Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Governance
Public Opinion and Political Theory in Britain
Acknowledgements ix
2 A Multi-Level Survey 33
The test of public opinion 33
Levels of opinion: the general public and rival local
governance elites 34
The survey 36
Influences on images 97
Conclusion: low on efficiency but high on honesty and
trustworthiness 103
Notes 262
Index 268
List of Figures
vii
Acknowledgements
ix
Introduction and Overview
Local governance
And it is a book about local governance rather than local government tra-
ditionally understood. The system of elected local councils running a
wide range of services that lasted, in Britain, from the 1930s to the
1980s is only one method of local governance. By local governance we
mean the commissioning, organization and control of services such as
health, education, policing, infrastructure and economic development
within localities. There were alternatives to the so-called ‘all-purpose’
elected councils before the 1930s and there are alternatives now.
Under the Conservative governments of 1979–97 Britain became the
world’s ‘brand leader of local government’, ‘introducing a whole raft of
new bodies at local level, mainly special purpose bodies, all appointed,
whilst removing functions from elected local governments at the same
time’.1 We pay particular attention to the alternatives to traditional
local government that burgeoned during the Thatcherite years. We
look at the attitudes of academic theorists and the general public
towards local governance by appointed bodies, by consumer or pro-
ducer self-management, and by private companies operating within a
market, as well as their attitudes towards local governance by elected
all-purpose councils. More than that, we investigate the view from the
1
2 Models of Local Governance
But the main thrust of this book is not to prescribe, nor to provide a
detailed account of the trials and tribulations of local governance
under the Conservatives or for that matter under New Labour. Rather
Introduction and Overview 3
our aim is to test the reactions of the public and practitioners inside
the system to the new world of local governance that has been created
over the last two decades. More than that we relate their views on local
governance to the major themes in the debate on local governance
stimulated by political theorists and informed observers. There is not
one model of local governance but rather a variety of models.
Throughout the book we refer to a broad distinction between localist,
individualist, mobilization and centralist models of local governance.
(Indeed in Chapter 8 each of these models is comprehensively tested
against public opinion.) Our aim then is to test the reactions of public
and practitioners to the world of local governance that emerged in the
1980s and 1990s and provide an understanding of how these two
bodies of opinion would like to see a system of local governance con-
structed. What, from their point of view, is the ideal model of local
governance?
Chapter 2 gives a brief description of our methodology. We used a
multi-level survey to investigate public and elite attitudes towards local
governance. It comprised 2203 interviews with the general public, 788
with elected councillors and 903 with appointed members of boards
charged with local business development and local health care –
TEC/LECs (Training and Enterprise Councils in England and Wales,
Local Enterprise Companies in Scotland) and DHA/HBs (District Health
Authorities in England and Wales, Health Boards in Scotland). Rather
than spreading our interviews with appointed elites across too wide
and disparate a range, we chose to look only at members of TEC/LECs
and DHA/HBs. These organizations constituted particularly well-
organized and powerful representatives of the local quango state. And
restricting our attention to these two provided enough interviews
within each to allow us to analyse opinion within specific kinds of
quango, and contrast opinion between them. The contrast proves unex-
pectedly illuminating.
It is difficult to deny that understanding the views of the public and
those that work inside the local governance system should be one
factor informing public policy discussion and decision. Yet investigat-
ing people’s views about issues such as local governance is problematic.
For most members of the public – and indeed for many members of the
local governance elite (board members and elected councillors) –
general questions about the performance of the system or thoughts
about how it could be reconstructed are not to the forefront of their
daily lives. The interviewing system we used helped to address the
difficulties raised by the relatively low salience of the issues that
4 Models of Local Governance
Local identity
The main body of our findings starts with a look at the general public’s
attitudes. Chapter 3 investigates the extent, depth and nature of the
public’s perceived and felt community of place.2 We found a strong and
widespread psychological ‘sense of belonging’ to localities of different
kinds. But this sense of belonging peaked with respect to ‘Britain’. It
was lower for regions (Scotland excepted), lower still for the local dis-
trict or home neighbourhood, lower still for the workplace, and very
low indeed for ‘Europe’. Nonetheless, among the public as a whole,
local identification with region and district was far stronger than
identification with any class, religion or political party. People felt a
particularly acute sense of pride in the achievements of local people
and shame at their misdemeanours.
But this psychological identification with locality lacked one essen-
tial character of citizenship: it was simply not exclusive. Only a small
minority felt that access to local services or participation in local elec-
tions should be restricted to those who had lived or paid taxes locally
for at least two years – itself a ridiculously low threshold for entry into
a genuinely meaningful ‘local citizenship’. Despite their own strong
sense of local identification, the vast majority felt that local govern-
ment should be the property of currently local residents, no matter how
recently arrived nor how shallow their local roots.
Citizenship is nothing if not a privilege. It is a meaningless concept
if it includes everybody and excludes nobody. And a local citizenship
that applies to anyone who happens to be in the locality on the day is
not in any real sense a citizenship. Nor is a local community that auto-
matically includes everyone who happens to be in the locality on the
day, in any real sense a community. The vast majority of the public
therefore base their attitude towards access to local elections and ser-
vices on some wider and non-local conception of citizenship and com-
munity, probably focused on Britain, and perhaps wider still.
Introduction and Overview 5
Chapter 4 deals with the general public’s attitudes towards the role of
local governance, its aims and objectives. Should it provide only a
minimal range of services? Should it provide local or national stan-
dards of service? Should it let the market provide? Should it attempt to
mobilize local people or particular ‘disadvantaged’ groups, or leave
them to get on with their own lives? Should the conflict between local
and individual autonomy be reconciled by individuals moving to a dif-
ferent locality more in keeping with their ideal of local governance (a
test of the so-called ‘Tiebout hypothesis’, see p. 74)?
We found a wide diversity of views on these issues. There was evi-
dence that they reflected, in part, the general political ideology of left
versus right, big government versus small government. Such left–right
ideology had a strong influence on attitudes towards the extent of
public services but less upon attitudes towards issues that involved
local autonomy.
Attitudes towards local autonomy were themselves strikingly para-
doxical. There was overwhelming public support both for ‘national
standards’ and for local councils’ freedom to provide ‘whatever
standard of services their local community wants and is willing to
pay for’. Two-thirds of the public simultaneously supported both.
Relatively few – only a quarter – supported local discretion without
national standards, and even less supported national standards
without local discretion.
Each of these four models bases prescriptions for forms and structures
of local governance on assumptions about the public’s identities,
aims and objectives, images of local government and institutional
preferences.
None of these models proves entirely consistent with our survey
findings but, on a crude count of consistencies and inconsistencies, the
local democracy and mobilization models fare best. The ‘new right’ individu-
alist model proves highly inconsistent with the reality of the public’s
identifications, aims and objectives, images and preferences. And the
often overlooked centralist model comes somewhere in the middle.
Introduction and Overview 9
To refer to a shift over the last two decades from local government to
local governance in Britain implies a recognition of two factors. First
there has been a shift in the institutional structure of governing with a
range of appointed bodies or ‘quangos’ gaining greater responsibility
and prominence. Second there has been a change in the character of
governing, a blurring of responsibilities, with appointed bodies and
partnership organizations working alongside elected local authorities.
Elected politicians and full-time local government bureaucrats have
found themselves joined by a range of other actors. And major roles
have developed for users, for interested citizens and for the private
sector in this complex interplay of local actors
To understand the world of local governance it is necessary to begin
with a review of institutional change over the last two decades. The
second part of this chapter then explores some of the key features of
the new system that resulted from these changes and the tensions asso-
ciated with it as a style of governing. The third section examines the
debate about the need to revive local democracy, a debate which was
stimulated by this shift from local government to governance. The
fourth section looks at New Labour’s approach to ‘reform beyond
reform’ in British local governance. And a final section summarizes
a number of normative models of how local governance might be
organized.
11
12 Models of Local Governance
Single-tier (unitary)
46 English unitary councils
36 English metropolitan districts
32 London boroughs (plus City of London Corporation)
22 Welsh councils
32 Scottish councils
Two-tier (functions
split between levels)
33 English county councils
238 English non-metropolitan authorities
14 Models of Local Governance
national VAT was hiked 2.5 per cent to fund a further proportion of
local services from central resources. Excluding user charges, local tax-
ation (the Council Tax) accounted for at best only a quarter of total
local authority income by 1997. The remainder of local authority
income came from central government transfers and other nationally
distributed sources. Apart from the post-Poll Tax settlement, the crucial
shift occurred in 1990–91 when the government removed the control
of local ‘non-domestic’ or business rates from local authorities. In the
mid-1980s a combination of local domestic and business rates had
meant that local government raised over half its own income.
The heavy reliance on non-local revenue established in the early 1990s
created a substantial opportunity for central government to dictate the
level of local spending in aggregate terms. In addition it was able to
influence the spending decisions of individual authorities by using
annual Standard Spending Assessments (SSAs) to define what ‘needed’ to
be spent and by using ‘capping’ powers over local authority budgets to
ensure that they did not rise above government approved levels.
These draconian measures led to an increasing degree of central
control over local spending. Some local authorities had to make drastic
cuts. Others protected programmes through a variety of strategems
including what was called ‘creative accounting’. They became expert in
juggling the books so that the figures for spending matched govern-
ment targets but resources still continued to flow into local services.
Over time, however, the scope for creative accountancy was reduced
both by the introduction of new central controls and by the build-up
of postponed costs. Although local government was still responsible for
about a quarter of all public spending in 1997 it now operated under
very controlled conditions.
Elected local authorities were not only reorganized and restructured,
they were bypassed. There was a growth in the number of appointed
bodies or quangos at the local level. Training and Enterprise Councils
took over local authorities’ responsibilities in further education and train-
ing towards the end of the 1980s. Institutions of further education along
with sixth form colleges were constituted as corporate bodies in their own
right, following the previous removal of what were then local authority
controlled polytechnics and are now centrally controlled universities. In
specific areas, urban development corporations, housing action trusts,
housing associations and more broadly various partnership organizations
assumed, with the support of central government funds, responsibilities
for renewal and development. In Scotland, Local Enterprise Companies
had a broad role in training and regeneration. For other functions local
From Local Government to Local Governance 15
Table 1.2 Key agencies in the Conservatives’ ‘local quango state’ (expenditure
in £bn)
Source: Adapted from G. Stoker, ‘Quangos and local democracy’, in M. Flinders and
M. Smith (eds), Quangos, Accountability and Reform (London: Macmillan, 1999). Some
of these agencies were abolished by the incoming New Labour government after 1997.
the local level. But for the Conservatives, local government, especially
in urban areas, become virtually a ‘no-go’ area. In such circumstances
bypassing elected local authorities might well have appeared particu-
larly attractive.
A second factor behind the growth of local quangos was the desire to
bring new participants into the process of local governance. It was
argued that the electoral system and its demands discouraged many
people with relevant skills and experience from being involved in local
governance. Bringing business skills, knowledge and interest to local
governance was a key theme for the Conservatives. But there was also a
recognition of the value of enabling others from outside the traditional
system such as service users, volunteers and active citizens to become
involved in local decision-making.
Finally there was a view that quangos would help to develop more
business-like management of public services in tune with the ideas and
arguments of the ‘New Public Management’. By developing more slim-
line and focused management teams to run organizations and by
encouraging competition between these organizations to attract users
From Local Government to Local Governance 17
instances but, it was argued, they lacked political accountability. The key
point is that these other forms of accountability cannot replace the need
for collective accountability for the policy and resource allocations of
these bodies. The requirements of that further and more general
accountability are not met by the framework of democratic control
through Parliament. The effective control that can be exercised over so
complex a machinery of bodies through this central route is inherently
limited. Moreover the issue is whether in any event public accountability
at national level is appropriate for appointed bodies at local level. If there
are local choices to be made by appointed bodies about priorities or the
setting of policy, even though these choices may take place within a
framework of national policy, the argument is that where there is local
choice there should be an opportunity for a local voice.
national government provides a basis for the public to judge it. Failure
at either level is judged to be unacceptable.
New Labour’s agenda tackles head-on two issues that were ducked by
the Conservatives: (a) the political organization of local government;
and (b) its core role and purpose. The Prime Minister’s pamphlet indi-
cates that the two issues are linked: ‘At the heart of local government’s
new role is leadership – leadership that gives vision, partnership and
quality of life to cities, towns and villages all over Britain.’16 However,
there is seen to be a need for a considerable improvement in the quality
of elected local government if that leadership role is going to be viable.
Dimensions
Key goals Attitude to Attitude to Key service- Key political
local autonomy public delivery mechanism
participation mechanism
Model
Localist Expression and Strongly in Supportive but Multi-functional Representative
meeting of local favour gives primacy to elected local politics through
communities’ elected authorities local elections
needs representatives
Individualist Ensuring Inclined to Favours Competitive Individual rights
individual choice favour but consumer range of service- as consumer
and recognizes need consultation but specific
responsiveness in for upper-level not large-scale providers
respect of intervention to citizen
services protect participation
individuals
Mobilization Developing a Strongly in Strongly in Neighbourhood- Developmental
politics of favour as part of favour based and participatory
change to ensure process of decentralized politics
more effective change structures
influence of
disadvantaged
and excluded
Centralist To maintain Strongly opposed Limited value Agencies subject National
national to substantial government:
standards and the central control legislation,
primacy of guidance and
national controls
democracy
29
30 Models of Local Governance
The key issue in service delivery is that local agencies of service pro-
vision are subject to central control and direction in order to ensure
that national objectives are achieved and nationally set performance
targets are met. The overarching democratic priority rests with the
superior national parliament and government. It has a responsibility to
use legislation, guidance and controls to ensure that the national will
of the population is successfully imposed. Local agencies have a role
and can provide a valuable service. However, their key task is to
support the achievement of national objectives and standards.
Conclusion
Arguments for and against the traditional model of local governance, for
and against the innovations of the 1979–97 Conservative governments
or for and against New Labour’s reforms all raise questions about
identification with locality, the proper purposes and objectives of a
system of local governance, perceptions of the performance of different
institutions and preferred prescriptions for institutional structures.
33
34 Models of Local Governance
elites, the old and the new, the elected and the appointed, local
authority councillors and quango board members.
Both elected councillors and appointed board members are part of
the local governance elite. As such they could be expected to differ
from the general public. They have far more experience of the prob-
lems and processes of local governance than the ordinary citizen. They
should have far more interest in local governance, and far more infor-
mation about it, than the ordinary citizen. We anticipate some evi-
dence of a ‘governing perspective’ among the elites, whether elected or
appointed.
But we also anticipate differences between these elites. They are, at
least potentially, rival elites within the overall structure of local gover-
nance. They owe their place to different processes of selection. And
Jones, Stewart and Regan argue that
board members may see their own particular kind of board as ‘excep-
tional’, and take a positive view of it, without feeling any wider com-
mitment to the general principle of appointed boards. Indeed they
may be quite critical of other types of appointed boards.
The survey
Sampling
All interviews were conducted by telephone from Glasgow University.
Over 90 per cent of adults in Britain were accessible by phone at the
time.8 For our sample of the general public we drew a random sample
of listed telephone numbers from BT directories throughout Britain,
and then made a random selection of those present at the selected
number. While that strategy did not give access to the increasing
number of ex-directory numbers, it allowed us to mail advance letters
of introduction to each selected household a few days before phoning
for an interview. People are naturally reluctant to submit to a long and
searching interview without advance warning. 9 We estimate these
letters of introduction reduced the refusal rate by almost a third. The
sample was weighted to bring it into line with the 1991 Census and
1995 Labour Force Survey on age, gender, housing tenure, education,
economic activity and region.
For our sample of councillors we drew a random sample of names
from the 1995 Municipal Yearbook.
There were 82 Training and Enterprise Councils in England and Wales
and 22 Local Enterprise Companies in Scotland. Only one TEC, Sheffield,
failed to provide a list of board members and contact details when we
approached them directly. Since there was evidence of a high turnover of
board members we interviewed some recent past members as well as
those who currently held seats. The 1994 Health Services Yearbook pro-
vided a list of the non-executive board members for all DHA/HBs and we
supplemented this by approaching each board to confirm membership
and get contact details. During the survey, DHAs were undergoing a reor-
ganization which encouraged the merger of DHAs and Family Health
Service Authorities (FHSAs). In addition, there were mergers between
DHAs. This complicated the sampling process. But in the end, 90 author-
ities provided us with the details we requested while only 11 refused,
though several failed to reply by the end of the interviewing period,
mostly because of the upheaval caused by reorganization.
