The LocGov Research Network has been conducting comparative surveys on local government in Europe since the late 1990s, systematically covering different actors and levels of the local government system.

The first survey focused on municipal executive officers (CEOs) — the highest-ranking appointed, non-elected civil servants at the municipal level. Supported by UDITE (Union des dirigeants territoriaux de l'Europe), it became known as the UDITE survey (Klausen and Magnier 1998; Dahler-Larsen 2002; Mouritzen and Svara 2002) 

This was followed by a survey of mayors in municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants (Bäck and Magnier 2006), and subsequently by the MAELG (Municipal Assemblies in European Local Governance) survey, based on a stratified sample reflecting the regional distribution of municipal councillors in each country (Egner et al. 2013). 

A further survey then turned to the second tier of local government, covering councillors as well as executive heads (such as prefects) and the highest-ranking appointed civil servants operating at that level (Bertrana et al. 2016). 

In 2017, a new survey was launched to study institutionalised local state-society relations — that is, local governance arrangements involving municipal actors and representatives from various civil society organisations, ranging from trade unions and employers' associations to grassroots organisations. Since it was not known who in which country should be included in such a survey, work began by creating an inventory of such governance arrangements, compiled by national partners as country experts. The resulting inventory of country studies, along with a conceptual framework and comparative analysis, was published in Teles et al. (2021). The survey of actors involved in these arrangements was conducted between 2020 and 2021. Its results made it possible, for example, to identify and analyse the legitimacy claims and understanding of democracy among the societal actors involved, as well as their perceptions of the effectiveness and relevance of these networks. The findings are presented in detail in Egner et al. (2022).

Immediately after completing work on that publication, preparations began for the next survey, which again focused on municipal councillors. It was conducted between summer 2023 and summer 2024, with partners from 28 countries contributing to a total of more than 30,000 respondents. Given the breadth of the findings, the resulting publication spans two volumes (Heinelt et al. 2026).

All of these surveys were made possible by the close collaboration of national partners across a European network. The close collaboration of national partners was also the basis for joint international projects funded by the European Union's Framework Programmes for Research and Development. 

The network's activities are ongoing. Preparations are currently underway for a further survey of mayors and, in a sense, a repetition of the original UDITE survey of the highest-ranking municipal civil servants — returning to the theme with which the network's survey work began in the 1990s. Information on the current status of these two surveys can be found in the dedicated section of this website.