PoliticalGeography, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp.

155175,1995
Copyright@ 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd
Printed in Gnat Britain. AU ri@ts reserved
096”29&95 $10.00 + 0.00

Active citizenship and local governance:

political and geographical dimensions

hE &TARNS

Centre for Housing Research and Urban Studies, Univenily of Glasgow, 25 Bute Gardens,
Glasgow G12 SRS, UK

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the possibility of a participatory form of

democracy emerging in the UK out of the confluence of ‘active citizenship’ and
‘local governance’ and through reform of the state and civil society. A
consideration of the type of ‘active citizenship’ strategy being pursued, an
examination of the institutional and constitutional nature of ‘local governance’,
and a review of patterns of participation in voluntary sector governance all serve
to raise doubts about the potential outcome. It is important to recognize that
both the citizen’s inclination to participate or ‘get active’ in local governance, and
the institutional structures and arrangements of local governance, have crucial
geographical dimensions. The nature of places affects the citizen’s capacity for
governance and yet, although local governance exacerbates territorial fragmenta-
tion, disjuncture and conflict, the improvement of places can be a beneficial
outcome of local governance. A study of the role of place as both mediator and
outcome of active citizenship and local governance is relevant as an empirical
question relating to the impacts of modernism and Thatcherism, but also affords
opportunities to consider the causes and significance of ‘place-uniqueness’, and
to evaluate their consequences for postmodernist epistemologies which eschew
the notion of generalized theories of place.

Introduction

In recent years, two phenomena have emerged, and are developing, with the potential to
affect substantially the experience of citizenship in Britain. discusses the
This paper
political and geographical dimensions to active citizenship and local governance as
barriers and opportunities to the establishment of a more participatory democracy in the
local public sphere.
The first section of the paper outlines the political development of the two phenomena,
giving reasons why an active citizenship strategy has been adopted (primarily to overcome
an uncaring image of the British polity, and as part of an attempt to reform the welfare
state), and why a wider range of organizations has been involved in local public service.
After providing a definition of local governance, which emphasizes the primacy of
negotiation and influence rather than the exercise of rule in local politics, the paper
discusses the prospect of a government-controlled strategy producing a wider involvement
156 Active ci&&@ and local governance

of citizens in the exercise of power and influence in the local political arena. A number of
problems facing such an outcome are noted, namely the dual, elitist character of active
citizenship; the tendency for voluntary service, education for citizenship and the Citizen’s
Charter to depoliticize rather than politicize citizens; and the government’s distrust of the
‘amateur’ and its preference for paternalistic governance involving the use of paid
directorships.
Local governance involves a transfer of power away from elected local authorities
towards other organizations. Increasingly important among these are voluntary
organizations, which may provide services under contract to local authorities, in
partnership with them, or by means of direct, central-government funding. The voluntary
sector is, of course, one where a great many citizens (a little over a fifth of the adult
population) are already active. The second section of the paper discusses the potential for
the voluntary sector to overcome the social biases in political participation that are
currently evident in formal, local politics. Evidence from a number of studies is reviewed
to show that the exercise of control functions in the voluntary sector is subject to many of
the same biases as in local government, but to a lesser degree. Although voluntary sector
management is more open to participation by women, younger adults, public sector
tenants and manual working groups, there is still a bias among voluntary activists in favour
of control being exercised by the professional and managerial class, and against power
being in the hands of the skilled manual class, the unemployed and those with home and
family responsibilities.
The third section moves on from the consideration of existing patterns of voluntary
activity and voluntary sector organization to identify a number of characteristics of local
governance itself that may hinder the evolution of a participatory democracy-one in
which citizens feel involved in, and in control of, local collective affairs. Many of the
organizations involved in local governance are disadvantaged by virtue of their own
internal democracy: poor relations with local government, unclear definitions of governor
and governed, and variable and intermittent mechanisms for granting consent to be
governed all serve to weaken the resistance of such organizations to centralized
regulation. Participation in local governance and the autonomy of non-governmental
organizations are also inhibited by the promotion of a management accountancy culture in
the ‘public sector’ (so-called ‘New Manageriahsm’), and by the search for economies of
scale, which inevitably results in moves towards rationalization in the intermediate sector,
making organizations larger in scale and less local in character and in constitutional terms.
Both the citizen’s inclination to participate in local governance, and the institutional
arrangements that comprise local governance (the subjects of the second and third
sections), have important geographical dimensions. The geographical conditions and
consequences of local governance are set out in the fourth section of the paper. Local
governance has to cope with a situation where the pattern of voluntary activity is regionally
uneven. In its response to this, the government faces a difficult choice between expanding
the geographical areas of activity of existing organizations-a cheaper option but one that
makes the local character of governance difkult to maintain, or fostering new, local
organizations-an expensive, longer-term option with less guarantee of success. However,
the main geographical condition which the section discusses is the mediating role that
places play in determining the citizen’s capacity and inclination for governance. The
history of places, the quality of the socio-spatial environment, the configuration of
neighbourhoods and the sense of place-attachment all inlluence the citizen’s ability and
willingness to contribute to local, collective endeavours. This is due to their effects on: the
extent of shared interests and values; the positive and negative images of places held by
 iiDE &tUWS 157

local residents and others; and the opportunities for participation in space and time.
Structures of local governance, if they are to be successful, must also accommodate the
politics of locality-existing concerns, interest groups and power relations-and the
citizen’s own definition of community and territory.
AS well as being a condition that local governance must respond to, places are also an
outcome of such a process, for initiatives of this type can not only improve the local
physical and social environment, but can also generate new shared interests, and enhance
social interaction and place-attachment. The other geographical consequences of local
governance are less beneficial, comprising: a weakened locational link between the
governors and governed; a fragmented system of governance whereby the coordination of
services is made more difficult, and administrative rationality and efficiency are sacrificed;
a boost to the politics of turf and the exercise of territoriality; and a confused citizenry
facing calls for its allegiance to different territorial entities.
The final section of the paper contrasts a service-orientated with a citizen-orientated
strategy towards active citizenship and local governance. The former would perpetuate an
elitist approach to governance less local in scale and focus, and would miss the
opportunity to strengthen place-based communities and the citizen’s sense of belonging.
In contrast, a citizen-orientated strategy would attempt to enable all citizens to become
involved in local democracy and self-governance (if they so choose) by means of
institutional adaptation, as well as through the use of appropriate recruitment methods,
educational and family policy, and employment reform. A key element of this approach is
the recognition of places as both mediating conditions and outcomes of the process of
local governance. The counterposing of these two approaches is seen as raising both
empirical questions about whether Britain’s social and political geography is heading
towards a modern or a postmodern future, and epistemological issues pertaining to
whether generalized theories about the mediating role of place and the behavioural
significance of place-attachment have more to offer political geography than do
celebrations of place uniqueness.

T’he emergence of active citizenship and local governance

It was in the late 1980s that Conservative ministers first started talking about the active
citizen, following Mrs Thatcher’s controversial speech to the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland in May 1988 (see Raban, 1989), in which she discussed the citizen’s
responsibility to be merciful and generous to others. This theme was then developed over
the next two years by a succession of ministers (primarily in the Home Office and
Education Department) who expanded the notion to include a role for ‘active business’
and a partnership with the voluntary sector (see Kearns, 1992).
The version of active citizenship that has emerged has a number of key characteristics.
First, it is individualistic and counterposed to collectivist approaches to welfare.
Increasingly, responsibility for welfare is being passed over from the state to individual
citizens whose compulsion to get active is to derive from their personal morality and the
prospect of the approbation of others, rather than from feelings of community belonging
and communal endeavour. This combination of personal effort and the exercise of moral
judgement by citizens (who have been educated in the right way) has facilitated the linking
of active citizenship to the longer-term project of reforming, curtailing and cheapening the
welfare state. Some five years after the active citizen was first mentioned, the Chief
Secretary to the Treasury sought to justify impending welfare benefit cut-backs by
repeating many of Mrs Thatcher’s moral themes, saying that the state and taxation have
158 Activecitizen.&@and local governance

