What was the role of peasants in the administration of their own villages? I'm asking especially for England, but over regions would be interesting, too!
We are aware that in some occasions even small and not so small villages were capable of organizing their own political life, to the point of being able to broker deals and discuss economic policies with the local power they depended from. I shall provide you informations mostly regarding some villages of southern Italy during the 1440s-1470s.
Sessa (nowdays Sessa Aurunca) was an important city of the Aragonese Kingdom of Naples, seat of a duchy whose late dukes Giovanni Antonio and Marino Marzano had been "grand admirals" of queen Joanna II of Naples (1371-1435), king Alfonso the Magnanimous (1396-1458) and king Ferdinand I (1423-1494). We know that the surrounding territory it governed consisted of 47 villages as of 1443, some of which appear to have been influenced or politically submitted to bigger villages. These greater administrative units were called terzieri ("third parts") numbering 9 zones, which: «[...] brought separately in town the weight of monetary payment^(1)», of which three were the major ones: Cascano, Piedimonte (nowdays Piedimonte Massicano), Lauro and Toraldo (an ancient fief now divided in a dozen villages), which: «[...] comprised three others in itself^(2)».
These bigger villages are known to have consisted of no more than 280 and no less than 200, yet, we are aware that in 1470 the mayor of the terziere of Piedimonte, Abramo Francesco, paid the due tax of its terziere to the royal officer stationed in the city^(3). The fact that such a small village, which in some manner organized other three administrative units under itself, had a mayor like the main city it depended by, is a clear indication of a certain amount of political initiative these villages were able to uphold.
We know how the city of Sessa elected its mayors, four in total, and the privileges it received from the Aragonese rulers since 1464. We also know that the city obtained the monopoly over the justice to be meted out for all people living and paying taxes in the city «and in its district^(4)» which some scholars have intended the whole territory, to whose inhabitants was granted the right not to be summoned in courts aside from the one proper of their own city.
Although we still have little informations regarding these lesser mayors, it is indeed a reality that they existed and that they held a measure of political power through which it was even possible to mediate with the local power in matters of taxes, privileges and, perhaps justice. We can only speculate that these mayors could be drawn from a class of small landowners or perhaps wealthy craftsmen, if we interpret some of the names provided by the 1443 census, some of which start with "mastro", literally meaning "master" and oftern used to indicate a skilled artisan or craftsman and the few instances were a person has something resembling a proper last name (i. e. many names follow the patronymic or toponymic rule, like "Francis son of Bartholomew son of Philip), suggesting a familiy of a somewhat higher status than the rest.
I hope this short answer can help your inquiry.
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