In order to minimize the transient effects of particular events on
public opinion, interviews with the general public were conducted
40 Models of Local Governance
Local councils like the council in [council district] generally take decisions
that [represent / do not represent] the views of local people. Do you agree
or disagree?
45
46 Models of Local Governance
But there are also very good reasons why psychological commit-
ments to localities should be weak compared to other commitments.
The smaller the locality the more likely people are to leave it, either
temporarily or permanently. Most residents of Jesmond probably leave
that neighbourhood every week to work, to go shopping, to visit
friends or to go to the cinema. They are likely to leave Newcastle some-
what less frequently, though the huge Metro Centre shopping and
entertainment complex lies outside Newcastle, just across the Tyne, in
Gateshead. Conversely, many residents of Newcastle would have lived
outside Newcastle at some time in their lives. By contrast, relatively
few would have lived for long outside Britain, and few would have
moved from one religious faith to another. So a local community – as
defined by local government boundaries – is likely to be less stable, as
well as being less bounded, than the national community or a religious
community.
Moreover, British local authority boundaries have been revised quite
frequently in recent decades, with major reforms in London during the
1960s, throughout the rest of the country in the 1970s, in metropoli-
tan England in the 1980s and throughout the rest of the country again
in the 1990s.3 So even if people stayed rooted to one place, local
government boundaries would frequently have shifted past them.
% %
Born in Britain 92
Workplace located:
within district 38
outside district 27
both 3
no job 31
Note : For simplicity, throughout this book we have routinely excluded ‘don’t know’
answers before calculating percentages. Thus, for example,the figure of 82 per cent (of
those who answered the question) saying that they restrict all their shopping and leisure
to within the region implies that 18 per cent (of those who answered the question) said
they did not restrict such activities to within the region. Very occasionally the number of
‘don’t know / can’t say’ is sufficiently large to merit comment as a significant finding in
itself.
district was simply too small to mark the boundary of their connec-
tions to family and friends.
Work, leisure and shopping were somewhat more local than family
and friends: half the people in our survey did not make regular use of
shopping or leisure facilities outside the district. And, among those
who had a job, almost three-fifths worked within their local council
district. Many had no job of course. So at most, less than a third of the
public had jobs outside their local district.
48 Models of Local Governance
Born in region 45 50 57 64 80 83 85
Born in district 10 8 14 30 49 62 71
All relatives in region 30 34 41 49 57 54 58
All relatives in district 4 6 7 21 30 31 33
The longer people had lived in the locality the more roots they had put
down there. Or perhaps it was the extent of their local connections that
tied them to the locality. Either way, length of residence in the locality
proved to be a key variable. If we divide people into seven categories
according to their length of residence in the local council district, the per
centage with all their friends living in the district rose steadily from
11 per cent to 51 per cent as length of residence increased (and the per-
centage with all their friends living in the region rose from 42 per cent to
68 per cent). People seemed to acquire local friends as time passed. In
addition, the percentage whose job lay within their local district rose
from 47 per cent to 80 per cent as their length of residence increased.
Similarly, the percentages having all their relatives in the region or
district also rose steadily with the number of years spent living in the
locality. The percentage with all their relatives in the district rose
steadily from 4 per cent to 33 per cent and the percentage with all
their relatives in the region from 30 per cent to 58 per cent. Only the
use of shopping and leisure facilities failed to conform so clearly to this
pattern of increasingly local orientations as time spent in the locality
increased.
What kinds of people were the most locally oriented? A good indica-
tor is the percentage who had lived for over 20 years in the district. As
we have seen, the longer people had lived in an area, the more roots
they had there. So what affected long-term residence?
The Limits of Local Identity 49
70
60
All shopping/leisure in district
50
40
Per cent
30
20
All friends in district All relatives in district
10
0
0–4 yrs 5–9 yrs 10–19 yrs 20–29 yrs 30–39 yrs 40–49 yrs 50+ yrs
Obviously age itself made a difference. The old (over 55 years) were
34 per cent more likely than the young (18–35 years) to have lived in
50 Models of Local Governance
the local district for over 20 years. Other social patterns were less
obvious. The self-described ‘working class’ were 17 per cent more likely
than the self-described ‘middle class’ to be long-term residents.
Compared to people with managerial jobs, manual workers were 24 per
cent more likely to be long-term residents. Council tenants were the
most likely to be long-term residents and those in the private rented
sector the least. More striking still, compared to those with university
degrees, people without educational qualifications were 35 per cent
more likely to be long-term residents of the district, and 26 per cent
more likely to be long-term residents of the region. So there was a
strong class and educational bias, as well as the obvious age bias, in
patterns of long-term local residence.
In addition, there were regional biases. Judged by long-term resi-
dence in the region, those in Scotland were the most likely to be long-
term residents, closely followed by people in the north of England.
Conversely people in London and the South West (but not the South
East) of England were the least likely to be long-term residents. But
judged by a still more local criterion, long-term residence in the local
council district, people in all the northern regions of England and in
Wales were more likely to be long-term residents than those in
Scotland though, once again, the people of London and the South
West of England were the least. Scottish residents tended to move
around within Scotland and, indeed, beyond it, but relatively few came
into Scotland from outside.
NE England 73 88
NW England 69 85
Yorkshire/Humberside 69 84
Wales 68 83
Scotland 61 90
Midlands 59 78
East Anglia 57 79
SE England 55 80
SW England 52 64
London 40 66
On average the public rated their interest in local and national issues
about the same – at close to +2 on the ±5 point scale. But they rated their
interest in European issues at close to the mid-point, zero. By that stan-
dard, people were as interested in local as in national affairs, and far more
interested in local than European affairs. Three-fifths also claimed that, in
local elections, they voted more on local issues than on national issues.
On the other hand, twice as many admitted they had not voted in the
last local elections as in the last parliamentary General Election.4
Mean score
on ± 5 point scale
Multiple identities
In his discussion of Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Hobsbawm
argued that ‘the modern nation, either as a state or as a body of people
aspiring to form such a state, differs in size, scale and nature from the
actual communities with which human beings have identified over
most of history.’5 For a comparative measure of the degree of
identification with different scales of community we asked people
about identifications with a dozen different reference groups or areas.
Hobsbawm himself contrasted spatial identifications with ‘supra-local
forms of popular identification’ such as Catholicism. We did the same.
54 Models of Local Governance
• Europe;
• Britain;
• the region where the respondent lived;
• their local (council) district;
• the neighbourhood where they lived;
• the neighbourhood where they worked (which we shall call the
‘workplace’ to distinguish it from the ‘neighbourhood’ of residence);
• the place where they were born.
Mean score on
± 5 point scale
Europe 100
Britain 21 100
Region 7 31 100
District 7 26 64 100
Neighbourhood 4 30 52 64 100
Workplace 5 19 33 36 45 100
Birthplace 4 15 28 28 26 23 100
Family 5 22 26 20 18 16 23
Friends 10 14 27 21 24 17 17
The Limits of Local Identity 57
Lived in region
(district) for:
50 years or more 3.7 (3.7) 2.9 (3.4) 3.5 (3.5)
40–49 years 3.3 (3.5) 2.6 (3.1) 3.0 (3.3)
30–39 years 2.8 (3.1) 2.1 (2.6) 2.5 (3.0)
20–29 years 2.4 (2.6) 1.5 (1.7) 2.7 (2.9)
10–19 years 1.7 (2.3) 1.1 (1.5) 3.0 (2.8)
5–9 years 1.2 (2.0) 0.4 (1.0) 2.7 (2.8)
0–4 years –0.1 (1.5) –0.3 (0.1) 2.6 (2.5)
Lived for 20
years or more:
in district 3.1 2.6 3.1
in region but not 2.9 1.4 2.6
in district
neither 1.2 0.6 2.8
under 35 yrs old 2.2 1.2 2.2
35–54 yrs old 2.7 2.0 2.9
55 and over 3.2 2.6 3.6
58 Models of Local Governance
4
Mean scores on ± 5 point scale
3.5
3
With Britain
2.5
2
With region
1.5
1
With district
0.5
0
0–4 yrs 5–9 yrs 10–19 yrs 20–29yrs 30–39 yrs 40–49 yrs 50+ yrs
Years lived in district
Who identified most with the locality? It was useful to contrast the
patterns of identification with state, region and district. The old
identified more strongly than the young with all three. Partly as a result
of that, those who had lived longer in the region or district also
identified more with Britain as well as with the region or district itself,
though only a little more. Suppose we contrast those who had lived in
the district for under five years (‘recent arrivals’) with those who had
lived in it for over 50 years (‘very long-term residents’). ‘Very long-term
residents’ differed from the ‘recent arrivals’ by 3.3 points (on the
±5 point scale) in terms of identification with their district, but by only
2.2 points in terms of identification with their region, and by only
1.0 points in terms of identification with Britain. The effect was not
limited to the newest arrivals nor to the longest residents. Figure 3.2
shows that the length of residence in a particular locality generally had
its most powerful influence upon identification with that very particular
locality, with the district rather than with the region or with Britain.
Analysis of the data from two Local Government Commissions in
the early 1990s found a similar pattern of attachments. The researchers
found that length of residence in a particular local area was the pre-
dominant factor in driving attachment not only at that level, but at
The Limits of Local Identity 59
higher levels also. They speculated that what they might be measuring
was a sense of ‘being settled’.6
Multiple regression analysis confirmed that age itself had no influence
upon identification with region or district once the length of local resi-
dence had been taken into account. We used stepwise multiple regres-
sion to predict the strength of identification with five areas – Britain, the
region, the district, the neighbourhood and the workplace. As predictors
we took age in years, plus 13 measures of objective local connections:
whether people were born in Britain, in the region or in the district; the
number of years lived in the region and district; the proportions of rela-
tives and friends who lived in the region and district (on four-point
scales); whether the respondent’s workplace was outside the district; and
whether they paid regular attention to local evening papers, local weekly
papers or local evening news on radio and television.
Six of these had no impact, once other influences were taken into
account: attention to local news media, the proportion of relatives in
the locality and whether people had been born in the district. Only age
and being born in Britain – and age more than British birth – affected
the strength of identification with Britain. Indeed, since so many had
been born in Britain (92 per cent), birthplace could hardly explain
much of the variation between people in the strength of their
identification with Britain or anything else. But identification with
Britain increased sharply with age.
Being born in the region, having a high proportion of friends in the
region and being a long-term resident in the region all increased the
strength of identification with the region. But by far the strongest of these
influences was simply long-term residence in the region.
Having a high proportion of friends in the district and being a long-
term resident in the district (or even in the region) increased the
strength of identification with the district. But the strongest of these
influences was long-term residence in the district itself, even when
long-term residence in the region was taken into account.
Age, having a high proportion of friends in the district and being a
long-term resident in the district all contributed towards the strength
of identification with the neighbourhood. Although age itself had no effect
upon identification with either the region or the district, it had as
much effect as long-term residence on identification with the neigh-
bourhood. Older people had a noticeably stronger identification with
the very limited space of their very local neighbourhood.
Finally, our multiple regression analysis suggested that identification
with the workplace was highly dependent upon the location of the
60 Models of Local Governance
towns and cities. Those who worked for local government (except for
school teachers), or had family or friends employed by local govern-
ment, did not identify with the district any more strongly than others.
The strength of local identification hardly differed between those
who felt they ‘knew enough’ to use their local election votes wisely or
to assess whether the local council was taking the right decisions and
those who did not. Nor between those who made much use of local
government services and those who did not. Nor between those who
felt their region or district was relatively well or badly off. Nor between
those who lived in politically competitive and politically ‘safe’ districts.
Nor between those who placed themselves at different points on the
left/right ideological spectrum (except for those on the extreme left).
Nor between those with Conservative, Labour or Liberal voting prefer-
ences – though, unsurprisingly, Scottish and Welsh nationalists were
more locally oriented.
Those who lived in districts that were nearly always controlled by
Labour councils tended to identify more with the locality and less with
Britain than those who lived in normally Conservative districts,
however. Within both parties’ citadels, individual Conservative voters
identified with Britain much more strongly than individual Labour
62 Models of Local Governance
voters. But individual Conservative voters were only more likely than
individual Labour voters to identify strongly with their district if they
lived in a local Conservative stronghold. And conversely, individual
Labour voters were especially likely to identify much less than Con-
servative voters with their district if they lived in a local Conservative
stronghold.
Those who had considered moving to another district with better
local services or lower local taxes but had not actually done so – and
who therefore still lived in a district they had considered leaving – had
a particularly weak identification with that district.
The pattern of spatial identifications varied dramatically across the
different regions of Britain. Identification with the district ranged only
between 2.1 and 2.4 across all the northern regions of England, the
Midlands, Wales and Scotland. But it sank lower in southern England
and dropped to a mere 1.2 in London. Similarly, identification with
Britain ranged only between 3.1 and 3.5 across the whole of England
except for London where it dropped to 2.6. But it dropped to 2.0 in
Wales and to a dismal 1.4 in Scotland. Conversely identification with
the region peaked at 3.9 in Scotland (where, of course, the word ‘region’
in our question was replaced by ‘Scotland’). But it was also high
throughout northern England and Wales where it ranged only between
3.1 and 3.4. By contrast, it was low throughout the Midlands and the
south, including London, where it ranged between 1.9 and 2.3.
4.5
4
With region
Mean scores on ± 5 point scale
3.5
3 With Britain
2.5
2
With district
1.5
1
0.5
0
–0.5 With Europe
–1
ia
b
s
gl
on
es
gl
gl
nd
gl
gl
nd
um
En
En
En
En
An
al
nd
la
la
W
/H
ot
Lo
E
SW
id
SE
E W
Sc
ks
N
M
N
r
Yo
% % %
Pride/shame *Pride *Shame
Note:* These two versions of the questions were put to randomly selected split-half
samples. Figures are the percentages who answered with an unqualified ‘yes’.
been done by someone from their district, from their region or from the
rest of Britain. Half were asked about pride when hearing about ‘some-
thing good’, half about shame when hearing about ‘something bad’ –
which avoided any pressure to take equal responsibility for the ‘good’
and the ‘bad’. The public was always about 10 per cent more willing to
feel pride in others’ achievements than to feel shame for their misdeeds.
But what was most significant in this context was that the public was
most inclined to feel either pride or shame when hearing about someone
from the district, and least inclined to feel these emotions when hearing
about people from outside the region. Emotional involvement seemed to
increase as the scale of the locality decreased.
People felt a special responsibility for their local areas and that sense
of responsibility clearly strengthened as the area diminished. Only
47 per cent agreed that people who lived in their region had more
responsibility for the welfare of others in that region than for the welfare
of others in Britain as a whole. But 61 per cent agreed that people who
lived in their district had more responsibility for the welfare of others in
that district than for the welfare of others in their region as a whole.
66 Models of Local Governance
Identification:
with Britain 13 7 10 –2 0
with region 11 27 22 18 3
with district 10 20 24 12 8
The Limits of Local Identity 67
franchise. If we had set the term at over two years – at say five or ten
years – we presume the public would have taken an even less exclusive
and even more inclusive stance with regard to the local franchise.
Secondly, we asked about barring access to local schools and hospi-
tals until incomers had lived or paid taxes locally for at least two years.
(Again we varied the question wording between region or district and
between residence and taxpaying, putting each variant of the question
to randomly selected subsamples.) This second approach to the issue of
local exclusion won even less public support: a mere 18 per cent.
Overwhelmingly the public took the view that local services should be
accessible to the national citizenry.
And in so far as they differed at all on this issue, their attitudes
towards local exclusiveness correlated better with mere length of local
residence than with the strength of local identity. The weakness of the
correlation between local exclusiveness and local identification merits
some emphasis. Even among those who fell into the top quintile in
terms of the strength of their identification with the local district, the
numbers who took an exclusive attitude on the right to vote in local
elections only reached 27 per cent. And in that top quintile the
numbers who took an exclusive attitude on rights of free access to local
schools and hospitals only reached 19 per cent. There was a detectable
correlation with local identification but it was so weak as to be barely
detectable – statistically significant (in our large sample) but certainly
not politically significant.