removed the opportunity for citizens to exercise individual, Christian responsibility

towards others by sharing their wealth and doing good (Wintour, 1993a).
Active citizenship has consisted of a process of moral hectoring and mild coercion by
the state reinforced with inducement of social recognition and civic reward-the latter
achieved through the private sponsorship of caring citizen awards and a slight re-emphasis
within the public honours system. Indeed, Dahrendorf (1990) has called active citizenship
‘an almost totalitarian concept because it implies mobilisation’, and Oliver (1991) has
noted ‘the scope for it to encroach on the privacy and autonomy of the citizen’. As such it
can be a threat to voluntarism (Barnett, 1989; Keams, 1992), i.e. that activity freely given in
an open generous spirit, to use Heginbotham’s (1990) definition.
Active citizenship has also become a selective, dual and elitist strategy. Only a small
group of wealthy, professional citizens are expected, selected or provided with
opportunities to exercise control functions, or power, in the new structures of ‘public’
sector management being put into place as government and the welfare sector are
reformed (see below). Many more ‘ordinary’ citizens (though some believe there may well
still be a passive majority) will increasingly be given the chance to engage in the more
mundane activities of citizenship, such as face-to-face welfare or service provision.
The government’s own explanation of its interest in the active citizen has been to stress a
logical progression from an emphasis on liberty and wealth creation for most of the 198Os,
which provided the foundation for the exercise of responsibility, and the release of
generous, caring activity thereafter. Others (Dahrendorf, 1990; Heater, 1991; Kearns, 1992)
have pointed out that there were pressing concerns and public criticisms of the
government in the late 1980s which led it to stress the role of the active citizen. The
public’s perception was that social provision was being run down, social problems were
intractable, and the government in the face of this was uncaring. The adverse reaction to
the famous statement by Mrs Thatcher that ‘there is no such thing as society’, combined
with the labels of selfishness and greed that had been applied to the Reagan-Thatcher-led
societies, led the government to re-launch itself under the guise of a fresh idea, namely the
party of the active citizen-free to be generous and caring.
In addition to the appearance of the active citizen on the political stage, there have also
been, during the current period of Conservative rule, substantial changes in the
complexion of local political institutions and in the role of elected local authorities. Stoker
(1991) has observed rapid institutional innovation with the growth of non-elected agencies
operating in the local political arena. Thes agencies are used by central government to
bypass local authorities unsympathetic to its aims; to channel constrained resources to
priority areas; to enable services to be operated in a business-like manner; to challenge the
monopoly position of local authorities; and to gain access to private sector funds and
expertise. Whilst Stoker acknowledges that local authorities themselves have made use of
non-elected agencies, they do so under conditions not of their own choosing. Others see
the ‘enabling’ local authority (at the centre of this myriad of organizations) being born out
of hostility to local discretion (Local Government Information Unit, 1992) and reflecting ‘a
new concern to reduce the role of local government in the locality as well as in the
national economy’ (Goodlad, 1993: 4).
Once we recognize these recent developments, involving further extension of directly
funded, opted-out sevices, compulsory competitive tendering with more local services
being provided under contract, and the adoption of ‘executive management’ models of
service delivery, then Stoker’s original typology of non-elected local government agencies
needs further elaboration. To his list of central government ‘arms length’ agencies, local
authority implementation agencies, public/private partnership organizations, user organiz-
 hE &ARNS 159

ations, inter-governmental forums and joint boards, should be added private trusts and
companies, and voluntary organizations. This is reflected in the Economic and Social
Research Council’s Local Governance Research Initiative, which defines its object of study
as ‘the transformation of the structure of government beyond Westminster and Whitehall
from a system of local government into a system of local governance involving complex
sets of organisations drawn from the public, private and voluntary sectors’ (ESRC, 1992).
The change in emphasis in the functions of local authorities has been summarized by
Leach et al. (1992) as a consistent reduction in the direct provision of services and a
redirection towards service-purchasing and regulation, together with an uneven
development of the proactive facilitation function. With regulation so far offering little
scope for enhaced local political direction and control, I would argue that power in local
politics is shifting towards those agencies other than local authorities that are involved in
collective services and strategies.
With less direct service provision by local government, and a greater range of
organizations (governmental and non-governmental) involved in the local public sphere,
the exercise of influence through negotiation rather than the exercise of rule through laws
and by-laws will be a feature of the system of ‘local governance’. The latter can, therefore,
be defined as:

A system of arrangements for collective affairs whereby: firstly, organisations

other than elected local authorities (both public and private, for-profit and
not-for-profit) are partly or wholly responsible for the funding and/or direct
provision of public and welfare services at the local level, either separately or
under contract to local elected authorities; secondly, responsibility for allocation
decisions relating to those services are partly or wholly the responsibility of
people other than local elected authority members; and, thirdly, local authorities
enter into negotiations with these other organizations in an attempt to influence
the level and nature of the services provided.

On paper, at least, local governance provides openings for the active citizen to exercise
power and influence within a pluralist system for devising collective strategies and
providing public services. However, we have several reservations about this prospect
becoming a reality were the government entirely to control the outcome. As already noted,
active citizenship as propounded by the government has elitist tendencies. It is the
upper-middle and professional classes who will be expected to exercise control within a
range of new or expanded governmental and non-governmental organizations, placed
there by appointment or encouraged there through regulation. In the main ‘the activities
in which citizens are to be engaged are to be far removed from any levels of real political
power’ (Heater, 1991: 153). Kearns’s (1990) study of the voluntary management
committees of British housing associations found that the majority of members were those
who already possessed management experience and wished to exercise it further.
The call for some citizens to give of their wealth (e.g. through direct debits or
covenants) and their skills, and of others to give their time and physical effort, in the
service of others, reflects the objective of allying active citizenship to local governance in
order to create a paternalistic form of local politics, which is seen as another unfortunate
loss from the last century (Roberts, 1979). Since the government neither trusts local
authorities as institutions, nor trusts the ‘amateur’ in the control of public affairs (‘amateur’
defined to include councillors and lay people), its preference is to expand the use of paid
directorships in the public arena.
Furthermore, a number of factors currently serve to depoliticize rather than politicize
160 Actiw citizmsbip and local govemance

the citizen. Active citizenship and education for citizenship are not being introduced in
order to create a politically vocal or politically active public. For the latter to come about,
citizenship education would have to be broadened to include the skills for political
participation, and be aimed at enabling and encouraging critical opinions to be expressed
on sensitive issues. Rather, the government wishes to leave behind the politics of advocacy
and of protest-seen as the product of the irresponsible 1960s and 1970s. It does not want
a politically vocal or engaged citizenship, but a politically uninterested public. Active
citizenship is itself silent about the assertion of positive rights by citizens. The emphasis of
education for citizenship in schools is to be on obligations, not rights (Department of
Education and Science, 1990). Rumbold (1991) has discussed how political protest
movements have died a death due to the settling of some major issues, the rise of
consumerism and the removal of differences between the political parties. The public
preference for comfortable ways of registering dissent is one that Major’s big idea, the
Citizen’s Charter, exploits: it diverts the citizen’s energies into complaints to the service
provider rather than into an engagement with, or involvement in, governance; and it places
responsibility on the individual citizen if she/he has not secured better services. The
Charter was also notably silent on the question of Freedom of Information legislation,
which would have politically empowered citizens (Baxter, 1991). Others have also agreed
that the notion of an active citizen depoliticizes the citizen (see Heater’s [1991] discussion
of Wringe).

