by Oliver Meza & Ana Cecilia de Alba
Local government, policy agency and policymaking are often associated with mayors, senior officials or policy entrepreneurs. Yet elected councillors also play a vital role in shaping public policy, even when they operate with limited formal authority. In their article, “Power, Politics and Policy Agency: Towards a Functional Theory of Agency,” Oliver Meza and Ana Cecilia de Alba explore how municipal councillors influence the policy process and argue that their contribution has been overlooked in policy process research.
Policy process scholarship has traditionally focused on institutions, coalitions and systemic dynamics, paying comparatively less attention to the individuals who navigate these environments. Drawing on the recently developed Functional Theory of Agency, the authors instead examine what policy actors actually do. They identify four key policy agency functions—steering, innovation, intermediation and intelligence—and investigate how these are performed by municipal councillors in Mexico.
Using a sequential mixed-methods design combining the first national survey of Mexican municipal councillors with follow-up semi-structured interviews, the authors compare the behaviour of councillors from governing majorities and opposition parties. Rather than simply documenting institutional differences, they examine how political position shapes the strategies councillors use to influence policy.
The findings reveal distinct patterns of policy agency. Councillors aligned with the governing majority primarily act as steerers and intermediaries, coordinating policy, supporting executive priorities and using their institutional position to stabilise decision making. Opposition councillors, by contrast, are often excluded from formal decision-making arenas and instead rely more heavily on innovation and intelligence. They cultivate external alliances, generate evidence, develop alternative policy ideas and use knowledge strategically to challenge dominant policy agendas.
Importantly, the study shows that institutional constraints do not eliminate agency. Even where councillors have unequal access to formal policymaking authority, they continue to adapt the functions they perform to influence policy outcomes. Political position shapes how agency is exercised, but it does not determine whether meaningful policy influence is possible.
Beyond its empirical contribution, the article advances the Functional Theory of Agency by demonstrating how observable patterns of action can help explain the behaviour of policy actors across different institutional settings. Crucially, the authors show that even structurally disadvantaged actors can exercise meaningful influence by adapting how they innovate, generate knowledge and build relationships within the policy process. By bringing local councillors into the foreground, Meza and de Alba broaden our understanding of who shapes public policy and provide a framework that can be applied comparatively across different levels of government and political systems.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Meza, O., & de Alba, A. C. (2026). Power, politics, and policy agency: towards a Functional Theory of Agency. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2026) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2026D000000102 [Open Access]
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