Only if they have [lived/paid taxes] for at least 2 years in [region/district] should
people from other parts of Britain who come to live in [region/district] …
be able to vote get free access to local
at local elections schools and hospitals
% %
23 18
If identification with district falls
into the…
lowest quintile (score < 0) 19 12
second (score 0) 18 18
mid quintile (score 1, 2) 26 19
fourth (score 3, 4) 22 19
highest quintile (score 5) 27 19
The concept of local democracy would imply that the locality, or more
broadly the ‘territory’, has some significant meaning for people. The
phenomenon of globalization and the development of a more geo-
graphically mobile society have led some to question whether a basis
for local democracy remains. Was there enough sense of attachment to
sustain local politics? Our findings suggest the need to recognize a
complex response to that apparently simple question.
Identification with the family was considerably stronger than the
other identifications we investigated, but it was far from an exclusive
identification. It did not prohibit strong identifications with wider
communities. Indeed, identification with family on the one hand cor-
related quite strongly with identification with Britain, region, district
and birthplace on the other. People identified as strongly with their
home neighbourhood as with the district, but much more strongly
with the district than, for example, with a social class. Identification
with Britain was clearly stronger than with local districts but not much
stronger than with regions except in the south of England. In the
north of England identification with Britain was about the same as
with the region. And in Scotland and Wales, identification with Britain
was much weaker than with the region, and even somewhat weaker
than with the district.
So local identification at various levels was certainly strong enough
to suggest that people should not be regarded merely as individualistic
consumers of local services. They did have a psychological basis for a
concept of local citizenship but, very significantly, it was an inclusive
rather than an exclusive concept. Only a small minority of the public
would deny recent incomers access to local public services or the right
to participate in local decision-making.
And yet it may be difficult to give real content to the notion of cit-
izenship without distinguishing between citizens and non-citizens. A
federal system like the United States permits the possibility of a
sharply defined local citizenship, at least at the level of the different
states within the Union. State universities in the USA, for example,
have different scales of fees for ‘in-state’ and ‘out-of-state’ students.
Conversely they often make no distinction between a student arriv-
ing from another state of the USA and a student arriving from Europe
or Asia. That is very definitely not the way the British public views
access to local authority funded services. Yet, even in Britain, it may
be unreasonable to expect the residents of a locality to pay additional
The Limits of Local Identity 69
Different aims and objectives have been proposed for local governance,
objectives that range all the way from developing the personality of
the individual and mobilizing the apathetic through to the cheap or
efficient provision of services to those that want to buy them. ‘New
Right’ theorists see local governance primarily as a provider of those
few services that cannot be provided, or at least that cannot be pro-
vided more efficiently, by private companies operating in the market.
Theorists on the left take a more positive and expansive view of public
services. To them, public services are not a necessary evil, to be only
grudgingly accepted, but an opportunity to provide a wide range of
high quality services that will enhance the lives of citizens. But even
those who look favourably upon public services may disagree about
whether they should be national or local. And they may disagree on
whether public services should apply national standards even if deliv-
ered by local agencies, or whether they should vary from place to place
according to the wishes of local people and the willingness of local
people to pay for them. Ultimately these three viewpoints encapsulate
different notions of citizenship – local citizenship, national citizenship
or very little citizenship of any kind at all. Different theorists therefore
emphasize different objectives for local governance. Some of these dif-
ferences are no more than a difference of emphasis. But others are dif-
ferences between incompatible objectives.
What do the public think about such abstract matters? Are there
clear majorities in favour of some objectives and against others? And, if
there are clear majorities, are they logically coherent or self-contradic-
tory? Are there public majorities for incompatible objectives? In this
chapter we ask what the public think the role of local government
should be. What level of services should be provided? What is their
71
72 Models of Local Governance
attitude to national standards? Does the public think that local govern-
ment has a role beyond service delivery? And do these questions
matter enough for people make a tax–service calculation when choos-
ing where to live?
Minimalism
Note: * These two questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
74 Models of Local Governance
All respondents
* ‘for better service’ 93 6 1
* ‘for lower taxes’ 97 3 1
London only
* ‘for better service’ 83 14 3
* ‘for lower taxes’ 95 3 2
Note: * Questions about ‘better services’ and ‘lower taxes’ were put to randomly selected
split-half samples.
better services (7 per cent) than to get lower taxes (3 per cent). Only
one per cent had actually relocated for these reasons. However, our
survey did confirm, as Dowding and others have suggested, that such
behaviour was more frequent in London. In our survey, 17 per cent in
London said they had considered relocating to get better services and
5 per cent to get lower taxes, though less than 3 per cent said they had
actually relocated for either reason.
Local interests
At the time of our survey, twenty years had passed since the British
had last elected a government that extolled the virtues of economic
intervention. On the other hand, the Conservative government had
tried to foster positive attitudes towards the role of business in local
politics. We asked whether ‘local government should actively encour-
age local business in order to create jobs and improve the local
economy’ or ‘leave economic development to [central government/
market forces]?’ It made no difference at all whether we balanced local
government economic initiatives against central government or
against the market: 88 per cent said local government should take
economic initiatives. The public remained instinctively interventionist
in local terms.
At the same time this high level of support for local economic
initiatives implied a majority neither for a ‘zero-sum’ competition with
other areas for economic development, nor for ‘feather-bedding’ local
business. We asked whether ‘when a local council buys in services from
76 Models of Local Governance
Note: * Questions about whether to leave local economic development to ‘central govt’ or
‘the market’ were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
A mission to mobilize?
Both liberals and left-wing radicals have argued that local government
should develop more than the local economy, certainly more than
local businesses. Following J. S. Mill, philosophical liberals have argued
that an important function of local government is to develop individ-
ual capabilities and personalities through active participation in gov-
ernment ‘on a human scale’. So we asked whether ‘local government
should help people to develop their capabilities and personalities by
encouraging them to participate [in elections and political campaigns/
directly in the management of the services they themselves use]; or
leave individuals to develop their own capabilities and personalities?’
Despite this hint at a ‘big brother’ state interfering with people’s
‘own’ development there was substantial, even though minority,
The Role of Local Governance 77
Note: * Questions about whether or not to offer financial support were put to randomly
selected split-half samples, and questions about committees for ethnic groups, women or
gays were put to randomly selected split-third samples. The two random selections
were independent: so, for example, approximately half the interviews about committees for
ethnic minorities specifically included financial support and half specifically excluded it.
78 Models of Local Governance
%
Local government should…
* ‘provide as few services as possible, allowing people to
provide for themselves’ 16
* ‘encourage those in need to demand more services’ 78
Note: * These two questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
Note: * These four questions were put to randomly selected split-quarter samples.
The Role of Local Governance 79
Social background
Attitudes towards minimalism were hardly affected by social back-
ground. Working-class identifiers, for example, were very slightly
more favourable than middle-class identifiers towards universal ser-
vices and services for the needy but, at the same time, very slightly
less favourable than middle-class identifiers towards ‘quality of life’
subsidies for theatres, concert halls or sports centres. The surprise is
not that we found such plausible patterns but that they were so
weak. Education made somewhat more of a difference. Compared to
those with only school-level qualifications, university graduates
hardly differed in their support for universal services or services for
the needy. But graduates were relatively antagonistic towards the
provision of special chargeable services for shops and businesses and
relatively favourable towards ‘quality of life’ subsidies for sports and
the arts.
Working-class identification correlated most strongly with support
for paying attention to those who needed local government jobs (r =
0.21) or services (r = 0.12), and with encouraging those in need to
demand more services (r = 0.18). Older respondents were somewhat
more inclined to agree that councils should pay most attention to local
taxpayers, provide as few services as possible and stay out of national
politics. Women hardly differed from men. The highly educated were
less inclined than others to agree that councils should pay most atten-
tion to any particular reference group though their reluctance was
most evident with respect to those who needed council jobs and least
evident with respect to ‘experts’.
Across the regions, the most striking pattern was a tendency for
people in Scotland, Wales and all the northern regions of England to
80 Models of Local Governance
be a few per cent less inclined than those in the south of England to
say that their local councils should stay out of national politics.
But this question of council involvement in national politics apart,
social patterns of opinion do not seem very distinctively ‘local’. In
character, they are the kinds of pattern we might expect with any ques-
tions about public services and taxation, national or local, though they
are perhaps rather weaker than we might expect if asked in the context
of national politics.
Note: The cut points on the local identity scale divide the public into five roughly equally
sized groups.
greater than 10 per cent effect upon attitudes in two rows, while the
extremes of ideology did so in eight rows. Compared to those who placed
themselves on the left, self-described right-wingers were 14 per cent more
favourable to councils providing extra payable services for business
although slightly less favourable towards the provision of other kinds of
local services. They were 22 per cent less favourable to discriminatory
local preference (versus ‘value for money’). Conversely, right-wingers
were 22 per cent more inclined to say councils should provide as few
82 Models of Local Governance
Note: Left includes ‘strongly’ left; right includes ‘strongly’ right. The cut points on the
ideological self-image scale divide the public into five roughly equally sized groups.
65
By identification
with district
60
55
50
By right-wing
45 ideology
40
35
30
Lowest quintile Middle Highest quintile
Ideology and local identification both arrayed along the horizontal axis
35
30 By right-wing
ideology
25
20
Per cent
15
By identification
with district
10
0
Lowest quintile Middle Highest quintile
Ideology and local identification both arrayed along the horizontal axis
services. And right-wingers were 16 per cent more inclined to say local
councils should stay out of national politics.
84 Models of Local Governance
85
86 Models of Local Governance
appointed rivals, and although the public may still have relatively little
experience of those rivals, we also pose some comparative questions.
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half samples
Interests
Special interests
So, if the public were no more than lukewarm about the extent to
which elected councils reflected and responded to their own views, did
they think councils were over-responsive to special interests of any
kind? We asked whether local councils were dominated by business
interests or, alternatively, whether they failed to take them sufficiently
into account, whether the council weighted its service provision
towards poorer or richer areas, and whether the council was too willing
to accept or reject the dictates of central government. Among the
public, opinion seemed fairly evenly divided on all these questions –
though that may have reflected indecision and vagueness rather than a
sharp division of opinion within the public.
When we framed the question in a different way we got a much
clearer result. We asked whether nine groups had ‘too much or too
little influence over decisions about local services’. In each case about a
quarter of the public, without any prompting, said the degree of
influence was about right, but most people took a view, and their views
varied sharply across the nine groups.
88 Models of Local Governance
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half
samples.
On balance, the public did not think that either their elected local
councillors or local businessmen had much too much or too little
influence. But by a margin of over 30 per cent they thought local
taxpayers, and racial or ethnic groups, had too little. And by margins
of up to twice that much the public claimed that local voters, ordinary
council workers and women’s groups had too little influence.
Conversely, by a margin of 35 per cent they felt that senior local gov-
ernment officials (local government bureaucrats rather than politi-
cians) had too much influence. And by a margin of 54 per cent they
felt that central government had too much.
Indeed there was a striking contrast between the public’s assertion by
a margin of 54 per cent that central government had too much
influence over decisions about local services, and their assertion by a
similar margin of 60 per cent that local voters had too little. It seems
that the fairly even balance of public opinion on whether their local
council was too willing to accept or reject instructions from central
government reflected wearied resignation, or the desire to avoid inter-
institutional conflict, rather than agreement that the balance of power
between local and central government was about right.
Self-interest
Tabloid journalists and political opponents of local government politi-
cians (sometimes within the same party) frequently accuse them of
‘junketing’ – using their office for personal gain, usually very small per-
sonal gains but offensive to local taxpayers nonetheless. And even
The Image of Traditional Local Government 89
% ‘too much’
minus % ‘too little’
Note: Although the question only asked whether each group had ‘too much or too little
influence’, large numbers of respondents spontaneously replied ‘neither too much nor too
little – about right’, or words to that effect. Excluding the question about central govern-
ment on which opinion was more one-sided, the numbers replying ‘neither’ ranged from
21 per cent to 32 per cent. Consequently, in this table, we have not treated this response
as a ‘don’t know’ to be excluded from our calculation of percentages. Instead we report the
difference between the ‘too much’ and ‘too little’ percentages, calculated as a percentage
of all three responses – ‘too much’, ‘too little’ and ‘neither’.
90 Models of Local Governance
Local councillors…
*have the good of the community at heart 79
*are in it for personal gain 42
*have a sense of duty towards their fellow citizens 80
*just want people to look up to them 44
People appointed to DHA/HBs…
*have the good of the community at heart 66
*are in it for personal gain 31
*have a sense of duty towards their fellow citizens 73
*just want people to look up to them 31
People appointed to TEC/LECs…
*have the good of the community at heart 73
*are in it for personal gain 41
*have a sense of duty towards their fellow citizens 70
*just want people to look up to them 37
Note: * The two versions of each question were put to randomly selected split-half
samples.
Corruption
The word ‘corruption’ implies rather more than junketing or self-
seeking. We asked people whether they thought local councils were
more or less corrupt than private businesses. We could get 35 per cent
to agree that local councils were ‘more corrupt’, but 51 per cent to
agree that they were ‘less corrupt’. On balance therefore, public
opinion seemed to favour local councils over private business and
councillors over private businessmen, though not by a very large
margin.
Effectiveness
Note:* The two versions of this question were put to randomly selected-split half samples.
Note: * The two versions of each question were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
Capability
But however well organized central and local government may be,
many desirable goals may still be beyond their capabilities. So we asked
whether central and local government could do ‘very little’ or ‘quite a
The Image of Traditional Local Government 93
bit’ towards achieving each of nine goals, taking the percentage who
answered ‘quite a bit’ as an indicator of perceived capability.
Local councils scored surprisingly well in comparison with central
government. The top scores were 83 per cent for central government’s
ability to ‘improve health and social services’ and 87 per cent for local
councils’ ability to ‘improve their area as a place to live in’. The lowest
scores were 64 per cent for central government’s ability to ‘keep prices
down’ and 53 per cent for local councils’ ability to ‘improve employ-
ment prospects in their area’. The generally high scores for local gov-
ernment suggest that the community governance role for local
authorities is one that the public may find convincing.
Comparing public perceptions of central and local government capa-
bilities on similar goals, central government scored 18 per cent higher
on its ability to ‘improve health and social services’ and 13 per cent
higher on its ability to ‘improve employment prospects’. But central
government scored only 6 per cent higher on its ability to ‘cut crime’.
And local councils’ ability to ‘improve their area as a place to live’ was
rated 12 per cent higher than central government’s ability to ‘improve
the general standard of living’ – not an identical goal but one that
should be considered the ‘corresponding goal’ appropriate to a differ-
ent level of government. Overall therefore, people did not see local
councils as much less capable of achieving locally defined goals than
central government was of achieving nationally defined goals.
• to your MP?
• to your local councillor?
• to [the offices of the appropriate government department/the dis-
trict council/your local enterprise company/your district health
authority/the police themselves]? (depending on the institution
proposing the unjust or harmful action)
• to newspapers, radio or television?’
Mean score
on ± 5 scale
Note: * These five versions of the questions were put to randomly selected sub-samples.
Note: * These five versions of the question were put to randomly selected sub-samples.
Influences on images
Images of local governance did not vary greatly across different social
groups. Class, for example, had very little effect upon images except for
a slight tendency for middle-class identifiers to defend both local and
national government against crude charges that they wasted taxpayers’
money. Women were somewhat more likely than men to allege that
the council wasted taxpayers’ money. And unsurprisingly, women were
somewhat more likely than men to say that ‘women’s groups’ had too
little influence upon decisions about local public services. But apart
from that their image of local governance hardly differed from that of
men. The highly educated were distinguished most by their actual
complaints to MPs and the mass media, but not by any special expecta-
tion that they would be effective.
98 Models of Local Governance
Mean score on
± 5 scale
Age had more effect on images of local governance than any other
social variable. Older people were especially critical of the supposed
excess influence of ethnic groups, women’s groups, council employees
and even local voters. They were particularly satisfied with the services
provided by their local council – but also with every other provider of
services about whom we asked. They were particularly convinced that
the local council and local health authority cared about their views.