Voluntary sector Involvement in governance and patterns of participation

Notwithstanding the elitist tendencies of active citizenship, it is worth investigating the

potential that could exist for overcoming perpetual social biases in political involvement,
through expanding the scope of responsibility for collective affairs and services beyond
the confines of formal local politics as it is currently framed in the United Kingdom. The
caricature of local councillors as male, middle aged, middle class and white holds true
more often that it does not, and a review of successive surveys of councillors over a 20-year
period showed little change in their social origins (Gyford et al., 1989: Ch. 2). The last
study of the characteristics of local councillors concluded that ‘elected members as a group
are still highly unrepresentative of the overall population’ (Widdicombe Committee, 1986:
19). A similar picture emerges if we consider citizens’ involvement in political activity
more generally. The British Political Participation Study of 1985 found 23 percent of the
adult population to be political activists. Confining the analysis to activists involved in
formal political structures (the three groups termed ‘collectivists’, ‘contacting’ and ‘party
campaigning’ activists), there were consistent biases towards those with higher education
qualifications, the richest quarter of the population, the ‘salaried class, and the early
middle aged (Parry et al., 1992: 234). The most significant break with the profile of
councillors was along gender lines, with the group of formalized political activists being
weighted in favour of women.
One of the potential benefits of a greater role for the voluntary sector in a system of local
governance could be to open up opportunities for hitherto ‘excluded groups to
participate in collective affairs. For example, the Second International Inquiry of the
European Values Systems Study Group, in its British survey of 1990, found that whilst
women were less likely than men to engage in political action, they were more likely than
men to do unpaid work for certain types of voluntary organization, in particular for
religious organizations and for organizations involved in youth work, education and
community activity (Timms, 1992: 29). These types of organization were those more likely
 tiDE kUWS 161

to be harnessed to the iocal governance project than those in which men had the greater
role, namely trades unions, professional associations and sports organizations.
The differences between the exercise of control functions in local government and the
voluntary sector are highlighted in Table 1. The data on voluntary committee members
come from a secondary analysis of the 1991 National Survey of Voluntary Activity in the
UK.’ The table shows that whilst voluntary sector management displays many of the social
biases evident among local authority councillors, none of the biases is as extreme as in
local government. Notably, women, younger adults, public sector tenants and those from
the manual working groups all have a greater role in the running of voluntary
organizations that they do in the control of local authorities.
This is not to suggest that the voluntary sector is without its own problems of
participation and representation. The national survey also revealed that the propensity to
volunteer increased with social class and education level, and was higher among those in
employment than among others. T&e 2 presents a social profile of ‘current volunteers’,
that is people who have done some voluntary activity in the past 12 months. We can see
that volunteering is more common among non-manual than among manual social groups,
and is by far most frequent among professional and managerial people. On the other hand,
only a minority of the unskilled manual class volunteer. An official review also concluded
that ‘for both sexes, it was those in the professional, employers and managers and
intermediate non-manual socio-economic groups who were most likely to participate’ in
voluntary work (Central Statistical Office 1992: 195).

TAFSLE
1. Social profile of voluntary sector committee members and local councillors

Categoy Committee members Councillors

(Column %)

Socio-economic group
Managerial/professional 32 41
Other non-manual 33 28
Skilled manual 17 16
Semi-skilled 15 4
Unskilled 3 1
Tenure
Own 79 a5
Social rented 18 10
Private rented 3 4
Sex
Male 55 ai
Female 45 19
4ge
la-24 a 0
25-34 17 7
35-44 23 19
45-54 20 25
55-64 14 27
65-t 17 22
Totals (N> 158 1552

Source: Lynn and Davis-Smith (1992)

Widdicombe (19%).
162 Active citizenship and loud governance

TABLE
2. Level of current volunteering, by socio-economic group

Socio-economic group Percentage volunteering (row %,I

Manageri&professionaL 72
Other non-manual 59
Skilled manual 58
Semi-skilled manual 48
Unskilled manual 37
Unclassified 33
Total (N) 1488

Source:Lynn and Davis-Smith(1992), Table 14

Table 3 divides regular volunteers into those people engaged in committee work, and
those involved in other types of activity, such as visiting, raising money, etc. It reveals that
there is more of an imbalance in committee membership than in other types of voluntary
activities. Compared with the British adult population, the non-manual social groups are
over-represented by 1.5 times on voluntary management committees. This is particularly
evident for the professional and managerial classes who, unlike the ‘other non-manual’
group, are not over-represented among volunteers engaged in activities other than
committee work. The biggest difference between the two types of voluntary activity occurs
in the case of the skilled manual class who, when they volunteer, are far less likely to
exercise the levers of power than to engage in the other voluntary tasks, and are
significantly under-represented on committees of management.
Forty-two percent of all regular volunteers are engaged in committee work. This
includes 45 percent of regular volunteers who have a job, and 47 percent of the retired,
regular volunteers. But only a third of unemployed, regular volunteers, and only a quarter
of those who look after the home or family, are involved in committee activity. There are
also marked differences in type of voluntary activity by age-group. Rates of committee
membership are highest among young-retired regular volunteers (aged 65-74), 62
percent of whom are involved in committee work. Between the ages of 35 and 54 the
balance between committee and other activities is around 50:50. Among the under 35s
however, only 29 percent of regular volunteers are engaged in committee work.

TABLE3. Profile of regular volunteers, by type of activity

Committee members other dunteen

Socio-economic group (Column %I) (Column % ‘)

Manageri&professionaf 32 22
Other non-manual 33 30
Skilled manual 17 30
Semi-skilled 15 15
Unskilled 3 3
Total (IV) 138 177

‘Excluding unknown and unclaMfiible cases.

 hE &ARNS 163

The nature of local governance: a problem for participatory democracy

The previous section showed that although an enhanced role for the voluntary sector
could result in a broader citizen participation in collective affairs, there are still
participatory weaknesses in the increasingly important area of control functions in
voluntary organizations. In this section, I wish to show that it is not just the pre-existing
pattern of voluntary activity among individuals and within voluntary organizations that is a
problem, but that the potential for a participatory democracy to emerge is also
compromised by the nature of the emerging local governance itself.
To start an assessment of the significant characteristics of ‘local governance’, I shall look
at the related areas of consent (or authority), autonomy and accountability from the point
of view of those organizations other than local government that are involved in public and
welfare services, i.e. the sorts of organizations in which ‘active citizens’ might be involved.
One of the features of government is that someone, usually the electorate, gives the
governors their authority to govern. Within the sphere of local governance, the granting of
consent or permission to govern to the various organizations involved is far less clear, far
more varied in character, and often less perpetual and more intermittent in its application
or conveyance. Sometimes, an organization’s permission to operate in the local public
sphere comes not from local government itself, but directly from central government, or
from a public agency at national or regional level-as with approved landlord status
required for the taking over of local authority housing estates. Sometimes, positive consent
may be entirely absent, and it is simply the case that an organization’s activities are not
prohibited by law. Or again, with many membership organizations, consent to an
organization’s activities may be granted by an unrepresentative membership-there are,
for example, no minimum requirements placed on the membership levels of housing
associations before they may develop and manage social housing for rent. There are a
variety of ways, therefore, in which one of the central components of governance (as a
system of managing communal affairs) can be compromised under ‘local governance’; the
forms in which the consent to govern exists, therefore, necessitate scrutiny if we are to
elucidate the nature of ‘local governance’.
Dunn (1992) defines one of the services provided by modern representative democracy
to be ‘a measure of real responsibility of governors to governed’. Given what I have just
said, it is also worth asking to what extent the same can be said to exist throughout the
sphere of ‘local governance’. If the authority to govern does not come in full measure from
those subject to the governance in question, will the governors act, or feel they ought to
act, with responsibility to the locally governed? This begs the question of whether one can
always define who the governors and the governed are. This is easier under a system of
local government (albeit subject to difficulties at the boundary and with mobile groups)
than it is under a system of ‘local governance’. Does a neighbourhood watch committee,
for example, feel that it is governing the entire neighbourhood or just those areas with
significant participation rates ? Do local non-participants feel governed by the
neighbourhood watch? The definition of governors is the more straightforward. We might
say that a local governor is anyone responsible for deciding policy for the making of
allocation decisions at a subnational level in relation to public or welfare services. A system
of governance may also involve citizens in ways other than as governors in the sense just
described. They may be co-opted to serve as monitors, observing practice and
recommending changes, as with prison visitor committees.
Scope exists for autonomy to reside at a local level within a system of ‘local governance’.
In his study of local justice, Elster (1992) has pointed out that local institutions make
164 Active citizenship and &ad governance

allocation decisions in a variety of ways, with different weight being given, for example, to
the principles of equity and efficiency. Echoing a point made by Elster, that the public
(more so than either politicians or professions) is concerned with equity and desert as
allocating principles, we have found cases where locally based housing associations have
given significant weight to length of time on the waiting list in the prioritization of
applicants for rehousing, a practice that local people perceive to be fair. Yet housing
professionals have moved away from using this factor within allocations policies,
preferring to allocate according to severity of housing need.
The autonomy and diversity of local governance institutions, an important factor in the
morale and voluntary input to such organizations, can come under threat from three
directions. First, there is the thorny question of accountability. This is a problem for local
governance for, whereas the accountability of government is given by its democracy, the
institutions of local governance are not so much ‘made accountable’ as reguIated. There
are a few things we should note about this aspect:

1. Many such ‘local governance’ organizations have a flawed form of public accountability.
Private companies and voluntary organizations are accountable to their members
(share-holding or not), but the membership rarely matches the local population they
serve. Although citizenship, that which gives us control over government, is also based
on membership, membership of these other organizations is harder and less often
achieved.
2. Regulatory systems are put in place not as a substitute for the ‘democratic deficit’ of
local governance organizations, but in order that the policies and practices of such
institutions match the preferences of government. Regulation is not relaxed where local
governance organizations are well and truly locally democratic.
3. It is not the case that regulatory systems in Britain have developed as far as Osborne and
Gaebler’s (1992) preference for incentives rather than command and control
mechanisms. Compliance orders continue to exist and expand, but there is often a thin
line between an incentive and a command.
4. The predominant form of regulatory system instated in the UK places central
government as both the master and client of the system. We might have expected that a
system of ‘local governance’ would give the former role to local government, with the
client being local citizens. To this end, Bogdanor (1992) has suggested that a ‘local
authority could become protector of the citizen against Whitehall-regulated public
services which would otherwise be too remote for real accountability to the consumer’.
The local authority ‘might see itself as representative of the consumer, in relation to all
the public services within the community, whether these services are under the control
of local government or not’.

The struggle for autonomy is a key element in the analysis of citizenship (Held, 1989: 199).
Further, in participatory theory, the objective of self-governing and self-expressive
individuals depends upon their ability to participate in decision making within associations
that are themselves free to control their own a&it-s--see Pateman’s (1970: 35-40)
discussion of Cole’s theory of associations. In ‘local governance’ there is a symbiotic
relationship between autonomy and accountability. Whilst we can agree with Foster (1988)
that accountability presupposes autonomy, the reverse is equally true where the
governance of public and welfare services is being passed to new organizations. If the
‘little platoons’ spoken of by Conservative politicians and right-wing policy gurus such as
Murray (1988) are to have the autonomy nominally ascribed to them, they have to have
grounds to avoid or resist over-regulation by central government. To do this the
 hE k%RNS 165

organizations concerned would have to ensure that they are locally accountable by means
of their own internal democracy and the nature of their relations with local elected
authorities.
Two other related phenomena have accompanied increased central government
funding of non-governmental organizations in the public and welfare service arenas, and
serve to curtail the autonomy of such institutions and refute the scope for participatory
democracy at a local level. This first has been referred to under the rubric of ‘New
Managerialism’, with the emphasis placed on the three Es of economy, efficiency and
effectiveness, serving to bolster the growth and empowerment of managers and
management accountants as a professional group. Non-governmental organizations are
increasingly subject to the norms of this culture, and increasingly inhabited by this
credentialized population: there have for example been recent reports about the number
of private sector directors seeking jobs in the charitable sector, where the risks are less but
‘their way of doing things’ is in demand. The fact that this environment may inhibit the
freedom of thought and action of the volunteers who run many non-governmental
organizations is not a problem for a government whose ministers have expressed doubts
about the wisdom of trusting the ‘amateur’.
The other important factor at play is the government’s search for economies of scale.
The professed preference for the ‘local governance’ of public and welfare services is
slowly but surely subject to erosion by this tendency, which has long existed in
government. As the cost of farming out service provision to a myriad of local organizations
becomes apparent, attempts are made to rationalize the intermediate or non-state sector.
This can take the form either of enforced agency arrangements and the sharing of
resources between organizations, or simply the redirection of state funding to fewer
organizations, which are encouraged to grow at the expense of others (the latter may
appear under the guise of ‘performance-related funds allocation). The result is that the
larger organizations become less local in constitutional and operational terms, and the
smaller or less successful organizations suffer restricted autonomy and reduced morale.

Geographical dimensions to active citizenship and local governance

Having looked at the inherent institutional deficiencies and constraints contained within a
system of local governance, I now turn to the geographical dimensions of active citizenship
and local governance. These comprise, first, the geographical conditions that a
participatory civil society would have to respond to, adapt or seek to change. Second, there
are geographical consequences of a system of local governance that are social, political and
functional (i.e. service-related). A review of these two sets of dimensions shows not only
why geography is important to active citizenship and local governance, but also helps us to
recognize how the study of these phenomena can give political geography a role in
examining how the nature of places affects social participation, and enable it to contribute
to debates about ‘postmodern geographies’.
The most obvious geographical precondition faced by local governance is that of an
uneven pre-existing pattern of voluntary activity and voluntary organizations on which to
draw. A study carried out as part of the 1987 General Household Survey showed mat
organized voluntary work was more common in the south-east and south-west of England
than elsewhere (Central Statistical Office 1992: 104). The 1991 National Survey of
Volunteering reported a different pattern, with the highest rates of volunteering in the
Midlands (Lynn and Davis-Smith, 1992: 36), but both studies recorded the lowest rates of
activity in the north of England. Local governance clearly faces the problem that, in some
parts of the country, the necessary activity and organizations do not exist for civil society to
166 Active c&z&n.&@and local governance

take on the tasks of governance. The government is then situated between a rock and a
hard place. If it imports or expands organizations based elsewhere, the local dimension to
governance is either lost or more difhcult to maintain in organizational terms. It if decides
to promote the growth of new organizations, this requires a hefty investment of resources,
and it may take some time for such organizations to establish their independence and
credibility with local people. Local governance must, then, be a long-term project.
I shall now consider how the character of places influences the practices of citizenship
and the capacity of citizens to engage in local governance. To start with, it must be
recognized that place can be an important mediating factor to the success of local
governance initiatives, both as regards the level of involvement of local citizens, and in
operational terms. Place, here, is taken to consist of the following elements:

1. Locale: This is the setting in which people live, consisting of a particular mix of
household types and socio-economic groups, residing in a physical environment
containing unique combinations of different types of dwelling, other buildings, and
public and private spaces. This socio-spatial structure is akin to elements of Kemeny’s
(1992) theory of residence.
2. Neighbourbood: For individuals, their neighbourhood consists of the time-geography
within which they move as they follow their own paths. Focal points may form within
the neighbourhood as individuals’ paths converge in time and space, either as they each
pursue their own interests, or as they contribute to collective, institutional projects.
3. Community: Through social encounters within the neighbourhood, people may
develop a set of shared interests and values, which contribute to the predictability of
social encounters and social outcomes (and hence to ontological security), and can
form a foundation for collective social and political endeavours.

