Municipal elected office is often understood through the role of elected
officials and, more generally, through the degree of professionalization of this
office. According to Mévellec and Tremblay, this "role" approach allows us to
grasp the day-to-day life of these elected officials and, above all, "1) the
image these elected officials have of the political role incumbent upon them; 2)
their perceptions of the expectations of their constituents and, more generally,
of their various partners" (2016, 124, translated by author). What elected
officials like or dislike about their duties is, to our knowledge, a question
more rarely asked. At a time when the resignations of elected representatives
make headlines in some provinces, and the harassment to which some elected
officials are subjected calls into question the health of our democracy, it is
relevant to look at which aspects elected representatives like or dislike about
their office.

Methodology and data

In 2020, the first Canadian Municipal Barometer survey asked the following two
questions:
What's the best part of your job as an elected mayor or councillor? And
What's the worst part of your job as an elected mayor or councillor?
Both questions were open-ended, allowing respondents to express themselves as
they wished.

Table 1. Number of responses by gender and question

We analyzed all these responses by creating word clouds, which make it possible
to quickly visualize the most frequently used words. The size of the word is
proportional to its frequency in the responses.

What elected officials appreciate most about their job: Helping, acting,
meeting people and the community

Considering all responses – across all positions, genders, and languages – the
answer to our first question allow us to make three  observations. Firstly,
action verbs are used to answer this question. The most frequent occurrences are
"to help", "to act" and "to meet", followed by "to be able to" and "to do".
Secondly, these verbs are mostly associated with the words "community",
"people", "residents" and "citizens".

The following responses are good examples: "Helping people who really need it",
"helping my community", "making positive change", "meeting the citizens". This
choice of words indicates a desire to be useful and to be in contact with
people, as the notion of helping is often linked to the idea of interacting with
people and meeting them. Thirdly, while it's certainly a question of helping,
acting for the community and meeting residents, is expressed differently,
sometimes emphasizing people, such as "Engaging with people", "Helping people
with issues that they cannot seem to get done on their own", sometimes
emphasizing helping the community grow and prosper, such as "Interest in helping
my community grow and prosper", sometimes emphasizing both aspects (e.g. "I love
meeting citizens and helping to create the booming little city on the east
coast!"). The answers to these questions can be seen as an echo chamber of these
respondents’ primary motivations for engaging in municipal politics, as this
respondent recalls: "[...] It's my dream job: I get to represent and advocate
for the neighbourhood in which I grew up; vote for and advance a progressive,
environmentalist agenda for my city; and help residents in their day-to-day
lives".

What do elected officials like least about their job? Social media,
interactions with certain people and the time-consuming nature of the function

Elected representatives, regardless of their position as councillor or mayor,
responded that they enjoy social media, as well as interacting with certain
individuals. The question of time also figures prominently in these responses.

The references to social media are related to the criticism they received and
the stress inherent in using this type of medium. The following exemplify the
type of responses received:

"Stress from social media harassment [...]" "Social media, without a doubt.
First, because it imposes additional obligations for virtually any kind of
event ('if it's not on Facebook, you weren't there?), and second - and more
seriously - because it seriously degrades the tone and quality of public
discussion and debate, especially with constituents."

In addition, respondents underscore the sometimes challenging interactions with
citizens ("Dealing with chronic complainers"), as well as with certain council
members. Some responses mention difficult relationships within the municipal
council ("Dealing with fellow councillors") or the political nature of certain
meetings ("Politics that interfere with rational decision-making"). The notion
of time is also underlined - all types and types of positions taken together -
with regard to the time devoted to the office and its repercussions:

"Not being a full-time mayor time management and the ability to find time
especially around visionary work." "Time away from family" "It is a very low
paying job with full time hours.  I would like to be able to give my position
100% but I need to have another job so that I can afford to live here." "Time
demands" "[...] it is difficult to manage the work I am doing at the wage I am
earning while not having sufficient extra income to save for my future [...]
At 30 hours per week it doesn't give me enough time to do extra well paid work
while balancing a chaotic and ever changing council schedule"

Other answers involve the word "decisions", related to the difficulty of making
certain decisions, their sometimes political nature, or dealing with individuals
who don't understand the decisions made due to a lack of information."

Conclusion

The answers to these questions only provide a glimpse of the highs and lows of
elected office. Semi-structured interviews with these elected officials would
enable us to fully grasp the details and depth of respondents’ answers, not
least because this quantitative portrait does not offer any fine-grained
distinctions between men and women, or between the type of position held by
respondents. What elected representatives like most about their job often
reflects the ideals which drove them to pursue their political career: to make a
difference, to act for the common good and, to participate in the future of the
municipality. The answers give a glimpse of the different conceptions of elected
office. These ideals can, however, be at odds with the reality on the ground.
Inappropriate behavior by residents has recently led some municipalities to
adopt "codes of conduct" (Farrell 2024) or, in some cases has even led to
convictions  (Péloquin 2024) . The issue of social media has also recently been
tackled head-on by a number of elected representatives, who put themselves on
display and publicly read out the insults or other aggressive criticism they (or
city employees) receive on social media (Krol 2023). So, although our results
date from 2020, they nonetheless echo contemporary realities. The same applies
with regards to time. Numerous studies have questioned the relationship between
time invested in relation to elected officials' salaries  (Mévellec, Chiasson,
and Couture 2022; Breux 2022) but also in relation to work-life and work-work
balance (Bouchard et al. 2024). These issues deserve to be explored further,
perhaps also in light of what Dalibert calls "overcommitment" (2023).

References

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