They were particularly likely to have contacted a local councillor,
though not an MP or the press. And they were particularly likely to
trust elected councillors – though also more likely than younger people
to trust health board members, Parliament and the government.
People with a relatively right-wing self-image, or Conservative rather
than Labour preferences, tended to defend the motivations and respons-
iveness of appointed boards, defend the influence of local businessmen
over public services, and criticize the undue influence of ethnic groups or
women’s groups. Right-wingers were also unusually ready to defend the
quality of service given by any provider other than the local council.
People with a strong sense of identification with their district were
particularly willing to defend the quality of council services, though
they also tended to defend the quality of local services provided by
others, if to a lesser extent.
The Image of Traditional Local Government 99
Trust to do what is
right for their areas…
people elected to local
councils – 19 22 –
people appointed to
DHA/HBs – 11 18 17
businessmen appointed
to TEC/LECs – – 14 22
Trust to do what is
right for Britain…
Parliament and
government 15 11 13 35
Notes:
1. Identification with district coded on 11-point scale from –5 to +5.
2. Right-wing self image coded on a 7-point scale: strongly left, left, centre-left, centre,
centre-right, right, strongly right.
3. Correlations less than 0.10 replaced by a dash.
100 Models of Local Governance
Class self-image:
middle class 0.9 0.8 0.6 –0.2
working class 0.7 0.6 0.3 –0.9
Age:
young (18–34) 0.3 0.5 0.4 –0.9
middle-aged
(35–54) 0.7 0.4 0.4 –0.8
old (55 and over) 1.2 1.0 0.5 –0.4
Identification
with district:
lowest quintile
(score <0) 0.1 –0.1 –0.2 –1.4
second (score 0) 0.5 0.5 0.4 –0.8
mid-quintile
(score 1,2) 0.7 0.5 0.4 –0.6
fourth (score 3,4) 1.0 0.8 0.7 –0.4
highest quintile
(score 5) 1.2 0.9 0.6 –0.6
Ideological
self-image:
left 0.7 0.1 –0.3 –1.7
centre-left 1.0 0.6 0.5 –0.9
centre 0.7 0.8 0.6 –0.7
centre-right 0.8 1.0 0.9 –0.1
right 0.8 1.0 0.8 0.5
Note: These divisions on ideology and local district identification divide the sample into
four approximately equal subsamples.
1.5
1
Mean scores for trust on ± 5 pont scale
0.5
–0.5
–1 Trust govt
Trust appointed
Trust councillors
board members
–1.5 High district identification
Low
High district identification
Low
–2
High district identification
t
ef
-L
tre
tre
Low
t
ef
en
en
tre
-L
/C
t
C
ef
tre
en
ht
ft/
-L
tre
en
ig
Le
/C
tre
en
R
ht
en
ft/
/C
ig
Le
ht
ft/
ig
Le
Even though general levels of trust in local councillors did not seem
to be much influenced by ideology, it might be thought the interaction
between the public’s own ideology and their perception of their local
council’s ideology would have an impact. Left-wingers who lived in
areas controlled by a right-wing council, or right-wingers who lived in
areas controlled by a left-wing council, might be more inclined to dis-
trust councillors.(5.15)
In fact, left-wingers who lived in places which they said had nearly
always been controlled by a Conservative district council expressed
almost as much trust in councillors as other left-wingers who had lived
under near-permanent Labour councils. Right-wingers were somewhat
more sensitive to the partisanship of their council, however. Right-
wingers who lived under near-permanent Labour councils differed
from other right-wingers who had lived under near-permanent
Conservative councils by 0.4 on our scale of trust in councillors. So, for
The Image of Traditional Local Government 103
Table 5.15 Trust in councillors by personal ideology and party control (mean
scores)
Personal self-image:
left or centre-left 0.7 0.8 1.1 1.1
right, centre-right or
centre 0.9 0.5 1.2 1.0
satisfied with the services provided by local councils than those pro-
vided by local doctors, electricity suppliers or tradesmen. But it trusted
elected councillors more than appointed board members and far more
than central government.
These levels of trust were influenced, in different ways, by ideological
and local identifications. Local identification dominated trust in
elected councillors while ideological identification dominated trust in
central government. What is particularly interesting is that both these
identifications – local and ideological – influenced trust in appointed
local governance boards. Right-wingers liked appointed boards, no
doubt in part because these boards were the creatures of a right-wing
Conservative government. But those with the strongest commitment
to their localities were also more willing to trust these appointed
boards, presumably because they saw them as more than mere crea-
tures of a right-wing central government – genuinely local even if also
ideologically driven. As we shall see in later chapters the attitudes and
opinions of the people appointed to these boards were in fact locally
oriented as well as ideologically driven. So there was some truth in this
aspect of public perceptions.
6
Institutional Preferences
In this chapter we look at public views about the best institutions and
mechanisms for delivering local services. Institutional preferences are
linked to views about the aims and objectives of local governance. But
institutional preferences are not dictated by views about objectives: the
connection is a matter of choice rather than strict logical necessity.
Support for no more than a minimal range of local public services does
not, in fact, determine views about whether these services should be
delivered by elected councils or by appointed boards. It is possible to
oppose local socialism or local social democracy without opposing local
political democracy. The connection between attitudes to purposes and
to institutions is detectable but remarkably weak. So before we investi-
gate that connection we shall focus our attention on the public’s insti-
tutional preferences for local governance as an important aspect of
public opinion in its own right.
Localism
How local?
The arguments for larger or smaller local authority areas are fairly well
known.1 Some services may benefit from economies of scale that
require a relatively large organization spanning a wide geographic area.
And questions of equity or national standards may also be easier to
address if the geographic scope of the organization is larger rather than
smaller. On the other hand, the essence of local governance is that it
should be local. Any argument for local governance at all inevitably
implies that it should be as local as is practically possible – arguments,
for example, that focus on the need for responsiveness, variety, repre-
sentation or local knowledge.
105
106 Models of Local Governance
Refuse collection 84 10 6
Leisure services 82 13 5
Schools/education 42 29 29
Roads 33 29 38
Police 32 28 41
Environment/pollution 30 21 49
Hospitals/ health 26 33 41
Economic development 20 29 51
Average 44 24 32
Note: Rows sorted by percentage naming district as the best scale for providing the service.
Institutional Preferences 107
Overwhelmingly the public said that refuse collection and leisure ser-
vices should operate on the scale of their district council. But it was
divided three ways on education, roads and the police, though tilting
towards the district on education and towards Britain on roads and
police. The public was also divided on services concerning the environ-
ment and pollution, hospitals and health, and economic development,
but more clearly inclined towards having these services organized and
controlled at a national rather than a local level. The public never
placed the region in top place for any of these services, though the
region came second to the district on refuse collection, leisure and edu-
cation, and second to Britain-wide organization on hospitals, health
and economic development.
Indeed, although the local district was the single most popular
choice (with an average of 44 per cent support) to run the eight ser-
vices specified in our questions, a majority chose a higher level of gov-
ernment of some kind. So on balance, averaging across these eight
services, people seemed to think their district was too small to run the
service. That conclusion was confirmed when we asked explicitly
whether the ‘[district] council area is too [big/small] for the provision
of local services like health, education and policing?’ In reply, 18 per
cent agreed that their district was ‘too big’ but 38 per cent agreed that
it was ‘too small’.
At the time of our survey local district councils existed. Some higher
tier local authorities also remained in England though the Greater
London Council and the English metropolitan councils had been abol-
ished a few years earlier and the Scottish regional councils were in the
process of abolition. However, with the single exception of the GLC,
abolished in 1985, elected authorities on the scale of our ten specified
regions had never existed in Britain. Scottish ‘regional’ authorities had
covered regions within Scotland, not Scotland as a whole. And English
counties, even the metropolitan counties prior to 1985, had been
*Too big 18
*Too small 38
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half
samples.
108 Models of Local Governance
much smaller than the ten regions into which we divided Britain – and
which we specified by name in our question about organizing services
at the level of the respondent’s region. Consequently our question
included references to the district and to Britain which already had
elected governments, and to the respondent’s region which, London
excepted, had never had an elected regional government. 2 Given the
hypothetical nature of regional government at the time, it is perhaps
significant that as many as 24 per cent on average opted for regional
control of local services.
Elsewhere in the interview we asked directly: ‘Would you support or
oppose giving greater powers of self-government to [region], by means
of an elected council or assembly for the whole of [region]?’ For each
respondent, our CATI system automatically inserted the actual name of
their particular region into the question. A clear majority supported
the idea of an elected council for their region as a whole.
Support for regional government varied. In our survey, as might be
expected, support was highest in Scotland (where ‘Scotland’ itself was
substituted for [region] in the question) by a margin of at least 11 per
cent compared to any other region. But support for elected regional
government ran as high in London and the north of England as in
Wales. Indeed, on our figures, it was higher in London than in Wales.
Support (unconditionally) 56
Support, if locals want it 4
Oppose 40
That reflects the pattern of local and regional identities that we found
in Chapter 3. Support for elected regional government was highest in
those regions where the strength of regional identity most exceeded the
strength of local district identity – in the north, and especially in
Scotland, because regional identity was so strong, and within London
because local (borough) identity was so weak.
The recent reorganization of local government raised questions
about who should fix local government boundaries. In England and
Wales, new boundaries were fixed by independent commissions after
public hearings (although Parliament had the final decision). But in
Scotland, new boundaries were drawn up in private by civil servants
from the Scottish Office working directly under the control of the
Secretary of State, and then imposed despite widespread allegations of
gerrymandering. We asked who should decide ‘the boundaries and
sizes of local councils like [district]?’ We offered respondents a choice
of ‘central government, a joint committee of neighbouring local coun-
cils, independent experts, or the local people in a referendum’. The
public’s top choice was a referendum (46 per cent) followed by a joint
committee of local councils (31 per cent). Central government, such as
the Secretary of State for Scotland, won very little public support (9 per
cent) and even ‘independent experts’ only got 15 per cent support.
Local rather than central govt should have the final say…
*after a local election on the issue 88
*after a local referendum on the issue 83
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half
samples.
Institutional Preferences 111
Democracy
Direct democracy
When asked, the public usually tend to support mechanisms of direct
democracy. We have already seen that a local referendum was the most
popular public choice of mechanism for fixing local government
boundaries. Similarly, when faced with the more general proposition
that ‘[national/local] political issues are too complex to be decided by
everyone voting in a referendum and should be left to [Parliament/the
local council] to decide’, 65 per cent disagreed. That indicates rather
firm public support for referenda despite our intentionally discourag-
ing question wording. But it was support for direct democracy at any
level rather than for specifically local referenda. In fact support for
referenda in national politics ran at 69 per cent while support for
referenda in local politics ran at only 61 per cent.
Another traditional mechanism of direct democracy, now part of
New Labour’s local government reform programme, is a directly
elected executive mayor. We found public support for that was even
higher. Although we avoided the somewhat ambiguous and Anglo-
centric term ‘mayor’ in our interviews, 78 per cent of the public
agreed that ‘the leader of the council should be directly elected by
Note: * The two versions of each question were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
voters to [represent/carry out the will of] the people as a whole, and
not be elected by councillors as at present’. Our wording posed a
clear choice between a directly or indirectly elected chief executive.
Support for directly elected council leaders was very high every-
where. It only varied by a few per cent across the regions of Britain.
Significantly, it was lowest in London at 72 per cent. That was still a
very high figure. But what distinguished Londoners from others in
our survey was their unusually high level of support for a London-
wide tier of regional government rather than unusually high support
for an elected mayor.
Along with public support for a greater role for themselves as voters,
there was public support for a reduction in the number of their elected
representatives. We suggested that ‘council decisions would be
improved by having [more/less] councillors on each council than at
present’. Only 26 per cent agreed that more councillors would improve
decisions, while 58 per cent agreed that fewer councillors would do so.
Monitoring quangos
Elected local councils won more support when contrasted with non-
elected bodies than when contrasted with the people themselves. We
reminded our respondents that ‘many local services are no longer pro-
vided by elected local councils but by specialist bodies like health
authorities (boards in Scotland), NHS trusts, Training and Enterprise
Councils (Local Enterprise Companies in Scotland), and school boards’.
Then we asked how these non-elected bodies should relate to central
and local government. We divided our respondents randomly into two
half-samples.
Institutional Preferences 113
Once again, we used the facilities of our CATI program to permute the
sequencing of these alternatives randomly to avoid any tendency for
people to opt for the first or the last of a set of three somewhat wordy
alternatives. A clear majority (57 per cent) said local councils should
have powers of investigation but not of control. Another 26 per cent
went further and said councils should have powers of control. And only
18 per cent said councils should have no powers of oversight, leaving
these non-elected bodies to manage their own affairs.
Taken together, these two questions show, very clearly, the degree
and nature of public support for local council monitoring of appointed
quangos. Overwhelmingly the public felt that these quangos should be
monitored, and monitored by local rather than central government.
However, they did appear to feel that powers of investigation rather
than control would be sufficient to keep quangos in order. If glasnost
could destroy the Soviet Union it might be sufficient to control local
NHS trusts.
114 Models of Local Governance
*People should only have to pay for local services they use personally 34
*Everyone should contribute through taxation to the cost of
local services whether they use them or not 83
Note: * These two questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
Institutional Preferences 115
A large majority of the public (70 per cent) agreed that ‘it really does
not matter whether local services are run by elected councils,
appointed boards, or private business as long as they keep the quality
up while keeping charges and taxes down.’ Among the public, purely
ideological commitment to particular forms of local service provision
seemed weak. In particular, this was reflected in a remarkably weak
Note: Rows sorted by per cent naming national subsidy as best for funding the service.
116 Models of Local Governance
Mean score
on ± 5 scale
Best way to organise and control local services:
elected council 2.6
service-providers, e.g. teachers running schools 0.7
service-users, e.g. parents running schools 0.1
experts appointed by central govt –0.1
businessmen appointed by central govt –0.5
private companies charging for use of service –0.8
Note: Entries sorted by ratings for ‘best way to organize and control local services’.
Institutional Preferences 117
Best way to make sure people get the services they want is to let
them organize them through voluntary groups and associations 39
Notes:
1. Rows sorted by per cent saying control of the service should rest mainly with the local
council.
2. There were very few ‘don’t knows’ on every one of the ‘should control’ but larger
numbers of DKs on the ‘actually does control’ questions. These reached 10 per cent on
hospitals, 11 per cent on unemployment benefits and 30 per cent on ‘help for local
business’.
Institutional Preferences 119
Influences
Most attitudes towards the best scale of operation and control of local
services were relatively unaffected by social background, strength of
local identity, or political ideology. However, there was one exception:
the question of whether there should be an elected assembly for the
respondent’s region. Regional government was relatively unpopular
among older people, middle-class identifiers, those who placed them-
selves ‘on the right’ rather than ‘on the left’, and Conservative party
120 Models of Local Governance
Oppose
regional
assembly 16 14 –13 15 20
Central
government to
have the final
say 11 – – 14 13
Appointed
bodies should
be left to run
their own
affairs – – – 15 18
Appointed
bodies should
be responsible
to central
government – – – 14 –
Notes:
1. Identification with locality (district or region) was coded on an 11-point scale from –5 to
+5. We have used identification with the district, except for the question about regional
assemblies, where the correlation was, reasonably enough, slightly higher with regional
identification
2. ‘Right-wing self-image’ was coded on a 7-point scale: strongly left, left, centre-left,
centre, centre-right, right, strongly right.
3. Correlations less than 0.10 replaced by a dash.
Institutional Preferences 121
Support for referenda varied very little with social or political back-
ground, but opposition to the proposal for elected mayors was stronger
among the middle class and the highly educated, though it was largely
unaffected by local identification or left/right ideology.
Opposition to complete dependence upon usercharges for local ser-
vices came mainly from the old rather than, as might have been
expected, from self-proclaimed left-wingers. Age apart, the lack of cor-
relation reflected a very general view that local government services
should be funded mainly by local or national taxes.
Leaving private companies to provide local services was most
popular among right-wingers and Conservatives but it was unaffected
by other aspects of social and political background, including local
identity. Even the correlation between support for private companies
and ideology or party was only evident on half of the local services we
discussed in our interviews. Right-wingers were clearly more favourable
to private companies providing refuse disposal services, water and elec-
tricity, but only slightly more inclined than others to see a role for
private firms in hospitals, and still less so in schools, the police, unem-
ployment benefits or encouraging local businesses.