Places also have hktories which contribute to their present-day cburucter. The
development by citizens over time of personality, ideology and consciousness, and the
acquisition of language, are some of the constraints and enabling conditions that affect the
nature of cultural and social practices within a locale. They are based on rules, resources
and norms that reflect geographically and historically specific power relations. This is
Pred’s (1984) concept of place as historically contingent process.
The physical elements of locale, the neighbourhood and the community form an
important combination of factors relevant to the capacity for governunce within any
particular place. Giddens (1984, 1987) has suggested that the timing and spacing of the
settings of action and of interaction are essential to the generation and sustaining of
meaning in people’s lives, and Sennett (1976: Ch. 13) has explored the relations between
‘communal, collective personality and the concrete territories of community in the
modern city’ (p. 294). My argument is that shared interests and values are essential if local
citizens are to engage in collective projects such as self-governance. Socio-spatial
structures are important because people must interact with each other and have the
opportunity to interact as a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the generation of
these shared interests and values.
The socio-spatial environment is crucial for the dual internal and external role that it
plays. Internally, it is important since citizens must feel comfortable and safe in their locale
if they are to be willing and able to take part in its public life. The external role of the
socio-spatial environment derives from the fact that places are in part defined by their
external relations with broader social, economic and political (administrative) structures,
and with each other. As important as the views that residents hold of their own places, are
the perceptions held by outsiders. The relationship between place and identity, then, can
 ME &XlCiS 167

be two sorts: on the one hand, places may be the focus of civic pride and invested identity,
as mentioned by Bagguley et al. (1990); but they may equally be the focus of negative
labelling, which serves to reduce civic pride and reinforce demoralization. Thus, the
boundaries of places can be of two kinds: those which the residents wish to defend and
remain within; and those which the residents wish to remove or cross. The former can
become a motive for ‘local governance’, whereas the latter would be a barrier.
Some of the characteristics of local areas that are important to citizens’ propensity to
engage in voluntary activity were brought out in the analysis of the 1991 National Survey
referred to earlier. Lynn and Davis-Smith (1992: 38-39) reported that there was a strong
positive relationship between the number of people in the area known pesonally and the
level of volunteering. People who had lived in the area a short time were less likely to
volunteer than others, as were those who had a negative view about the quality of the area
as a place to live. This represents a marked change from previous findings in 1981, which
showed that ‘the nature of peoples’ links with, and attitude towards, the neighbourhood in
which they live had little significant effect upon their propensity for volunteering’
(Humble, 1982: 10). Now it would seem that the prerequisites for participation in local
civil society are social interaction, residential stability and a positive view of the local
environment.
If ‘local governance’ is about the regeneration of civil society, then one of the major
barriers to its achievement is that it faces a situation where privatism is the norm. For
some, the whole notion of a public life and a sense of place have been undermined by the
growth of private lifestyles and a reliance on the electronic media to overcome isolation
and define our social situation beyond our physical setting (Cohen and Taylor, 1992). For
example, a reliance on the car as a means of transport may alter the whole notion of who is
or is not our neighbour, which may be important if our willingness to participate in public
activities for the benefit of others is partly dependent on feelings of proximity. In this
situation, perhaps it is only a self-interested response to adversity or to a threat to a public
service that will produce participation in ‘local governance’. In addition to the extent of
privatism, the configuration of individual and collective time-geographies in different
places (neighbourhoods) will determine whether or not citizens have sufficient time and
energy to devote to the tasks of governance.
Thus, it cannot be assumed that life in the locality is increasingly a focus for people’s
lives, interests and identity (see Gyford, 1992), or that the ‘vitalization of civil society’ called
for by Keane (1988) is everywhere easily achievable. Further, the ‘character of local civil
society’ and ‘the politics of locality’ (Gyford, 1992) have to be accommodated within local
governance if it is to be meaningful to citizens and democratic in its function. Locale and
place-as-historically-contingent-process result in different mosaics of concerns and interest
groups within a place, with different power relations between them. This has to be borne
in mind when designing the structures of local governance in order that existing power
relations are not simply reproduced.
The inclination, as opposed to the capacity, for ‘local governance’ will also be affected by
the presence, strength or absence of a sense of place. Neighbourhood and community
together, or what Agnew (1987) calls ‘structuration in place’ can give rise to a sense of
place. Following Relph (1976), this is taken to mean ‘a sense of identity with a place’, ‘a
profound association with places as cornerstones of human existence and individual
identity’ and a sense of ‘being inside and belonging to your place both as an individual and
as a member of a community’. This sense of place, which some call ‘residential solidarity’,
can be of different strengths and significance in people’s lives, depending on the quality of
the locale and the type of neighbourhood and community involved. Since places can exist
168 Active citid@ ana’ local gouernunce

at a number of scales, the notion of a sense of place is not a contradiction with the
argument that people can hold more than one identity and relate positively to more than
one area at once (Urwin, 1990).
Taylor (1988) highlights the similarities between ‘attachment to place’ and ‘territorial
functioning’ (i.e. territorial cognitions, sentiments and behaviours). Territorial functioning
is relevant to group cohesiveness and solidarity (1988: 5) but, on the other hand, Taylor
says that attachment to place occurs at a larger scale and develops over a longer period of
time (1988: 102-103). Whilst Taylor argues that territorial functioning does not take place
at the neighbourhood level (but rather at the small group level of block or street corner),
for our purposes we should recognize that the definition of territory has important
consequences for ‘local governance’. Where a ‘local governance’ initiative is established, its
success will partly depend upon whether or not its spatial definition coincides with the
sense of place and feelings of community that the resident citizens hold. If an artificial
territory is imposed within such an initiative, interest and participation in it will be difficult
to generate and sustain. Two difficulties here are, first, the government’s longer-term
tendency towards larger rather than smaller scales of operation (referred to earlier), and,
second, the citizens’ preference for community identity at a very local scale. The latter is
illustrated by Glasgow’s community council scheme, which in its construction permitted
local definitions of community to take precedence, with the result that the city has a
scheme comprising 113 such councils (Community Council Resource Centre, 1991). To
resolve the tension between the two tendencies would require local governance structures
that can accommodate both-through nested structures with different levels of
responsibility, control and management, and via different spatial scales and configurations.
Despite facing the obstacles outlined above, the discussion of the geographical
conditions under which citizens may (or may not) participate in collective governance
indicates that local governance initiatives present a means of changing and improving
places: through the development of new shared interests; the presentation of additional
means of social interaction; the improvement of services and of the physical and social
environment; and, as a result of all these things, an enhancement of place attachment.
There are also a number of other geographical consequences of a system of ‘local
governance’, some intrinsic to the nature of the phenomenon itself, and others emanating
from the way in which it is put into practice by those involved.
AII obvious difference between government and ‘local governance’ is that, at the local
scale, the latter is not holistic governance in the sense described by Dunsire (1990) of
dealing with the whole of society. Thus, whereas government can be considered the
management and control of territory (even if like Foucault [1992: 93-941 one wishes to call
this the management of the imbrication of ‘men’ and things, with territory as a variable),
‘local governance’ comprises a complex set of arrangements for the governance of a
service or services without any overarching control over public affairs within any one
territory.
Another distinction between ‘local governance’ and local government is that the
locational link between governors and governed is weakened. Whereas local councillors
must live or work in the district in which they wish to serve as elected members
(notwithstanding the confusion caused by a recent legal case), the same is not true of other
local governors. Those people responsible for the management of other organizations
involved in ‘local governance’ do not necessarily live or work in the areas in which they are
operating. This raises questions about the representation, responsibility and accountability
of local governors: for example, they may not know the needs and preferences of local
citizens, and they may be less accessible to local citizens.
Under a system of ‘local governance’, governance becomes fragmented so that a
 .bE k4RNS 169

multitude of organizations manage and control different services, each with different
scales and overlapping territories of operation. The result is a burgeoning of governance
networks as organizations collaborate to deal with problems that overlap spatially and
functionally, and that impinge on one another. Far from administrative rationality or
efficiency being the dominant principle for the design of administrative territories
(Bennett, 1989), this is now being overridden by the axiom that ‘local is best’. The
management of some services (e.g. housing and education) is being organized at more
local, i.e. below-district, levels, but without consideration of the economy and efficiency of
doing so, and without sufficient retention of resources and coordinating powers at the
larger spatial scale(s) (district and county or region) to achieve economies in service
provision, and to cope with problems that do not neatly fall into smaller spatial domains.
An example of the latter problem is that of dealing with homelessness under a highly
fragmented, localized housing service.
Some of the problems of coordination arise because ‘local governance’ enhances the
‘politics of turf (Cox, 1989), or at least gives it greater scope to operate. In other words,
citizens often become involved in, or take advantage of the opportunities presented by
‘local governance’ initiatives in order to maintain exclusive possession of relatively
valuable resources within their territory (see Taylor, 1998: 22). Territoriality, i.e. the
attempt to control people and resources by controlling area (Sack, 1986), can be a
motivation for participation in ‘local governance’. For example, a local housing association
may wish to restrict access to its houses to the sons and daughters of local residents,
excluding what it considers to be undesirable citizens from other parts of the city and
citizens unknown in the local area. Similarly, the governors of a ‘successful’ school may
wish to opt out of local authority control in order to preserve access for privileged
children from a wealthy locale, or to institute a policy of selectivity. Yet the externality
effects of ‘local governance’ are left for others to cope with.
The consequences of having multiple, overlapping and contradictory political territories
under a system of local governance go beyond the more immediate problems of public
policy administration and coordination. There is the more fundamental question of what
the presence of a multitude of territorial institutions, each seeking the allegiance of
citizens from the same and different places, will do to that sense of belonging to a
community that lies at the heart of existential citizenship. As the institutions of local
governance have their impact on the pattern of attachments and detachments to and from
places, which are part of both the precondition and the outcome of this process, there is
every possibility of producing a confused citizenry with unstable, conflicting social
identities, rather than producing the sort of certainty and clarity of identity that, for
example, we are told is being sought in the current reorganization of local government in
the UK.

