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Abstract We investigated what people consider the optimal level of citizen involvement in local policy decision-making. This is an important question to answer, given that civil servants and politicians are increasingly confronted with the pressure to add a participatory layer to representative democratic policy-making. Across five empirical studies (total N = 1470), we consistently found that, overall, the most preferred decision-making model is a balanced model in which citizens and the government are equally involved. Despite this preferred ‘overall’ pattern of equal involvement, we identified three subgroups within the citizenry with different preference curves: Some citizens prefer a model in which citizens and the government are truly equal partners, whereas others prefer a model in which either the government or citizens are relatively more involved in the policy decision-making process. The main contribution of our work is thus that we identified a perceived ‘overall’ optimal level of citizen engagement, and variations to that optimum depending on citizens’ individual traits. This information might be helpful to policy-makers in developing effective citizen participation processes.

In many countries, as in Belgium, welfare services are provided by either local governmental, private nonprofit, or private commercial organizations. Next to that, welfare service delivery is often embedded in local communities. In this article we measure the prevalence of these three types of organizations at the local level, for the policy areas of child care and elderly care. Through the theoretical lenses of demand-side, supply-side and social origins theories, we also try to find an explanation for this relative prevalence. The results we present can be helpful in defining the limits local governments face in coordinating the heterogeneous field of welfare service deliverers in their local community, a role they have to play since the new Flemish Decree on Local Social Policy.