Right-wingers and Conservatives were particularly likely to agree that
the institutional form of local governance ‘did not matter’ as long as the
quality and cost of local services was right. The highly educated were
particularly likely to disagree. But perhaps it is worth noting that local
identification had little effect upon answers to this question and, in so
far as it had any at all, those who identified most strongly with the local-
ity were inclined to agree that institutional forms did not matter.
Table 6.17 Correlations with support for private firms running specific services
Notes:
1. Right-wing self image coded on a 7-point scale: strongly left, left, centre-left, centre,
centre-right, right, strongly right .
2. Correlations less than 0.10 replaced by a dash.
122 Models of Local Governance
Certainly, the public endorsed the view that it did not matter who pro-
vided local services so long as the quality and cost was right. But as a
general mechanism for organizing and controlling local services, the
public rated elected local councils very highly, certainly far higher than
any alternative we offered. Nothing else came close in the public’s esti-
mation. They had a mildly positive attitude towards self-management
by service users or providers. And a mildly but increasingly negative
attitude towards, respectively, appointed boards of ‘experts’, appointed
boards of ‘businessmen’ and private companies operating in the
market.
A table of mean scores for each alternative institution for local gover-
nance emphasizes the fact that elected local councils were universally
seen as the best way to organize local services. Every section of the
Table 6.18 Correlations with institutional ratings
Notes:
1. Identification with district coded on 11-point scale from –5 to +5.
2. Right-wing self image coded on a 7-point scale: strongly left, left, centre-left, centre, centre-right, right, strongly right.
3. Correlations less than 0.10 replaced by a dash, except the correlation between local identification and council rating, which falls just short of
the threshold but is important theoretically.
123
124 Models of Local Governance
Ideological self-image:
left 2.7 89
centre-left 2.7 90
centre 2.3 91
centre-right 2.7 85
right 2.5 73
Identification with
district:
lowest quintile
(score <0) 2.5 82
second (score 0) 2.4 85
mid quintile
(score 1,2) 2.4 84
fourth (score 3,4) 2.5 88
highest quintile
(score 5) 3.0 87
Years lived in district:
lowest quintile
(<9yrs) 2.5 86
second (9–19) 2.5 86
mid quintile
(20–29) 2.6 83
fourth (30–44) 2.4 87
highest quintile
(45 or more) 2.9 86
Participation in local
elections:
voted in last local
election 2.7 86
did not vote 2.3 85
3.5
3 Elected council
2.5
2
1.5
1 Providers
0.5 Users
Experts
0
–0.5 Businessmen
–1 The market
–1.5
–2
Lowest quintile Middle Highest quintile
Strenght of identification with the district
126 Models of Local Governance
3
2.5
Elected council
2
1.5
1
Providers
0.5
0 Users
–0.5 Experts
–1 Businessmen
–1.5 The market
–2
Left Centre Right
Left–right ideology
Ideological self-image:
left –1.4 –0.6 0 0.8 –1.6
centre-left –0.6 0 0.1 0.7 –1.1
centre –0.7 0.2 0 0.7 –0.8
centre-right –0.2 0.2 0.5 0.8 –0.5
right 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.5 0
Identification with district:
lowest quintile (score < 0) –1.1 –1.0 –0.4 0.2 –1.4
second (score 0) –0.7 –0.3 0.1 0.6 –0.8
mid quintile (score 1,2) –0.5 –0.2 0 0.8 –0.8
fourth (score 3,4) –0.2 0.3 0.3 0.8 –0.6
highest quintile (score 5) –0.3 0.3 0.5 1.0 –0.8
Years lived in district:
lowest quintile (< 9yrs) –0.9 –0.4 0 0.6 –1.1
second (9–19) –0.3 –0.3 0.1 0.5 –0.8
mid quintile (20–29) –0.8 –0.2 0 0.8 –0.9
fourth (30–44) –0.4 0 0.3 0.9 –0.7
highest quintile (45 or more) –0.1 0.6 0.3 0.8 –0.6
Participation in local elections:
voted in last local election –0.5 –0.1 0.2 0.7 –0.9
did not vote –0.4 0.1 0.1 0.8 –0.7
127
128 Models of Local Governance
95
85
80
By right-wing
ideology
75
70
65
Lowest quintile Middle Highest quintile
Ideology and local identification both arrayed along the horizontal axis
The key point in this argument is not whether those who run our
public services are elected, but whether they are producer-responsive
or consumer-responsive. Services are not necessarily made to
respond to the public simply by giving citizens a democratic voice,
and a distant and diffuse one at that, in their make up.3
Institutional Preferences 129
130
Governing Perspectives 131
Links to locality
Councillors were no more likely to have been born in the region or dis-
trict where they lived than the public generally. Yet, paradoxically,
they were far more likely than the public to be long-term residents of
the locality. The paradox is explained in part by the fact that council-
lors were, on average, much older than the public generally. But what-
ever the cause, the consequence was that councillors were 17 per cent
more likely than the public to have lived 20 years in the district.
Despite that, councillors were slightly less likely than the public to
have all of their friends or relatives located in the region or the district
where they lived. They were only slightly less likely than the public to
work outside the district and hardly differed from the public in terms
of confining their use of shopping and leisure facilities within the
region or district. So, across the full range of our objective measures of
links to the locality, we cannot describe councillors as unambiguously
more (or less) local than the public.
By contrast, appointed board members were significantly less likely
than either councillors or the public to have been born in the region or
the district where they now lived. And while councillors were 17 per
cent more likely than the public to have lived in the district for
20 years, DHA/HB board members were slightly less likely than the
public to have done so, and TEC/LEC board members 11 per cent less.
132
Born…
in Britain? 92 91 92 92
in region? 67 61 49 52
in district? 36 31 20 19
Lived in region for 20 years or more 80 88 67 79
Lived in district for 20 years or more 60 77 49 58
All relatives…
in region 47 42 30 34
in district 19 17 11 12
All friends…
in region 59 55 32 36
in district 34 27 14 16
Workplace located…
within district 38 40 57 48
outside district 27 22 37 30
Use shopping or leisure facilities entirely…
within region 82 79 65 71
within district 50 54 27 36
Table 7.2 Interest in local issues
Local issues and what local council does 1.9 4.6 2.9 2.9
National issues and what Parliament and govt do 2.0 3.9 3.6 3.6
European issues and what European Community does 0.4 2.3 2.1 1.8
Note: All scores measured on a scale from minus 5 to plus 5. Entries sorted by councillors’ levels of interest.
133
Table 7.3 Local information
134
Note: Entries for perceived control of services sorted in descending order of councillors’ perceptions.
Governing Perspectives 135
Appointed board members were about 10 per cent less likely than
councillors to have all their relatives living in the region. They were
21 per cent less likely than councillors to have all their friends living in
the region. Conversely, only 36 per cent of DHA/HB board members,
and 27 per cent of TEC/LEC board members, compared to 50 per cent
of the public and 54 per cent of councillors, relied on their district for
shopping and leisure facilities. On everything except their workplace –
though that is a very significant exception – board members had
significantly fewer objective links to their locality than the public, and
TEC/LEC board members especially so.
All elites, elected or appointed, expressed more interest than the
public in political issues of any kind including local, national and
European issues. But as we might expect, councillors were uniquely
interested in local issues and local council activities, far more even
than members of appointed boards.
Councillors and board members hardly differed from the public in
their attention to local newspapers and local news programmes on
radio or television. But both were far more likely than the public to
have attended a parents’ meeting at a school or a public meeting on a
local issue, councillors about 15 per cent more even than board
members. And both councillors and board members were better
informed than the public about the control of local services and the
funding of local government. Overall therefore in terms of interest and
information, board members were closer to elected councillors than to
the public, somewhat less obsessed with local affairs than councillors,
but much more informed and participant in local affairs than the
public.
Identifications
Local governance elites differed little from the public in terms of their
identification with friends or family or even with their birthplace, their
region or with Britain as a whole. Even differences in the extent
(though not necessarily the direction, however) of identification with a
class or religion were small, though board members’ identification with
class was relatively weak. But the elites, whether elected or appointed,
identified much more strongly than the public with their workplace.
And for very different reasons no doubt, elites identified much more
strongly than the public with Europe.
Figure 7.1 shows that councillors had a unique attachment to the
very narrow locality in which they lived. They identified much more
strongly with their local district or their home neighbourhood (by
136 Models of Local Governance
4
Mean scores on 5 point scale
3.5
3
2.5
2 Public
Councillors
1.5
TEC/LECs
1 DHA/HBs
0.5
0
–0.5
–1
with with with with with
Europe Britain Region District a Party
Notes: All scores measured on a scale from minus 5 to plus 5. Entries sorted by councillors’
identifications.
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half samples. Figures are the percentages who answer with an
unqualified ‘yes’.
Table 7.6 Local exclusiveness
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half samples. Figures are the percentages who positively agree.
139
140 Models of Local Governance
But other things were very unlikely to be equal in this case. The people
appointed to local governance boards were likely to have an unusual
interest in locally provided public services. Right-wingers these
appointees might be, but very atypical right-wingers.
Minimalism
Elites and public differed little on support for universal services or on
special services for the needy. But elites, especially councillors, were
relatively unenthusiastic about providing extra payable services for
business, and relatively favourable towards ‘quality of life’ subsidies for
theatres, concert halls and sports centres. Councillors were 23 per cent
less favourable than the public to the provision of extra payable ser-
vices yet, at the same time, 18 per cent more favourable than the
public towards ‘quality of life’ subsidies.
Averaging support across all four categories of local government ser-
vices, DHA/HB boards were as favourable as councillors, and TEC/LEC
boards slightly more so. Despite their relatively right-wing ideology,
therefore, board members certainly did not take a minimalist view on
local council services. Their entrepreneurial spirit was too strong for
that. The public differed from the elite, and rival elites differed from
each other, not so much in their commitment to minimalist or exten-
sive public services as in the mix of categories of public services that
they supported.
Ideological polarization was greater among councillors than among
the public. Amongst both councillors and the public at large, right-
wingers were more favourable than left-wingers to providing extra
payable services, and less favourable than left-wingers towards provid-
ing ‘quality of life’ subsidies. But the extent of ideological polarization
was much greater among councillors. Left and right differed on the
question of extra payable services by 14 per cent among the public but
by 22 per cent among councillors. And on ‘quality of life’ subsidies by
only 5 per cent among the public but by 17 per cent among council-
lors. Board members were less ideologically polarized than councillors,
but more so than the public.
Note: Votes as percentages of those who opted for one of the three main parties.
Governing Perspectives 143
wants and is willing to pay for’. And appointed board members were
only about 10 per cent less likely than councillors or the public to say
local government should provide ‘as few or as many services as the
local community decide’.
There was very much more support for national standards when the
concept was put more positively, by asking whether ‘Parliament should
decide national standards for public services and require local councils
to meet those standards everywhere’. But once again appointed board
members were only about 10 per cent more favourable than council-
lors or the public towards national standards.
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half
samples.
144 Models of Local Governance
A mission to mobilize?
Appointed board members hardly differed from the public on ques-
tions of local development, and councillors were only slightly more
inclined to say that local government should ‘actively encourage local
business’ rather than ‘leave economic development to the market’, or
still less ‘to central government’. Councillors were also only very
slightly more inclined than the public or appointed board members to
support discriminatory local preference in purchasing goods and
services.
Perhaps the surprise is that business-dominated TEC/LEC boards
were as willing as the public (and almost as willing as councillors) to
agree that ‘local government should actively encourage local business’
and yet no more willing than the public to back a purchasing prefer-
ence for local businesses. Adam Smith famously alleged that any
meeting of businessmen was a conspiracy against the public interest
and in favour of their own very particular interests. But despite their
right-wing ideology and their business background, TEC/LEC boards
were as ‘socialist’ oriented as the public in terms of public intervention
to encourage development. And despite their particularly local business
connections, they were no more inclined than the public to advocate
special favours for local businessmen. In these respects, their ‘public
spirit’ seemed to triumph over both their political ideology and their
narrow business interests.
Table 7.10 The Tiebout relocation thesis
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
145
146
Note: * These versions of the questions were put to randomly selected subsamples.
Note: * These four versions of the question were put to randomly selected quarter-samples.
Entries sorted by councillors’ views.
margin among councillors themselves but far different from the public.
The public were fairly evenly divided as to whether or not local coun-
cils took decisions that represented local views and, on balance, they
were slightly more inclined to claim that council decisions were unrep-
resentative than representative.
Less dramatically, by a margin of 20 per cent the public were
inclined to allege that councils relied too much on experts. Councillors
and DHA/HB members were ambivalent about this. But TEC/LEC
members were more inclined (by a margin of 16 per cent the other
way) to suggest that councils relied too little on expert opinion and too
much on the wishes of their voters.
Personally, councillors and board members felt more efficacious than
the public. They were about 20 per cent more likely to claim that the
people they met in everyday life generally took account of their views
and opinions. So it would not be surprising if councillors and board
members were also more inclined than the public to feel that local gov-
ernment institutions cared about their views. What is interesting is the
way these feelings differed across institutions and between councillors
and board members.
Councillors differed most from the public in their feelings about the
responsiveness of councils (by 33 per cent). They differed less in their
feelings about local enterprise companies (by 24 per cent) and the
police (by only 12 per cent). And they did not differ at all from the
public in their feelings about the responsiveness of local health author-
ities.
Board members were almost identical to councillors in terms of per-
sonal efficacy, that is in their feeling that the people they met in every-
day life generally took account of their views and opinions. And their
views about the extent to which the local council or the local police
took account of their views closely mirrored the views of councillors
themselves. On these matters, the views of appointed board members
and elected councillors were very similar to each other, and very differ-
ent from those of the public.
But councillors and board members parted company when asked
whether quango boards, such as the local health authority or the local
enterprise company, cared about their views. Moreover, they distin-
guished very sharply between TEC/LEC and DHA/HB boards. Roughly
a quarter of councillors and of DHA/HB board members, but very few
of the TEC/LEC board members, alleged that the local enterprise
company did not care about their views. Conversely, a quarter of
TEC/LEC board members as well as half the councillors, but very few of
Table 7.15 Representation
Note: * These two versions of the questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
151
152 Models of Local Governance
the DHA/HB board members, alleged that the local health authority
did not care about their views.
It is particularly illuminating to compare the views of board
members towards other boards with their views about their local
council. Let us take TEC/LEC board members first: 22 per cent of
them alleged that the local health authority did not care, but only 8
per cent that the local council did not care. Conversely, 28 per cent
of the DHA/HB board members alleged that the local enterprise
company did not care, but only 16 per cent that the local council did
not care. So members of each appointed board were far more critical
of the other appointed board than they were of the elected council.
There was no community of interest or ideology between members of
different appointed boards in this respect. With the exception of
their own board, they each held a significantly more favourable
image of elected than appointed local governance – at least in terms
of responsiveness.
Note: * These four versions of the question were put to randomly selected quarter-samples. Entries sorted by councillors’ views.
153
154
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
Table 7.18 Too much or too little influence?
Notes: Entries sorted by attitudes of councillors. Although the question only asked whether each group had ‘too much or too little influence’, large
numbers of respondents replied ‘neither too much nor too little – about right’, or words to that effect. Excluding the question about central
government on which opinions were more one-sided, the numbers replying ‘neither’ ranged from 21 per cent to 32 per cent among the public;
from 45 per cent to 68 per cent among councillors; and from 38 per cent to 68 per cent among appointed board members. Consequently, we have
not excluded such answers from our calculation of percentages in this table, and instead report the difference between the ‘too much’ and ‘too
little’ percentages, calculated as percentages of all three responses – ‘too much’, ‘too little’ and ‘neither’.
155
156 Models of Local Governance
Effectiveness
The public was highly suspicious of waste in public services, but far
more suspicious of central government than local government. Elites
were less suspicious than the public. But while councillors were 44 per
cent less likely than the public to allege waste by the local council,
TEC/LEC members were only 32 per cent less and DHA/HB members
only 15 per cent less likely to do so. Local governance elites were more
united in alleging waste by central government, however.