Conclusion: a service versus citizen-orientated strategy

It is in the links between ‘active citizenship’ and ‘local governance’ that much of interest
and importance lies, for they have the capacity, when taken together, to determine
substantially the nature of citizenship in Britain. The prospect is that active citizenship and
local governance will be promoted and implemented for service-orientated rather than
citizen-orientated reasons. The objectives of cheapening services, making them more
efficient, and strengthening central control at the expense of local power and control
would take precedence, and the structural obstacles that local governance poses for
participatory democracy (as described earlier) would remain. The consequences of such
an approach are both political and geographical, though the two are closely linked.
170 Active citi&@ and loud governance

A service-orientated approach to local governance fits in with an elitist, dual version of

active citizenship, sustaining marked differences in the social profile of those citizens
performing control functions in non-government organizations and those directly
delivering services. In terms of the exercise of control within local governance, the power
of the professional and managerial classes would persist and be extended, as they are the
social group most trusted by the government to deliver the service outputs being sought.
This would be achieved both by the extensive use of agencies to whom government can
make appointments, and by the use of regulatory powers and pressures of expectation in
respect of non-governmental organizations. Indeed, the government’s preference for local
governance through appointees, variously termed ‘the quangocracy’ or new magistracy’ is
becoming well documented (Stewart, 1992; Colenutt and Ellis, 1993; Wintour, 1993b).
Gender inequalities in the experience of citizenship would not be redressed. The
implications of these inequalities for the exercise of governance are illustrated by the fact
that the level of volunteering among adults is far lower for those who have responsibilities
for the elderly or disabled than for others (Lynn and Davis-Smith 1992: 367), and women
typically outnumber men among informal carers by a ratio of two to one (Varnplew and
Crookston, 1991). The government’s concern has not been how to relieve women of their
unequal burden of informal caring, thus freeing them to take a more active role in the
public sphere, but rather how to cope with an increased movement by women into the
labour force (Social Services Committee, 1990). For convenient reasons, gender issues are
avoided by the government in its promotion of active citizenship.
An ‘inherent weakness’ of the service-orientated strategy is that the attempt to convert
voluntarism into active citizenship will flounder as citizens see their own efforts replacing,
rather than significantly enhancing, the state’s contribution to collective services; as they
see their leisure time being reduced by the requirements of ‘voluntary’ service; and as the
government’s emphasis on duty and individual responsibility is perceived as reducing the
satisfaction that comes from freely choosing to take part, and as downgrading some of the
other motivations for voluntary activity such as compassion and the chance to contribute to
the community (see Timms, 1992: 30-31). ‘The adoption of an individualist, meritocractic
version of active citizenship, offering civic rewards to the most deserving citizens, is, we
would argue, one with limited chances of enhancing activity rates since self-interested
reasons are not the most prominent among citizens’ motives for voluntary activity’ (Timms,
ibid.).
A sense of belonging (the central component of citizenship), and the strengthening of
place-based communities are other potential casualties of a service-orientated strategy.
This is, first, due to the bias towards larger-scale organizations providing a standard service
package, which reduces the scope for local diversity and involvement. The second cause is
the emphasis on citizenship, and particularly on active citizenship, as an individual issue
rather than a collective experience with aims of social solidarity and enhancing the
common good (Mouffe, 1988).
Although we cannot readily make judgements about the impact on local democracy of
what are often termed ‘bypassing’ measures (see Taylor, 1991), our review of ‘local
governance’ has placed a question-mark against the extent to which such a system might be
‘local’. The government may make use of existing organizations of ‘local governance’ in
situations where some of the objectives of the two sides coincide, but where it attempts to
determine the full range of activities to be undertaken by such organizations, or the
methods they are to employ (either through funding conditions or regulatory systems),
then the objectives or goals of such organizations become distorted or displaced.
Voluntary organizations with uncertain funding are particularly prone to this effect. This
 ,‘iDE &SUNS 171

centralization works to transform ‘local governance’ into what we might term ‘government
by proxy’. The political anatomy of Britain would then not so much include a ‘shadow state’
as ‘government under camouflage’.
An alternative, citizen-orientated strategy for civil society would have as its main aim ‘to
make people better democrats and fuller members of their political communities, and to
enhance their personal development by involving them in all levels of public service from
policy to performance’ (Kearns, 1992: 33). This would entail what Marquand (1988) calls
the ‘politics of mutual education’, whereby citizens learn the art of government by
practising it, and become responsible by taking responsibility. Such a strategy would
recognize that a truly active citizenship, one which empowers as well as burdens its
citizens, will depend more and more upon the nature of local governance, and the
possibilities the latter offers for involvement as governors and governed that it opens up or
closes down for citizens.
‘Local governance’ would be seen as a set of arenas in which all citizens can participate.
Active citizenship and local governance together can form the basis of a participatory
democracy, but one where not only is an educative function an outcome of the process as
described by Pateman (1970: 42-43) but also where education is a precondition for ‘active
citizenship’. ‘Education for citizenship’ has to include more than the teaching of one’s
responsibilities to provide face-to-face welfare to others and to obey the law. It should seek
to give citizens an interest in democracy and self-governance, a knowledge of their rights
and opportunities to participate in the management and control of communal affairs, and
the skills required to perform these functions. A key issue is the raising of the competence
of the general volunteer so that he or she can master a system of local governance that
involves significant financial responsibilities, a highly trained professional staif, extensive
networking and heavy regulation.
However, education alone is not enough. What is required is more the process of
‘double democratization’ of which Held (1989: 182-185) writes, involving the
transformation of both state and civil society. The latter comprises the transformation of
structures that inhibit collective decision making, the curtailment of powerful interest
groups and systematic privileges, and the provision of a set of arenas in which citizens can
control their own projects and resources. The transformation of the state is to include a
‘double focus’ on formal rights and the conditions under which they are realized or
enacted (pp. 201-202); this includes ‘state’ rights (e.g. to vote, to be involved in collective
decision making) and social rights (p. 183); particularly important to ‘active citizenship’ are
education, financial resources and conditions of employment. So far, ‘active citizenship’
and ‘local governance’ are underdeveloped in both these respects. They may provide
opportunities for participation for some, but do not yet provide what we might call ‘new
state rights’. Equally, the social rights that are needed to support a greater voluntary
involvement in ‘local govenance’ are not in place. On these grounds, I would conclude that
non-participation in ‘local governance’, either as governors or as the willingly governed
(i.e. those to whom the governors are answerable), amounts to a form of exclusion from
citizenship. Phillips (1992), in her text on engendering democracy, has pointed out why
this is particularly so for women, for whom a more ‘actively participatory democracy’ (p.
162) is required if they are to influence agendas and choices. ‘Active citizenship’ and ‘local
governance’ have to overcome the sort of double bind whereby the more participatory
democracy becomes, the more it exacerbates existing discrimination and power
inequalities. Phillips points this out in the case of men and women, but it also applies to
other groupings of citizens. As Held puts it:
The study of citizenship has to concern itself with all those dimensions which
172 Act&e c&z&@ ana’ local govemaw

allow or exclude the participation of people in the communities in which they

live. (1989: 202)

