One of the advantages of studying public participation at the local level is that it is somewhat easier to establish the specific context which gives rise to action, particularly by individuals. The national political stage tends to be one in which great issues are debated, about which individual citizens may have views but the outcome of which they cannot affect in any very direct way. For this reason, the ‘great issues’ do not necessarily produce the largest amount of participation (Moyser, Parry and Day 1986). However, as was argued when discussing the existence of a distinctively ‘local’ form of participation in the introductory chapter, it is not possible to exclude entirely the national dimension from many aspects of the local context. Moreover, many of the problems which arise in a locality, concerning housing or education, will have their close parallels elsewhere. Indeed, one of the objectives of the study of participation is to examine the almost routine patterns of political life between the highlights of election periods.

Nevertheless, problems do take on more specific forms in different localities and the prevailing social and demographic structure, the party political alliances and the social norms will give their own bias to the outcome. This in turn leads us to a consideration of the methodological choices which lie behind the two chapters.

We can distinguish two broad approaches to the study of political participation. The first focuses on the long-term personal predispositions which affect behaviour.