Opinion among councillors, board members and the public was
fairly evenly balanced on the question of over- or under-provision of
local services. The striking difference was that so many of the public
would agree with either proposition – indicating a lack of firm
opinion on the issue – while local governance elites were much more
willing to defend the existing level of council provision by rejecting
both propositions.
158
Local councillors …
*have the good of the community at heart 79 98 90 90
*are in it for personal gain 42 7 15 21
*have a sense of duty towards their fellow citizens 80 96 93 92
*just want people to look up to them 44 13 33 27
People appointed to DHA/HBs …
*have the good of the community at heart 66 69 87 97
*are in it for personal gain 31 32 11 3
*have a sense of duty towards their fellow citizens 73 67 83 98
*just want people to look up to them 31 25 18 5
People appointed to TEC/LECs …
*have the good of the community at heart 73 70 93 81
*are in it for personal gain 41 22 3 17
*have a sense of duty towards their fellow citizens 70 66 94 78
*just want people to look up to them 37 23 9 16
Local councils like the council in [district] …
*are generally more corrupt than private businesses 35 5 10 19
*are generally less corrupt than private businesses 51 80 38 34
Note: * These two versions of the questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
Governing Perspectives 159
70
50
30
Public
10
Councillors
–10 TEC/LECs
DHA/HBs
–30
–50
–70
less corrupt more efficient
Compared to private businesses, local councils are ...
160 Models of Local Governance
90
% ‘good organizers’ minus % ‘not very good’
70
50 Ratings by:
Public
30 Councillors
TEC/LECs
10 DHA/HBs
–10
–30
councillors DHA/HBs TEC/LESs
efficient efficient efficient
Are councillors or appointed board members efficient?
case, the public took a view that was intermediate between board
members and councillors.
• Each elite had a uniquely favourable perception of its own capabili-
ties. Councillors were uniquely favourable to councillors, DHA/HB
members to DHA/HB members, and TEC/LEC members to TEC/LEC
members. The scale of this tendency towards self-admiration was
large.
• But each appointed elite was only a little more favourable than
the public towards the other appointed elite. DHA/HB members’
perceptions of TEC/LEC members were only slightly more
favourable than the public’s perceptions of TEC/LEC members.
Conversely, TEC/LEC members’ perceptions of DHA/HB members
were only slightly more favourable than the public’s perceptions
of DHA/HB members.
Note: * These two versions of the questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples.
161
162 Models of Local Governance
Note: * These five versions of the question were put to randomly selected subsamples.
Entries sorted by councillors’ actions.
Note: Entries sorted by councillors’ views, except for entries related to TEC/LECs or DHA/HBs which have been sorted by their board members’
views.
167
168 Models of Local Governance
So, as usual, insider effects were remarkably specific and the hierachy
of trust expressed by board members in particular was clear: the board
member’s own board came top; other institutions of local governance,
irrespective of whether they were elected or appointed came next; and
central government came bottom.
Institutional preferences
Local autonomy
Averaging across eight specific local services, councillors were 19 per
cent less inclined than the public to say they should be organized on a
national scale. On individual services, the difference between council-
lors and the public reached 30 per cent or more on whether services
concerned with the environment, pollution or economic development
should be organized on a local or national scale.
But averaging across these eight local services board members were
rather more inclined than councillors to say they should be organized
nationally, though not so much as the public. Of all the local gover-
nance elites, DHA/HB members were the most nationally orientated.
In addition, although board members were less favourable than
councillors towards organizing these services at district level, they were
more favourable even than councillors towards organizing them on a
regional scale.
The national orientation of DHA/HB members was evident in other
ways. They were the most inclined to complain that the area repre-
sented by their district council was too small for effective provision of
Table 7.25 Satisfaction and trust
District Region Britain District Region Britain District Region Britain District Region Britain
% % % % % % % % % % % %
Economic development 20 29 51 38 41 21 33 44 23 17 50 33
Hospitals/health 26 33 41 25 54 21 32 45 22 32 38 30
Environment 30 21 49 57 25 18 32 36 32 34 31 35
Police 32 28 41 37 46 17 32 44 24 30 48 23
Roads 33 29 38 39 47 15 27 49 24 26 48 25
Schools/education 42 29 29 58 30 12 53 31 16 51 30 19
Refuse collection 84 10 6 95 4 1 94 5 1 98 1 1
Leisure services 82 13 5 95 5 0 92 7 1 88 11 1
Average 44 24 32 56 31 13 49 33 18 47 32 21
public services, and yet they were by far the least inclined to support
the idea of elected regional assemblies. Conversely, the public
expressed as much support for an elected regional tier of government
as councillors, and more than board members, but the public was far
less inclined than elites to complain that their district area was too
small.
Democracy
Naturally enough, local governance elites were far less populist than
the public – irrespective of whether these elites were elected or
appointed. So, while 46 per cent of the public opted for local referenda
to fix local government boundaries, only 23 per cent of councillors and
21 per cent of board members agreed. Less obviously, councillors did
not differ from the public on whether boundary revision should be
controlled by local councils or central government. Instead, councillors
were much more inclined than the public to place the issue in the
hands of ‘independent experts’. And appointed board members were
even more favourable than councillors to relying on ‘independent
Independent experts 15 33 39 44
Joint committee of local councils 31 31 22 22
Local people in a referendum 46 23 22 19
Central government 9 13 18 16
Support referenda: 65 51 43 50
*in national politics 69 58 45 51
*in local politics 61 45 40 48
difference: in local – in national –8 –13 –5 –3
Council leader should be directly
elected 78 18 38 37
Better to have:
*more councillors 26 11 8 8
*fewer councillors 58 21 57 52
difference: fewer – more 32 10 49 44
174 Models of Local Governance
80
70
60
50
Per cent
Public
Councillors
40
TEC/LECs
30 DHA/HBs
20
10
0
to local to central to no-one
council government
Non-elected bodies should be responsible to ...
Note: * These two versions of the question were put to randomly selected split-half
samples.
Natl User- Local Natl User- Local Natl User- Local Natl User- Local
subs chg taxes subs chg taxes subs chg taxes subs chg taxes
% % % % % % % % % % % %
4
Mean scores on 5 point scale
2 Public
Councillors
1 TEC/LECs
DHA/HBs
0
–1
–2
–3
elected service service appointed private
council users providers boards companies
2-point difference between the public and elites and not much differ-
ence among the elites themselves. Elected councillors and appointed
board members held similar views on service providers just as they had
on service users, but this time their views were strongly negative and at
variance with the views of the public.
There was a divergence between public and elite on the value of vol-
untary and community groups. The public was very enthusiastic about
them at least for representation and exerting pressure (68 per cent in
favour), and moderately enthusiastic about them for actually running
services (39 per cent in favour). But councillors were overwhelmingly
sceptical about the value of such groups either for representation or for
management (83 per cent unfavourable). Board members were consid-
erably more sympathetic than councillors to such groups as mecha-
nisms of representation and pressure, though less sympathetic than the
public. But board members were just as hostile as councillors to the
suggestion that services were best organized through ‘voluntary
groups’.
When asked whether local councils, private companies or central
government should control eight specific local services, councillors’
choices were very similar on average to those of the public, though
slightly more favourable than the public towards local councils and
less favourable than the public towards central government.
Compared to councillors, appointed board members were 12 per
cent less inclined to say these services should be run by local councils
and 9 per cent more inclined to opt for private companies. The differ-
ence varied across the eight services. Board members differed most
from councillors on refuse collection and electricity. On refuse collec-
tion, 30 per cent of board members but only 12 per cent of councillors
opted for private companies, entirely at the expense of local council
control. And on electricity, 58 per cent of board members but only
37 per cent of councillors opted for private companies, mainly at the
expense of central government control. But board members agreed
with councillors that private companies should not have a major role
in education, health, distributing unemployment benefits or policing.
Although the private security industry is now larger than the police
itself, it seems that no one in our survey thought of ‘policing’ in such
terms.
To a large extent preferences reflected perceptions of the actual situa-
tion. But in so far as preferences differed from perceptions the public
wanted more central government control and less private involvement,
and councillors wanted more local government control and less private
180
Local Private Central Local Private Central Local Private Central Local Private Central
council co. govt council co. govt council co. govt council co. govt
% % % % % % % % % % % %
188
Testing Models against Public Opinion 189
Sociological assumptions
We found that over the course of a person’s life only a small minority
live within a local authority area. At the time when we interviewed
them 92 per cent claimed to have been born in Britain, but only 67 per
cent in the region where they now lived, and a mere 36 per cent in the
local authority district where they now lived. And before their lives
ended, many of those who were still in the region or district of their
birth at the time of the interview would, in all probability, have moved
away.
A less long-term, whole-life view suggests higher levels of stability:
60 per cent had lived at least 20 years in their current local authority
district and 80 per cent had lived that long in their region.
192 Models of Local Governance
On the other hand, mere residence is not all. We found that only
half the residents restricted their shopping and leisure activities to the
local district and that almost as many (27 per cent) worked outside the
district as inside it (38 per cent). Only a third said that all their friends
lived in the same district and less than a fifth that all their relatives did
so. Half regularly went outside the district for leisure or shopping pur-
poses.
For the majority of people, life was not lived exclusively within the
narrow confines of a single local authority district. On the other hand,
we could make the case that a majority lived their lives within the
wider confines of the region: 67 per cent were born in their region (as
we have defined ‘region’, one of the ten into which we divided
Britain), 80 per cent were long-term residents of the region, 59 per cent
said all their friends lived there and almost half that all their relatives
lived there. Only 18 per cent went outside the region for leisure or
shopping purposes. So the sociological assumptions of the ‘localist
model’ are clearly false for local authority districts though more valid
in terms of regions.
More clearly still, the sociological assumptions of the mobilization
model are false, at least for the population as a whole. If only a small
minority live their lives in a single council district, an even smaller
number must live their lives within the confines of a single neighbour-
hood. But of course, the mobilization model focuses on those particu-
lar sections of society that lack income, education and physical
well-being. It is not really intended as a prescription for the population
as a whole. More of those who need mobilizing do indeed live spatially
restricted lives. Judged by whether they had lived in the same district
for 20 years or more, we found that those who had no school
certificates were 18 per cent more locally rooted than those who had
school certificates and 35 per cent more than university graduates.
Manual workers were 24 per cent more locally rooted than those in
management. Judged by whether their shopping and leisure activities
were confined within their region the poor (those who said their
family income was ‘not enough to survive on’) were 19 per cent more
locally oriented than the rich (those whose family income was ‘enough
for a good standard of living’). The relatively uneducated, the manual
working class, the old, the poor and the tenants on council estates
were indeed tied more than others to life within the narrow confines of
a district and perhaps even within a neighbourhood.
The ‘centralist model’ assumes that people live in Britain as a
whole rather than being restricted to a specific locality. We found
Testing Models against Public Opinion 193
that people do move around Britain in large numbers, but not round
the whole of Britain. They frequently venture beyond a local author-
ity district for shopping, leisure, housing or work. But only a minor-
ity move outside their region. So while only a minority live within
the confines of a district, an even smaller minority live in Britain as a
whole. Socially and materially, life is more typically regional than
either local or national.
The ‘individualist model’ assumes that life is in essence private: that
it is lived within the family, the circle of close friends, or even on a
purely individual basis. The individual only interacts with the world
beyond the circle of family and friends in order to buy in goods and
services. The individual may appear to be living within the district,
within the region or even more widely. But in fact the individual is
really living in a private world that is probably very small indeed in
terms of the number of its inhabitants, though not necessarily in terms
of locality. The ‘individualist model’ makes no assumptions about the
physical space within which life is lived but it does make strong
assumptions about psychological identifications.
We can summarize our test of the sociological assumptions underly-
ing these various models by drawing up a scorecard (see Table 8.1).
Psychological assumptions
The psychological space in which people live, and with which they
identify, is equally important for the ‘localist’, ‘mobilization’ and ‘cen-
tralist’ models. And it is particularly important for the ‘individualist’
model. The ‘localist’ and ‘mobilization’ models assume that people are
interested and informed about their locality, the ‘centralist’ and ‘indi-
vidualist’ that they are not.
We found that people admitted to being less likely to vote in local
than in national elections. But they nonetheless claimed to be as inter-
ested in local issues and what their local council did as they were in
national issues and what Parliament did. And they claimed to be far
more interested in both local and national affairs than in European
issues and what the EU did. Almost half read a local evening paper,
and three-quarters followed local news on television or in local weekly
papers. At a minimum level of information, a majority clearly knew
that local authorities provided services such as refuse collection,
schools and police, but that they did not provide hospitals, unemploy-
ment benefits or help for local businesses. Only 9 per cent thought
they supplied electricity and more remarkably a large majority were
already aware that they no longer supplied water and sewage services.
194
Localist People live their lives in local districts Not true for local authority districts; – for district
more true for regions + for region
Individualist No assumption about the physical (as distinct from Physical test not relevant not relevant
psychological) space in which people live
Mobilization People live their lives in neighbourhoods Not true for the public as a whole; more – for whole
true for target groups – the uneducated, public
the working class, the old, the poor + for sections
Centralist People live their lives in a wide spatial area such as Not true for Britain as a whole; more – for Britain
Britain as a whole true for regions + for regions
Testing Models against Public Opinion 195
The low educated and the working class were relatively uninter-
ested in political affairs on a British or European scale but,
significantly for the mobilization model, they were about as inter-
ested in local affairs as anyone else. And they were more likely than
others to read a local evening paper or a local weekly, or to follow
local affairs on television.
The ‘localist model’ assumes that people identify strongly with
their local authority area, and the ‘centralist model’ that they iden-
tify strongly with Britain as a whole. The ‘mobilization model’
assumes that they identify, or can be mobilized into identifying,
more with ‘people like themselves’ – that is, people who live in their
immediate neighbourhood and who have similar social characteris-
tics to themselves. And the ‘individualist model’ assumes that, if
they identify with other people at all, it is primarily with their
family and friends.
Our measure of the strength of identification ran from a possible
minimum of minus five to a possible maximum of plus five. On that
scale, identification with the local authority district averaged plus 2.0.
So people do identify quite strongly with their local district as the
‘localist model’ assumes. But they identified more strongly with their
region (at 2.7) and still more with Britain (at 3.0). So the assumptions
of the ‘centralist model’ clearly get more support than those of a pure
‘localist model’ based on districts, though not much more than a
‘localist model’ based on regions. An ‘internationalist model’ focused
on Europe would score very badly indeed since identification with
Europe averaged zero.
The level of identification with districts might provide a justification
for a limited degree of local autonomy within the framework of nation-
ally defined policy. But by the same token, the level of identification
with regions would justify a more equal relationship between regional
and national government. Since the level of regional identification
varied across the regions of England, and both regional and (British)
national identification varied once we crossed beyond the English
borders, the varying levels of identification actually would justify:
Localist People are interested and informed about local affairs Yes +
Individualist People are not interested and informed about local affairs No –
Mobilization People are interested and informed about local affairs Yes, and target groups more locally
oriented +
Centralist People are not interested and informed about local affairs No –
Testing Models against Public Opinion 197
Localist People identify strongly with local districts Yes, but even more with regions and Britain +
Individualist People identify with family and friends They identify more strongly with family + for strength
only than with anything else – but not – for
exclusively exclusiveness
Mobilization People identify most with specific Yes, but only for neighbourhoods of +
neighbourhoods or social groups residence. Target groups identify more than
others with localities and social groups
Centralist People identify most with Britain Overall, they identify more strongly with +
Britain than with localities – but this is only
clearly true for the South and Midlands of
England
Testing Models against Public Opinion 199
We did not ask about pride in the neighbourhood. But the target
groups of the mobilization model were much more willing than others
to admit to vicarious pride or shame. Not only that, but they were even
more sensitive than others to actions that were linked to their locality.
Compared to graduates, the low educated were 22 per cent more likely
to feel such pride or shame about things done by someone ‘from else-
where in Britain’ but about 32 per cent more likely to feel such pride or
shame about things done by someone from their region or district.
Similarly the poor were 8 per cent more likely than the rich to feel
pride/shame about things done by someone ‘from elsewhere in Britain’
but were about 16 per cent more likely to feel such pride/shame about
things done by someone from their region or district. Local authority
tenants were by far the most likely to feel such vicarious pride/shame
and private renters the least – but once again the difference between
them was greatest when it concerned actions by local people.