Some of these dimensions were revealed in the analysis of survey data on voluntary
activity. Whilst some groups, and particularly manual workers, were less likely to volunteer
than others, even if asked to do so, a social pattern of inclinations is not the whole story.
There are also difEculties of resources, awareness and opportunity which a greater
reliance on voluntary activity would need to tackle, raising policy issues in the fields of the
labour market, education and the family. First, why is it that those people responsible for
bringing up families are least likely to be involved in committee work when they do
volunteer? Is it the constraints of their responsibilities; the lack of childcare assistance from
either their partner (if present) or other sources (e.g. the state or the voluntary
organization concerned); lack of self-confidence reinforced by their absence from the
labour market; or the expectations or prejudices of other volunteers? Making people aware
of opportunities for voluntary movement, through education and recruitment program-
mes, is also important. In the survey, some people simply had not thought about the
possibility of voluntary activity. This applied, for example, to one in seven unskilled,
non-regular volunteers. Furthermore, it was clear from the respondents’ potential reaction
to being asked to volunteer that opportunities played a large part and that all that some
people needed in order to volunteer was to be asked. An expanded programme of
voluntary activity would, therefore, need to give considerable attention to its methods of
recruitment, cognizant of the fact that direct approaches are currently an important and
successful device.
Lastly, the relationship between the worlds of voluntary activity and of employment need
developing. Commonplace ‘active citizenship’ would need to rest upon a consideration of
the suitability of the terms and conditions of employment of citizens, and the need for
financial or other support to volunteers, such as the granting of public service time away
from work for local governance activities. The secondary analysis of the 1991 National
Survey of Voluntary Activity, for example, found that, among non-regular volunteers, 47
percent of those with jobs had never felt that they wanted to volunteer (more) because
they lacked the time. And, of this group, 38 percent said they would fail to respond to a
direct plea for assistance for the same reason. The survey report itself showed that the level
of volunteering was very low among those who had to do overtime and shiftwork (Lynn
and Davis-Smith, 1992: Table 20).
‘Local governance’ could open up greater opportunities for citizens to participate in civil
society as the ‘shadow state’ (Welch, 1989) moves out of the dark towards centre stage. This
will not happen, however, if ‘active citizenship’ is implemented as a dual strategy, if
pre-existing geographical conditions-the mediating role of place-are not taken into
account in the design of ‘local governance’ initiatives, and if the issues of autonomy and
accountability are not addressed directly.
In addition to the matters mentioned above relating to the individual citizen, the
successful extension of voluntary involvement in governance, as opposed to either the
extension of a process of selection and appointment of people to boards and committees
by government or the exacerbation of selective patterns of voluntary involvement,
depends upon a number of institutional adaptations:

1. the clear separation of policy issues from technical issues and issues of day-to-day
administration so that the burden of workload on the voluntary governor is curtailed;
2. an apportionment of the burden of accountability to government between voluntary
governors and senior staff in order that not too much weight is placed upon the
 hE h?ARNS 173

shoulders of the volunteer, and so that the latter can make effective use of the scope for
delegation;
3. the preservation of the autonomy of the institutions of local governance;
4. promotion of the internal democracy of local organizations involved in governance;
5. curtailment of the government’s tendency to promote economies of scale and
organizational and geographical expansion within the private and voluntary sectors.

A citizen-orientated approach to active citizenship and local governance would recognize

the collective foundations to the individual benefits of citizenship. In so doing, it would be
sensitive to the geographical dimensions to these phenomena, and especially to the
recursive relationship between the nature of places as both a condition and a consequence
of local governance. Citizens’ inclinations towards voluntary, collective endeavour are
affected by their views about the physical and social qualities of the places in which they
live, and by their awareness of, and response to, how others view their places. Yet the
practice of local governance has the potential to improve substantially the characteristics
and experience of places, so that the dynamism and energy that local governance requires
of citizens becomes self-reinforcing.
However, not only are the geographical dimensions to active citizenship and local
governance important to the practice and outcome of these strategies, but the new local
politics formed by their interplay should be of interest to those involved in debates about
postmodern geographies. The emerging local politics has the potential to work in the
opposite direction from modernism’s supposed relegation or removal of place-based
communities (see Entrikin, 1991), and from Thatcherism’s alleged elimination of
differences between places (see Johnston, 1991), yet it does not necessarily provide the
‘maximum feasible local control’ sought by postmodernists (Cooke, 1990). But more than
this empirical question about the changing complexion of Britain’s social and political
geography, and contrary to the tendency to champion the explanatory virtues of
uniqueness, the study of local political geographies, of active citizenship and local
governance in practice, offers opportunities to address the challenge posed by Beynon and
Hudson (1993); namely, to understand the causes and significance of place-uniqueness. To
this end, it would be preferable not to adopt a postmodernist epistemology and discard the
notion of generalized theories of place (cf. Warf, 1993). Rather, we should entertain the
notion that political geography, through the study of new structures of local governance in
practice, may shed light on general theoretical issues such as how and to what extent
places mediate social and political participation, and why place attachment matters to
citizens. Hence, political geographers might be able to reflect on the pertinence of a
postmodern epistemology to the subdiscipline.

Acknowledgements
My thanks to Jon Bannister, with whom I have discussed at length the ideas in this paper, and to Chris
Philo and anonymous referees who provided comments on an earlier draft. I am also grateful to
Justin Davis Smith of the Volunteer Centre UK, for arranging the provision of survey data to me.

Notes
1. The 1_991 National Survey of Voluntary Act&&y in the UK was originally carried out by the
Volunteer Centre UK; for the full survey results see Lynn and Davis-Smith (1992). Apart from Table
2, the results reported refer to what are called ‘regular volunteers’, that is people who undertake
voluntary activity at least once a month for at least one group or organization. This is known as
‘formal voluntary activity’ and is the type of acitivity under which participation in ‘local governance’
174 Active and local governance
citizenship

would be classified. The survey definition of voluntary activity was ‘any activity which involves
spending time, unpaid, doing something which aims to benefit someone, other than or in addition
to close relatives, or to benefit the environment’ (p. 16). The questions themselves referred to
‘unpaid work or help’. A total of 1488 interviews were completed in the survey, including 444
interviews with regular volunteers.
2. This is an under-researched area in the study of voluntarism.

