such as civic education, leadership training, mentorship, and community-based mobilization may alter the social and normative barriers that discourage women and minority groups from pursuing political office.

The Special Issue invites contributions that analyze the design, implementation, and effects of diversity-oriented policies at the local level, including their intended outcomes, unintended consequences, and differential impacts across groups. Submissions may focus on gender, ethnicity, race, migration status, socioeconomic background, or other dimensions of diversity. Contributions from a wide range of geographic regions, as well as comparative studies examining variation across institutional and political contexts, are particularly welcome.

Dr. Aliza Forman Rabinovici
Dr. Reut Itzkovitch-Malka
Guest Editors

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