The four models differ sharply on social responsibility and exclusion.
The ‘localist model’ assumes a sense of ‘local citizenship’ involving
both a special right to local authority services and a special duty
towards others who live in the locality. A clear majority (61 per cent)
said they felt more responsible for the welfare of the inhabitants of
their district than for the welfare of the inhabitants of their region,
though only 47 per cent felt they had more responsibility for the
welfare of others in their region than for others throughout Britain.
Nonetheless even that 47 per cent is inconsistent with a pure ‘central-
ist model’, which would admit no citizenship more local than national
citizenship. And it is also inconsistent with the ‘individualist model’
which views people as customers for services rather than as citizens of
any kind. Customers have no rights to anything other than what they
purchase for themselves.
Like the ‘localist’ and ‘centralist’ models, the ‘mobilization model’
also accepts that those who do not have rights as paying customers
may still have a right to services, but the justification for such rights
under the ‘mobilization model’ is based more on ‘human rights’ –
applicable to people simply by virtue of their common humanity and
above all their need for services, rather than their ‘citizenship’.
Citizenship implies a right to services and benefits merely by virtue of
citizenship, even though the recipient has not paid for them and there-
fore has no rights as a paying customer. But the status of ‘citizen’ is
restrictive, just like that of ‘customer’. Citizenship implies that some
people are citizens while others are not, just as some are paying cus-
tomers and others are not. Citizenship, like customer status, has to be
200
Localist Emotionally involved with district Yes: pride strongest for district +
Individualist Emotionally involved only with family No –
Mobilization Emotionally involved mainly with neighbourhood Not tested explicitly. Target groups Not tested
more sensitive than others, and
especially to actions by locals
Centralist Emotionally involved only with Britain No –
Testing Models against Public Opinion 201
but four out of five seemed very reluctant to place any significant
limits on access to local citizenship. Mere residence (without a
minimum time period) was clearly enough for them and, although we
did not test views on it explicitly, perhaps even mere presence was
enough.
Indeed, the public displayed a curious mixture of ‘localist’ and ‘cen-
tralist’ views about citizenship. Locality seemed to impose a duty of
care (which made the majority ‘localist’), yet without conferring privi-
leged access (which made the majority ‘centralist’). Paradoxically, this
combination of attitudes is consistent with the ‘mobilization model’ in
so far as it focuses on need rather than citizenship though that model
focuses especially on relatively small areas of deprivation. Though not
concerned with equal rights to local services in the nation as a whole,
it would not differentiate between needy individuals within the small
areas of its immediate concern.
The four models take very different views about the proper ideological
objectives of local government. The ‘localist model’ suggests local gov-
ernment should be autonomous with respect to central government
though accountable to its own electorate. The ‘centralist model’ sug-
gests that it should be an agent for central government and accountable
to it. The ‘mobilization model’ emphasizes the need to change society
and change the disadvantaged themselves by encouraging the weak to
demand more services and more power, rather than focusing on
accountability in any form. And the ‘individualist model’ suggests that
government of any kind, local or national, is at best a necessary evil
and one that should be minimized.
Local autonomy
In broad ideological terms we found overwhelming support for at least
‘standard raising autonomy’. Although 75 per cent also wanted central
government to ‘set national standards’, most of them (67 out of the
75 per cent) also said councils should be free to provide whatever ser-
vices local people wanted and were willing to pay for. Thus 67 per cent
supported ‘standard raising autonomy’ though not ‘standard lowering
autonomy’. In addition, another 24 per cent supported unqualified
autonomy for local government. Because even ‘standard raising auton-
omy’ involves a degree of local autonomy it fits the ‘localist model’
and not the ‘centralist’. Conversely, public insistence on at least main-
Table 8.5 Psychological assumptions – local or national citizenship
taining minimum national standards fits the ‘centralist model’ but not
the ‘localist’. But both ‘standard raising autonomy’ and national
minimum standards fit the expansionist aims of the ‘mobilization
model’. And in practice, the minimalist aims of the ‘individualist
model’ mean that its advocates support local autonomy against
national standards (‘standard lowering autonomy’) but cry ‘local
tyranny’ when local autonomy is used to reach a collective decision
to increase local taxes and services. They do not, in fact, support
‘standard raising autonomy’.
Minimalism
We found very little support for the ‘individualist’ model’s minimalist
view: 82 per cent said local government should provide universal ser-
vices, that is services that everyone needs such as refuse collection and
basic police services. Rather less, but not much less (71 per cent),
agreed that local government should provide extra services for
payment: ‘special services for those who are willing to pay extra for
them, like special security patrols for shops and businesses.’ And
almost as many (67 per cent) agreed that it should even provide ‘grants
and subsidies for things that councillors feel make the area a better
place, even if only a few people actually use them – things like
theatres, concert halls or sports centres’. And fully 90 per cent said
councils should provide ‘services which are only used by those in
special need, like the sick or the poor’.
A developmental role
The idea that local government should take a positively developmental
role, evidenced already in support for ‘quality of life’ subsidies, is con-
sistent especially with the ethos of the ‘mobilization model’, though it
is not in conflict with the ‘localist model’. The same could be said of
attitudes towards local authority encouragement of local businesses
and local employment. We found overwhelming support for the view
that local government should be active in local economic develop-
ment, and that it should not leave it either to central government or to
the mysterious workings of the market. Half, though only half, were
willing to go so far against free-market principles as to agree that local
councils should buy from local suppliers in order to boost local
employment even if they charged ‘a little more’. That would be
anathema to either the ‘individualist’ or ‘centralist’ models.
But the clearest test of the mobilization model was provided by ques-
tions that specifically asked about mobilization. Four out of five agreed
Table 8.6 Objectives – local autonomy and national standards
Localist Autonomous with respect to central government Yes to ‘standard raising autonomy’ +
No to ‘standard lowering autonomy’ –
Individualist Minimal government (local or national) Yes to ‘standard raising autonomy’ –
No to ‘standard lowering autonomy’ –
Mobilization A mobilizing force for change Yes to ‘standard raising autonomy’ +
No to ‘standard lowering autonomy’ +
Centralist An agent of central government Yes to minimum national standards +
No to maximum national standards –
205
206
Localist Local government should be free to provide ‘extra’ Yes: public support ‘extra’ local +
services if it wishes services
Individualist Minimal services only No –
Mobilization Local government should definitely provide ‘extra’ Yes: public support ‘extra’ local +
services services
Centralist Only services specified by central government No –
Testing Models against Public Opinion 207
Accountability
Under the ‘localist model’ local government should be accountable to
its own electorate and under the ‘centralist model’ to central govern-
208
Pluralism
Only the traditional ‘localist model’ emphasizes the contribution of
local government to political pluralism. That could happen at two
levels, either within the local authority or within the nation as a
whole. We found that a majority claimed to vote in local elections on
local issues. In so far as they do not, local election voting has been
interpreted as a referendum on central government’s performance.
Either way that might seem to indicate that local elections contribute
to the democratic process at some level.
But we also found that 67 per cent thought (perhaps wrongly) that
the same party nearly always controlled their local council and only
9 per cent thought that party control changed ‘quite often’ – though
17 per cent thought it changed ‘very occasionally’. Other responses
indicated independent or hung councils were the norm. So whatever
the self-conscious motivation for their votes in local elections,
people did not see local elections as a significant mechanism for
choice and change within their own localities.
Advocates of the ‘localist model’ have long recognized the tendency
for one-party dominance within particular local authorities and have
instead stressed the contribution of local government to pluralism in
national politics. Some local authorities would be controlled by the
210
Localist Accountable to the local electorate as a whole Test not relevant Not relevant
Individualist Accountable to local taxpayers No –
Mobilization Act primarily in the interests of the needy Yes +
Centralist Accountable to central government Test not relevant Not relevant
Testing Models against Public Opinion 211
Symbolism
Both the ‘localist’ and the ‘mobilization’ models favour symbolic acts
designed to raise collective consciousness within the locality. The
‘localist model’ would aim to bind the whole local authority area
together, while the ‘mobilization model’ is more concerned to raise the
collective consciousness of smaller areas of deprivation within the local
authority. Conversely, both the ‘centralist’ and ‘individualist’ models,
with their emphasis on efficient service delivery, would reject any kind
of local symbolism as a distraction, a waste of resources and perhaps a
cover for inefficiency and corruption.
212
Such symbols can take many forms: officially sponsored fetes and
galas, unnecessary and extravagant public buildings (for concert halls
or council chambers perhaps), ‘mayoral elections’ and referenda in the
case of the ‘localist model’, or street demonstrations and protests by
the deprived in the case of the ‘mobilization model’. Symbolism is an
elusive topic and one that our survey did not cover well. An inherent
problem is that few symbolic acts are purely symbolic. Most have a
practical justification as well. Extravagant public buildings may serve a
useful, functional purpose and local referenda may contribute towards
democratic decision-making as well as acting as a focus for local con-
sciousness. So although we did ask questions about mayoral elections
and local referenda, some may see these as questions about deepening
and improving democracy rather than indulging in symbolic politics.
Still, even those who advocated the direct election of mayors for big
cities such as London generally recognized that the role would be as
much symbolic as executive. As we found in Chapter 3, identification
with London boroughs was weaker than with local authority districts
in any other part of Britain, and identification with London itself was
weaker than with any other region of Britain. The importance of an
elected London Mayor would be as much to give London a focus and
an identity as to plan for London-wide services.
We found 78 per cent of the public supported directly elected execu-
tive mayors and 61 per cent supported local referenda. In so far as that
represents support for local symbolism, it is consistent with the ‘local-
ist model’ but not with the ‘individualist’ or ‘centralist’ models.
Images
Representative
In particular, the ‘localist model’ suggests that local authorities can and
should be representative of their electors and responsive to them. We
214
found that public opinion was ambivalent about the extent to which
the local council represented the views of local people. Indeed percep-
tions were weak and malleable. Roughly two-thirds of the public would
agree that their own local council did or did not represent the views of
local people, depending entirely on the way we put the question. But
the public was more inclined to agree that local councils paid attention
to the views of experts rather than to their voters. When asked whether
various groups had too much or too little influence over the provision
of local services, the public complained that local voters and ordinary
council workers had far too little influence.
As a perception of actually existing local authorities our findings do
not support the ‘localist model’ as an accurate description. People did
not feel that local authorities actually were as responsive as the ‘localist
model’ suggests they should be. But as an aspiration, these findings do
tend to support the ‘localist model’. The public wanted local govern-
ment to be more responsive to its electorate.
The ‘centralist model’ suggests local government is or should be the
‘agent’ or representative of central government within the locality.
When asked whether various groups had too much or too little
influence over the provision of local services, people were highly criti-
cal of the excessive influence of central government. And they were
inclined to agree that local councils were too willing to accept instruc-
tions from central government. Again we need to distinguish aspira-
tions from perceptions: people wanted less central control, but they
perceived an excessive degree of it. What they wanted was not consis-
tent with the ‘centralist model’, but what they saw in actually existing
local government was something all too consistent with the ‘centralist
model’.
The ‘mobilization model’ suggests local government should pay
most attention to representing the interests of the relatively deprived
sections of the public. We found people were a little more inclined to
agree that councils were dominated by business interests than that
they did not take enough account of business interests. Paradoxically,
when asked whether various groups had too much or too little
influence over the provision of local services they were, by a small
margin, inclined to say that local businessmen had too little. But they
were much more inclined to say that ordinary council workers,
women’s groups and racial and ethnic groups also had too little
influence. A breakdown of opinion by income and education showed
that the poor (those who complained their family income was ‘not
enough to live on’) were 21 per cent more likely than the rich (those
216 Models of Local Governance
who said their family income was ‘enough for a good standard of
living’) to allege that councils ‘did not represent the views of local
people’. And they were 19 per cent more likely than the rich to claim
that councils provided ‘better services in rich areas where people need
them least’.
All the elite groups we interviewed, whether elected councillors or
appointed members of quango boards, said that council services were
biased towards the areas of greatest need within the locality, but the
public did not agree. Rightly or wrongly, and probably wrongly, the
public did not perceive any clear bias of services between rich and poor
areas within their local authority. Certainly there is no evidence here
that the general public perceived a ‘mobilization model’ operating
within their local authority, though they seemed to regret that.
The ‘individualist model’ questions whether government can ever be
representative. It suggests that government develops interests and
ambitions of its own which are not truly representative, though the
‘individualist model’ would still favour individual choice over any col-
lective decision, however representative. We found that the public
decisively rejected any suggestion that elected councillors were in local
politics for reasons of self-interest. By a majority of two to one, people
said councillors were motivated by ‘the good of the community’ or ‘a
sense of duty towards their fellow citizens’ rather than by personal gain
or a desire for self-aggrandisement. The ‘individualist model’ also sug-
gests that government tends to grow unnecessarily, to ‘build empires’
and to ‘over-supply’ services. Possibly that could occur even if politi-
cians were not personally motivated by the desire to build personal
empires. We did find that 47 per cent agreed that councils ‘raise high
local taxes to provide unnecessary services’ against only 41 per cent
who agreed that councils ‘fail to provide services up to proper national
standards because they are unwilling to raise local taxes’. But that dif-
ference is marginal and, given people’s natural antipathy towards tax,
it is perhaps surprising that it was so marginal. It is not enough to out-
weigh the public’s decisive rejection of the notion that councillors
were motivated by self-interest.
they are self-interested, and thence to the suggestion that they are
simply corrupt. However, we found that by a margin of 16 per cent the
public was inclined to view councils as less rather than more corrupt
when compared to private businesses – which is inconsistent with the
‘individualist model’.
The ‘mobilization model’ suggests that councillors are distant,
elitist and insufficiently sympathetic towards the plight of the poor.
Only a minority, though a large minority (41 per cent), felt their
local council did not care about the views of people like themselves,
which was inconsistent with the mobilization model. The poor were
14 per cent more likely than the rich to allege that their local council
did not care about their views. But they differed just as much from
the rich on whether appointed local governance boards and the
police, or even the ‘people they met in everyday life’, disregarded
their views. They felt a bit more neglected by everyone, not just by
local councils.
The public tended to suggest that the media – press, radio or televi-
sion – would be a slightly more effective channel of protest than their
local councillor, even on local government matters. But they seemed to
vote with their feet in favour of using councillors as their main
channel of protest. By their own account, 36 per cent had complained
to their local councillor at some time compared to only 31 per cent
who had ever complained to their MP, 17 per cent to the media and
even less to a health authority or local enterprise company.
Councillors were clearly more approachable than most other channels
of complaint and protest.
The ‘centralist model’ claims that councillors are irresponsible
and, in particular, that they are profligate spenders. We found that
61 per cent of the public were willing to accuse local government of
wasting ‘a good deal of taxpayers’ money’. But that gave no real
support to the ‘centralist model’ because a massive 92 per cent lev-
elled the same allegation against central government. By that stan-
dard, local government seemed comparatively frugal in the eyes of
the public. It looked less frugal when compared with private busi-
ness, however. A large majority accepted that councils were not as
efficient as private businesses but, paradoxically, a clear majority felt
that councillors were ‘good at organizing things’ (though not as
good as the business-oriented TEC/LEC boards). Instinctively the
public seemed to recognize that mere efficiency was not the only cri-
terion of good organization and responsible management in the
realm of public affairs.
Table 8.13 Images of elected councils – how honest, efficient, responsible and sympathetic
Trustworthy
A similar pattern emerged when we asked about satisfaction and trust.
People rated their local doctor, their electricity supplier and local
tradesmen higher than their local council in terms of ‘overall service
and value for money’, though they probably forgot how much they
were paying their doctor through national taxation. But they rated
their trust in elected councillors above their trust in the people
appointed to DHA/HB and TEC/LEC boards, and far above their trust
in ‘Parliament and government’. That is what the ‘localist model’
would expect. It is obviously inconsistent with the ‘centralist model’,
though that may partly reflect a less partisan public perspective on
local government than on central government.
The public clearly did not trust elected councillors anywhere near as
much as they trusted each other. But while not very high in absolute
terms, the level of public trust in councillors was sufficiently positive to
be inconsistent with the ‘mobilization’ model’s inherent suspicion of
local authorities and with the ‘individualist’ model’s inherent suspi-
cion of all elected bodies. Moreover, the fact that the public trusted
elected councillors more than ‘businessmen appointed to TEC/LEC’
boards is clearly inconsistent with the free-market and private business-
oriented ‘individualist model’.