References

AGNEW,J. A. (1987). Place and Politics. The GeographtiMediation of State andSocie& London: Allen and Unwin.
BAGGULEY, P., MARK LAUCSON, J., SHAPIRO,D., URRY, J., WALBY,S. ANDWARDE, A (1990). Resmcchving: Place, CIasr and
Gender. London: Sage.
BARNFIT, A. (1989). Charlie’s army. New Statesman and So&&, 22 September, 9-11.
BKCER, S. (1991). ‘It’s our fault. Citizen John tells us to pull our socks up’. Near S#esmu n and Sociery, 26 July.
BENNEIT, R, ED.(1989). Terriitoryand Admintktration in Europe. London: Pinter.
BEYNON, H. AND HUDSON, R (1993). Place and space in contemporary Europe: some lessons and reflections.
AT&@& 25(3), 177-190.
-DANOR, V. (1992). A local hero to confront Whitehall. The Guardian, 25 July, 25.
CENTRQSxxnsncx OFFXX (1992). Social Trends 22. London: HMSO.
COHEN, S. ANDTAYLOR, L. (1992). &@e &en?@. London: Routledge.
Co-, B. ANDELLIS,G. (1993). The next quangos in London. New Staresman and Society, 26 March, 20-21.
COMMUN~Y COUNCILS RESOURCE CENTRE(1991). Community Councils and Local Goventmeru in Scotkznd The
Future of Grawoots Democracy. Glasgow: CCRC.
COOKE, P. (1990). Modern urban theory in question. Transaction of the In.stih&eof Briti &ogre NS 15,
331-343.
Cox, K (1989). The politics of turf and the question of class. In The Power of Geography. How Terrby Shapes
So&l Life (J. Welch and M. Dear eds). London: Unwin Hyman.
DAHRENDORF, R (1990). Decade of the citizen. Interview with John Keane. l% Curd&z, 1 August.
DEPARTMENT OF EDU~T~ON AND SCIENCE(1990). Helping today’s children become tomorrow’s citizens: John
Macgregor. Neus Release 51/90. London: DES.
DUNN, J, (1992). Democracy: i%e Unfinished Journey 508 EC to AD 1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DUNSIRE,A. (1990). Holistic governance. Public Poliq and Administration 5, 4-19.
ECONOMIC AND Soua RESEARCHCOUNCIL(1992). Local Goyanmzce Initiutis. Swindon: ESRC.
ELSTER,J. (1992). Local Justke: How I?xitih&ionsAllocate Scarce Goods and Nece.w?y Burdens. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
ENTIUKIN, J, N. (1991). i%e Behueenness of Place: Towarak a Geography of Moabnity. London: Macmillan.
FOSTER,C. D. (1988). Accountability in the development of policy for local taxation of people and business.
Regional Sfudie 22, 245-250.
FOUCAULT,M. (1992). Governmentality. In 4he Foucuult E$et’: Snrdies in Governmatulity (G. Birchell, C. Gordon
and P. Miller eds). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
GIDDENS, k (1984). The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
GIDDENS, A (1987). Social Theory andModem Sociolo~. Cambridge: Polity Press.
GOODLAD,R (1993). The Housing Azhori~ as Enabler. Harlow: Longman.
GYFORD,J. (1992). Does PkueMattw?Loc&ty andLoculDemcwaq. London: TheLocal Government Management
Board, The Belgrave Papers No. 3.
GYFORD,J,, LEACH, S. ANDGAME, C. (1989). K& Changing Politics of Local Government. London: LJnwin Hyman.
HEATER,D. (1991). Citizenship: a remarkable case of sudden interest. Parliamenq A@rs 44, 140-156.
HEGINWTHAM, C. (1990). Rehun to Community: The Volwttmy Ethic and Community Care. London: Bedford
Square Press.
Hia~, D. (1989). Political Tbeoy and the Modern Skzte. Cambridge: Polity Press.
HLIMBLE, S. (1982). Voluntary Action in the 1980s. Berhamsted: Volunteer Centre.
JOHNSTON, R J, (1991). A Question of Place &Dlorirzg the Practice of Human Geogw#y. Oxford: Blackwell.
KEANE,J, (1988). Democracy and CtiZ So&~. London: Versa.
KERNS,A. (1990). Voluttk&m, Manugement and Accountability. Glasgow: Centre for Housing Research.
KuRNs, A (1992). Active citizenship and urban governance. Transacrions of the Instih#e of Brihkb Geugrapbetx N.S.
17, 20-34.
KEMENY,J. (1992). Housing and Social i’hory. London: Routledge.
LFXH, S., STEWART, M., DAVIES,H. ANDLAMBERT, C. (1992). Local Govemmenr. Its Role and Function York: Joseph
Rowntree Foundation.
 ADE &ARNS 175

LOCALGOVERNMWTINFORMA~ONUNIT (1992). Local Gouernmer~ in the 1990s. London: LGIU.

LKNN,P. AND DAVIS-SMITH, J. (1992). The 1991 Natbnal Surwy of Volun#y Actit@ in b5e UK. Berkhamsted:
Volunteer Centre UK
MARQUAND, D. (1988). The U?@ritrc@led Society. London: Fontana.
MOUFFE,C. (1988). The civics lesson. New Statcw?tun and So&~ 1-18, 28-30.
MURRAY, C. (1988). In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government. New York: Simon and Schuster.
OLIVER,D. (1991). Active citizenship in the 1990s. Parliamentary A&its 42, 157-171.
OSBORNE,D. ANDGAEEILEX, T. (1992). Reinventing Government. How the Ennepraeurial Spirit is Tran@rming the
Public Sector. Reading, MA: Addison-WeIsey.
PARRY,G., MOYSER,G. AM) DAY,N. (1992). Po&cal Participation andDemocracy in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
PAIEMAN,C. (1970). Pat-tic- and Democratic 7beoty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
PHILLIPS,A. (1992). Engenu’erhg Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
PRED,A (1984). Place as historically contingent process. Anna& of&e Awciiarion ofAmer+xm Geographers 74,
279-297.
RABAN J. (1989). God, Man and Mrs lkder. London: Chano and Windus.
FWPH,E. (1976). Place and Plad-. London: Pion.
ROBERTS,D. (1979). Paternulism in Ear& Victor&z England. London: Croom Helm.
RUMSOLD, J. (1991). Quietly, at home, the death of outrage. The Gumdian, 18 November.
SACK,R D. (1986). Human Terri&niulity. Its Zbeory and H&-tory.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SENNETT, R (1976). The Fall of the Public Man. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Snnnn, A. (1987). The Theory of Moral Senttments Idianapolis: Liberty Classics.
Socw. SERVICES COMMITTEE (1990). Fa@ Report Communify Care: Curers, Cm 410. London: HMSO.
Smw~ar, J. (1992). The rebuilding of public accountability. In Accounrabilily to the Public. London: European
Policy Forum.
STOKER, G. (1991). The Politics of Local Got.ern~, 2nd edn. London: Macmillan.
TAXOR, R. B. (1988). Human TerriirorialFunctioning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
T~MMS,N. (1992). Family and Citizenship Values in Contemporary Brimin. Aldershot: Dartmouth.
URWIN,D. W. (1990). The politics of territory and identity. Sta&ns o@ntliga utredningar 33, 1-17.
VAMREW,C. ANDCROOKSTON, E. (1991). SupportinginformaI carers.Local GnwnmemPolicyMakrng 17(4), 11-13.
WARF,B. (1993). Postmodernism and the loo&ties debate: ontological questions and epistemological implications,
T@kcbr# voor Economkcbe en Sociale Geograjk 84(3), 162-174.
WIDDICOMBECOMMIT~E (1986). Committee of Inquity into the Conduct of Local Au&&y Business, ~esemch
Volume II: The Local Government Councillor, Cm 9700. London: HMSO.
W~TOUR, P. (1993a). Portillo conjures up Christian lessons for welfare cutback The Gumdian, 16 September.
Wurrouk, P. (1993b). Relentless advance of the quangocracy. 7&a Guardian, 29 April.
WOLCH,J. (1989). The shadow state. In The Power of Geog-r@y. How Ten-by Shapes Social Life (M. Dear and J.
Welch eds). London: Unwin Hyman.

Bibliography

DOUGLAS,D. (1991). Highjacked: the spirit of Adam Smith Glasgow Heraki, 14 July, 21.
FRIEDMAN, M. ANDFRIEDMAN, R (1980). Free to Chose. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
GRAY,A (1948). A&m Smith. Historical Association/George Philip.
GRAY,J. (1986). Liberaltjm. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
GREEN,D. G. (1987). The New Right. 7be Counter-revolution in Political, Ewtwmic and So&al Thought. London:
Harvester Wheatsheaf
HAYEK,F. A. (1946). Irtditiuulimt: True and Fake. Oxford: Blackwell.
HAYEK,F. A (1973). Law, Legislation and Liber&, Vol. 1: Rules and Orb. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
HUME,D. (1957). An Inquiry Concern ing the Princ@les of Morals. New York: Liberal Arts Press.
HUME,D. (1972). A Treatise of Human Nature Books Two and Three. London: Fontana.
KE@.NS,A. (1991). Active Cittid@andAcwuntiility. Z5e Caw ofBrttti HousingAwciations. Glasgow: Centre
for Housing Research, HARU Discussion Paper No. 2.
MILLS,J. S. (1982). On Lzkrty. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
TAYLOR,P. (1991). The changing political geography. In 7Zw Changing Geogruply of the UK (RJ. Johnston and V.
Gardner eds). London: Routledge.
WINCH,D. (1978). Adam Smith’s Politics.An ibay in Historiographic Rev&km. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.