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2 - Too Big to Be Local: Local and National Elite Complicity in the Narrative of English Council Mergers
- Edited by Marta Lackowska, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Katarzyna Szmigiel-Rawska, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Filipe Teles, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
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- Book:
- Local Government in Europe
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 13 May 2022
- Print publication:
- 08 September 2021, pp 18-38
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Summary
Introduction
Local government in England is an outlier when it comes to size (Baldersheim and Rose 2010; Swianiewicz, 2010; Denters et al, 2014). Yet, amalgamations are far from finished in England and this chapter will explore how a policy narrative has been developed articulating the need for the ever-increasing size of English local government – a narrative which is shared between central and local government. While it is the centre that takes the formal decision about council mergers, the process is easier if some local government political elites share a policy narrative with the centre that extols the virtues of larger local government and fewer councils.
The council size debate reflects a series of assumptions about the purpose of local government (Bulpitt, 1983; Stewart, 1983 and 2003; Chandler, 2007; Copus et al, 2017) and the last wholesale reorganization in 1972 created councils which reflected those assumptions but not necessarily recognizable communities of place (John and Copus, 2011). Since the 1972 reorganization, subsequent governments have been shy of further massive territorial upheaval, preferring to cajole and convince local government into mergers through the creation of a policy narrative based on a folklore like belief in the efficacy of larger local government (Copus et al, 2017).
Drew et al (2019) point out the dearth of scholarly activity exploring the nature of the arguments that are employed by proponents and opponents of municipal mergers to convince the public of the rightness of their cause. They employ a rhetorical analysis to examine the efficacy of those arguments which display the ‘dreadful consequences’ that could occur from failure to amalgamate or from amalgamation. In this chapter, we take a different approach to analyzing the arguments, preferring to employ the notion of policy narratives (explained in section two) particularly as politicians in England need care little about convincing the public, who will only nominally be consulted in the process and have no real say, such as via a referendum, on amalgamations. The audience that needs convincing, in the English case, are councillors, council leaders and chief executives who can be convinced to assess the world in the same way as the centre through a stabilizing general policy narrative (Jones et al, 2014).
thirteen - New and established mayoralties: lessons for local governance in constructing new political institutions – the English and Polish cases
- Edited by David Sweeting, University of Bristol
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- Book:
- Directly Elected Mayors in Urban Governance
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 15 March 2017, pp 221-242
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Summary
Introduction
Central–local government relations are a common point of discussion across Europe and have spawned considerable literature often viewed through the lens of ‘territorial politics’ as a means of understanding the distribution of power relations (see Jeffery, 2008; Swianiewicz, 2010; Loughlin et al, 2011). The chapter examines one dimension of these relations by analysing the shift in power towards directly elected mayors that has taken place in England and Poland. In both cases, directly elected mayors have been viewed by central (and local) government as a means of rebalancing and redesigning the political landscape. While reaction to the introduction of elected mayors has ranged from lukewarm to outright hostility among local political elites (particularly in England – Copus, 2006) – as established political elites see a transfer of power from themselves towards the citizen through direct election – such antipathy is not surprising as elected mayors have changed the power balance within local government.
In the case of England, the arrival of directly elected mayors through the Local Government Act of 2000 provided for some local citizens choice over the system of local leadership, as a ‘yes’ vote was required from a referendum before a mayor could be introduced. The 2007 Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act, however, enabled councils to resolve to adopt an elected mayor without a referendum. Although this meant that councils – rather than citizens – were in the driving seat of change, the legislative change did not lead to a widespread adoption of directly elected mayors. Indeed, by 2015 only two city councils – Liverpool and Leicester – had chosen this route. Such a limited uptake ran counter to the rhetoric of the Conservative government (and the previous Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition) elected in 2015 with a localism agenda that included greater devolution to urban areas and a preference for elected metro-mayors heading newly formed combined authorities (collaborative working arrangements between several urban local authorities). But, at the time of writing in 2016 there were only 16 elected mayors (excluding the Mayor of London) in England from a total of 352 councils. All of this begs the question as to whether elected mayors are a significant development or a failed experiment in the long history of central–local relations.
one - Introduction: the scope and challenges of the financial crisis
- Edited by Joanna Richardson
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- Book:
- From Recession to Renewal
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 10 November 2010, pp 3-24
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Summary
Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! (Byrne, 2010)
This book aims to analyse the impact of the financial crisis on public services and local government. Public debt in Britain is high1 and to tackle this, the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government elected in May 2010 confirmed immediate reductions in public expenditure in 2010/11. The general election, however, was fought on the basis of not ‘if ‘ but ‘when’, and by whom, such reductions would be made and how the consequences of these reductions would be managed. It is the impact for providers and users of public services, and more widely for government and governance, which will be explored in the book. This chapter will set out a brief historical context and outline some of the emerging debates, responses and concepts in the rest of the book.
The Governor of the Bank of England captured the essence of the frustration of many at the handling of the financial crisis:
never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And, one might add, so far with little real reform. (King, 2009)
A number of government interventions, not only in Britain, but in the US and around the globe (see further Chapters Two and Three), sought to shore up the viability of the banks because of the view that they were ‘too big to fail’. The hold of the financial services sector over government actions from 2007 infuriated those who felt that similar support should be shown for the car industry and other key manufacturing industries such as steel, not forgetting small businesses too. The government supported the financial services sector, but the injection of public cash into the banks did not lead to increased liquidity, indeed loans to businesses were drastically curtailed, again hitting small business and individual home owners. The considerable support provided to the banks (effectively the nationalisation of private debt), at the expense of the taxpayer, resulted in only negligible change in behaviour by the banks. Indeed, the question of individual bonuses paid to some bankers, and the scare tactics of the loss of ‘the best’ of the banking industry if Britain enforced a regulatory cap on bonuses, indicated that little had changed.