Institutional preferences
The link between rival models of local governance and local authority
size is controversial. When Clarke and Stewart argued that ‘the struc-
ture of local government should be based not on the alleged efficien-
cies of administration, but on the perceived and felt community of
place’4 they seemed to link the ‘centralist model’ with large-scale local
authorities since that model gave priority to efficient service delivery.
And they linked the ‘localist model’ with small-scale local authorities
because it gave priority to local identification. Yet while we found
identification with neighbourhoods was stronger than with council
districts, we found identification with regions was stronger than both.
And when central government broke up large-scale local authorities
into smaller units, just after Clarke and Stewart had published their
views on scale, it was accused of doing so to reduce the political clout
of local authorities and make them easier to control centrally.
Abolishing Strathclyde Region was interpreted as centralization.
(Conversely, and equally paradoxically, creating a Scottish Parliament
was interpreted as decentralization.)
Table 8.14 Images of elected councils – how trustworthy
cated these other services (i.e. except for education) to the region
rather than to Britain. The term ‘subsidiarity’ is almost unknown to the
general public, but if it was brought to the public’s attention they
would probably react like M. Jourdain in Molière’s Le Bourgeois
Gentilhomme when he discovers the meaning of ‘prose’: ‘I’ve been
talking prose for the last forty years and have never known it!’6
Subsidiarity applies at all levels, however, and so may be consistent
with the ‘mobilization model’ if not with the ‘individualist model’.
Both of these models focus on very small areas, but they differ about
the autonomy of those areas. The ‘individualist model’ incorporates
the Tiebout thesis, which was designed to reconcile autonomy for the
local community with freedom for the individual. Under this model,
the very small local authorities would be as independent as possible.
Individual citizens would act like consumers, ‘shopping around’ for a
place to live which had their preferred mix of local services and taxes.
While the ‘mobilization model’ emphasizes the ‘voice’ and interests of
neighbourhoods, it does not see neighbourhoods as fully independent
of a wider local authority, nor in free competition with each other to
attract and keep residents. It is more about collective decision-making
in the context of sublocal authority subsidiarity.
We found only 5 per cent of the public had ever considered moving
to a local authority with better services or lower council tax, though
that rose to 11 per cent in London. Only 1 per cent throughout Britain
had actually moved for these Tieboutian reasons, rising only to 3 per
cent in London. Among the few throughout Britain who had contem-
plated such a move, twice as many were motivated by a desire for
better services as for lower taxes. In London, between four and five
times as many were motivated by a desire for better services as for
lower taxes.
So very few people thought or acted in Tieboutian terms. No doubt the
advocates of the ‘individualist model’ would argue that people would
think and behave differently if they were presented with the new oppor-
tunities afforded by a large number of very small, highly autonomous
local authorities competing for ‘customer-citizens’. However, the density
of population and the density of rapid transport systems across London
meant that London boroughs came close to the Tieboutian prescription
in terms of geographic size, if not in terms of political autonomy.
Moreover we found that the psychological sense of local identity was
uniquely weak in London. But despite that, the numbers who had even
contemplated Tieboutian moves were small, and the numbers who had
actually made them very small indeed even in London.
224
Localist Subsidiarity, devolving power to local authorities Yes – including districts and regions +
Individualist Very small local authorities, competing for No –
‘customer-citizens’
Mobilization Subsidiarity, devolving power downwards from local Not directly tested. Not tested
authorities
Centralist District sized local authorities, large enough to provide No –
services efficiently, but not large enough to mount a
political challenge to central government
Testing Models against Public Opinion 225
Localist Mainly local taxation Yes – especially for sports, arts and transport services +
Individualist Mainly user charges No –
Mobilization Mainly national subsidies Yes – especially for education, health and police services +
Centralist Mainly national subsidies Yes – especially for education, health and police services +
Testing Models against Public Opinion 227
The Tsar–Liberator
In a confrontation between local and central government, in which
the local authority had won the backing of its electorate by means of a
local election or a local referendum, the public came down overwhelm-
ingly on the side of local autonomy. That was clearly inconsistent with
the ‘centralist model’ and consistent with the ‘localist model’. Since
our respondents seemed no more impressed (indeed slightly less
impressed) by a local referendum than by a local election, it somewhat
undermines the argument for the more populist ‘mobilization model’,
but remains broadly consistent with it.
The ‘individualist model’ is based on fear of the ‘tyranny of major-
ities’ – especially the ‘tyranny of local and temporary majorities’ – over
individuals and minorities. For that model, the issue is not so much
whether the local authority should be able to impose its will against
central government as whether it should be able to impose its will on
the minority of its own residents who disagree with the collective
decision of the local majority. Under the ‘individualist model’, central
228
13 per cent more favourable than the rich towards local referenda, and
12 per cent more favourable than the rich towards directly elected
mayors. Graduates were slightly less favourable than average towards
local referenda and 21 per cent less favourable than the low educated
towards directly elected mayors.
Paradoxically, popular referenda are also acceptable to the ‘individu-
alist model’ as a ‘blocking mechanism’. In practice, low and socially
biased turnouts in referenda would probably favour the better-off high
taxpayers and work more to the advantage of the ‘New Right’ than the
‘New Left’. But whatever might eventually happen in practice, the
‘New Right’ and ‘New Left’ are joined by a common antagonism
towards elected local authorities and by common, though mutually
contradictory, hopes that populist mechanisms might work to their
advantage.
Localist All-purpose public bodies Does not matter, but prefer specialist bodies –
Individualist Specialist private companies Does not matter, but prefer public bodies –
Mobilization A variety of public bodies, including specialist Does not matter, but prefer specialist bodies +
Centralist Centrally appointed specialist boards Does not matter, but prefer specialist bodies +
Testing Models against Public Opinion 237
• First, that the ‘individualist’ model is so far out of touch with public
opinion that it is not a helpful or useful model in theoretical terms.
Some of its more limited and practical prescriptions are useful in
themselves – the public does want efficiency and ‘value for money’ –
but the ethos of the model as a whole does not provide a useful
guide or framework for thinking about the general development of
local governance.
• Second, that the ‘centralist model’, much neglected in theory and
maligned in practice, should be taken more seriously. It has far more
public support than the individualist model that has attracted far
more theoretical discussion.
• Third, that some combination of the traditional ‘localist’ model and
the ‘mobilization’ model comes closest to public opinion and should
be the basis for thinking about the future of local governance.
Individualist model
Centralist model
Localist model
Mobilizing model
Table 8.23 Testing four models of local governance – winners and losers
Assumptions 5 2 1 4 4 1 3 4
Aims and objectives 3 3 1 6 5 1 2 4
Images 2 1 0 3 1 2 0 3
Institutional preferences 5 3 3 4 3 1 4 3
Totals 15 9 5 17 13 5 9 14
Net positive +6 –12 +8 –5
Testing Models against Public Opinion 241
242
Public Support for Local Democracy 243
Note: ‘Betas’ are ‘standardized regression coefficients’ or ‘path coefficients’. * = statistically insignificant coefficients.
Public Support for Local Democracy 247
5
By councillors
Rating of councils
4
3
By public
2
1 By board
members
By public
0
Rating of boards
–1
–2
–3
By councillors
–4
Lowest quintile Middle Highest quintile
See councils as representative, honest and efficient?
248 Models of Local Governance
Note: ‘Betas’ are ‘standardized regression coefficients’ or ‘path coefficients’. * = statistically insignificant coefficients.
249
250
Table 9.3 Regressions predicting ratings for local services to run by private companies
Note: ‘Betas’ are ‘standardized regression coefficients’ or ‘path coefficients’. * = statistically insignificant coefficients.
Public Support for Local Democracy 251
Note: ‘Betas’ are ‘standardized regression coefficients’ or ‘path coefficients’. * = statistically insignificant coefficients.
Public Support for Local Democracy 255
Note: ‘Betas’ are ‘standardized regression coefficients’ or ‘path coefficients’. * = statistically insignificant coefficients.
Table 9.6 Regressions predicting attitudes towards the locus of accountability
Note: ‘Betas’ are ‘standardized regression coefficients’ or ‘path coefficients’. * = statistically insignificant coefficients.
258 Models of Local Governance
90
% who say quangos should report to the local council
80
70
60
50
40
Councillors
30
Public
Board members
20
High localism
10 Low
High localism
0 Low
High localism
t
ef
tre
-L
Low
t
tre
ef
en
tre
-L
en
/C
t
tre
ef
en
ht
C
-L
tre
en
ft/
ig
/C
tre
Le
en
ht
ft/
en
ig
/C
Le
ht
ft/
ig
Le
government and the private sector illustrate very well the two fronts
on which local democracy was open to attack.
Among the public, support for service provision by local councils
was influenced most by pragmatic localism. Among elites, it was
influenced about equally by pragmatic localism and left-wing ideology.
or private companies
By private companies:
Psychological identification with the locality * * *
Pragmatic localism * * *
Left-wing ideology –20 –49 –41
Good image of local councils –6 –10 –10
Multiple correlation coefficient 22 55 45
By (central) government:
Psychological identification with the locality –6 * *
Pragmatic localism –32 –27 –29
Left-wing ideology * * 10
Good image of local councils –5 * –10
Multiple correlation coefficient 34 28 32
By local councils:
Psychological identification with the locality 5 9 8
Pragmatic localism 30 25 24
Left-wing ideology 9 29 25
Good image of local councils 7 * 18
Multiple correlation coefficient 33 43 46
Note: ‘Betas’ are ‘standardized regression coefficients’ or ‘path coefficients’. * = statistically insignificant coefficients.
Public Support for Local Democracy 261
262
Notes 263
23. The mobilization model finds support in general terms and some concept-
ual elaboration in a number of chapters in Desmond King and Gerry Stoker
(eds), Rethinking Local Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1998). See in particu-
lar the chapters by Anne Philips and Hugh Ward. See also Desmond King,
‘From the urban Left to the New Right’, in Stewart and Stoker, Local
Government in the 1990s.
24. On the practice of left-wing Labour councils in the 1980s see Martin Boddy
and Colin Fudge (eds), Local Socialism? (London: Macmillan, 1984), and
John Gyford, The Politics of Local Socialism (London: Unwin Hyman, 1995).
25. The emergence of the centralist line of thought is described in Martin
Loughlin, Legality and Locality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
Within the general public there was a correlation between the time taken to
complete the interview and the age of the respondent: those over 55 years
old took seven minutes longer than those aged under 25. But there was no
correlation between the length of interviews and other social or political
characteristics such as gender, education, region or voting preference.
This suggests that Europe was not viewed in Scotland as some alternative to
Britain but rather as just another area larger than (or even beyond) Scotland.
Scottish identification with Europe is thus perhaps best seen simply in terms
of a cosmopolitian/parochial or outward/inward dimension to public atti-
tudes rather than in terms of the nationalist concept of Europe as an escape
route for Scotland from the confines of the United Kingdom.
Adonis, Andrew, 13, 33, 252, 262, corruption, 90–1, 157–9, 218–19
264, 267 councillors, opinions of, 130–87
aims and objectives, 5, 71–84,
141–48, 202–14 democratic governance, influences on
aims and objectives, influences on, support for, 9–10, 244–51,
79–84 259–61
‘all-purpose’ institutions, 115–16, democratic governance, support for,
176–82, 233–6 9–10, 243–4, 259–61
Andrew, Caroline, 1, 262 DETR (Dept. for Environment,
Augarde, Tony, 190, 267 Transport and Regions), 25, 263
autonomous governance, influences DHA/HBs, 7, 38
on support for, 9–10, 252–61 DHA/HBs, opinions of board
autonomous governance, support for, members, 130–87
9–10, 251–2, 259–61 direct democracy, 111–12, 172–3,
autonomy, local, 73, 108–11, 141–3, 230–4
171–2, 202–5, 222–4 don’t knows, unusual significance of,
40
Beetham, David, 86, 266 Dowding, Keith, 74, 266
Bennie, Lynn, 63, 265 Dummett, Ann, 201, 267
Blair, Tony, 24–5, 263
board members, opinions of, 130–87 economic development, 75–6, 144–6,
Boddy, Martin, 31, 264 204–8
Brand, Jack, 63, 265 effective channels of protest, 94–7,
Bulpitt, James, 222, 267 162–7, 218–19
Butler, David, 13, 33, 252, 262, 264, efficiency, 90–2, 157–60, 218–19
267 Eliasson, Kjell A., 19, 262
elite consensus, 184–5
capability, 92–3, 160–3 elites, divided, 185–7
CATI, 3, 41–4 ‘enabling’ institutions, 112–14, 174–5,
central government, local minority 235–8
appeals to, 110–11, 171–2, 227–31 exclusion, 66–7, 137–40, 199–202
centralist model, 8, 31 executive management, 111–12,
centralist model, testing, 188–241 172–3, 230–2
Clarke, Michael, 4, 45, 220, 262, 265,
267 Flinders, Matthew V., 20, 262
CLD (Commission for Local Fudge, Colin, 31, 264
Democracy), 21–4
Commission for Local Democracy, 21, Game, Chris, 11, 21, 22, 23, 262, 263
263 GLC (Greater London Council), 12
compulsory competitive tendering, Goldsmith, Michael, 1, 262
17–18 Gosschalk, Brian, 59, 265
Conservative Governments’ reforms ‘governance’, contrasted with
1979–97, 1, 11–32 government, 1, 18–21
268
Index 269
governing perspectives, 130–87 Leach, Steve, 21, 22, 27, 46, 263,
Greer, Alan, 36, 264 265
Gyford, John, 21, 31, 263, 264 local autonomy, 73, 108–11, 141–3,
171–2, 202–5, 222–4
Hall, Wendy, 36, 264 local governance, 1, 11–32
Hatter, Warren, 59, 265 local governance, support for,
Hazell, Robert, 201, 267 253–9
Heseltine, Michael, 267 local identity, 4, 9, 45–70, 135–7,
Hobsbawm, Eric J., 53, 265 190–203
Hoggett, Paul, 36, 264 local minorities, protection of,
Hunt, Lord, 21, 263 110–11, 171–2, 227–31
localism, 9, 190–203
identifications, 45–70, 135–6, localism, influence of, 244–61; see also
190–203 under: ‘influences on’ various
identifications, multiple, 53–7 attitudes
identifications, regional patterns of, localism, pragmatic, 9, 105–7,
63–4 168–71, 222–4
identifications, social patterns of, localist model, 8, 28
58–62 localist model, testing, 188–241
ideology, 9–10, 140–2 locality, exclusive attitudes towards,
ideology, influence of, 244–61, see 66–7, 137–40, 199–202
also under: ‘influences on’ various locality, objective links to, 46–50,
attitudes 131–5, 191–4
image of local government, influence locality, pride in, 65, 136–8, 197–9
of, 244–61 locality, resonsibilty for, 65, 136–8,
images of local government, 5, 199–201
85–104, 148–69, 213–21 locality, subjective links to, 51–64,
images of local government, 133–5, 193–203
influences on, 97–103 Loughlin, Martin, 31, 264
individualist model, 8, 30
individualist model, testing, 188–241 metropolitan counties, 12
institutions for local government, 6, Miller, William L., 23, 263
11–28 minimalism, 72, 141–3, 204–6
institutions for local government, Mitchell, James, 63, 265
influences on preferences, 119–29 mobilization model, 8, 31
institutions for local government, mobilization model, testing,
preferences, 6, 105–29, 168–82, 188–241
220–38 mobilize, mission to, 76–79, 147–8,
institutions for local government, 204–8
ratings of, 116–19, 176–80, models of local governance, 3, 8,
233–8, 242–51 28–32, 188–90
models of local governance, test
Jones, George, 28, 35, 37, 263, 264 results, 237–41
Judge, David, 105, 266 models of local governance, testing,
188–241
Keating, Michael, 105, 266 ‘monitoring’ institutions, 112–14,
King, Desmond, 30, 31, 33, 36, 189, 174–5, 235–8
263, 264, 266 monitoring quangos, 112–14, 174–5,
Kooiman, Jan, 19, 262 235–8
270 Index