Local Government Modernisation in England: A Critical Review of the LGMA Evaluation Studies

New Labour has subjected English local government to an unparalleled period of reform. This article reviews the Local Government Modernisation Agenda evaluation studies commissioned by central government. The review identifies valuable insights from the studies into the contemporary state of English local government, central government and central–local relations. However, the studies also illustrate the need for research on public service reform to include analyses of the political origins of reform policies and the political–bureaucratic issues involved in their implementation. It is also argued that future research needs to rediscover the value of studying local politics ‘in the round’, the impact of socio-economic and non-local factors on local policy outcomes and the role of new sources of policy influence in the channels of central–local relations.     

The Great Survivor: The Persistence and Resilience of English Local Government

This article is about the persistence and resilience of the form of local government that emerged in England in the nineteenth century and took shape in the twentieth century. English local government has adapted to successive reorganisations and changes to its functions; it has survived centralisation, privatisation, the imposition of quangos, regional governance, elected mayors, performance management and latterly fiscal austerity by responding to opportunities and meeting the continual need for administrative tasks at the local level. The centralised structure to political management in English local government has generated a high level of organisational capacity and a pragmatic sensibility that ensures the institution remains in place even in unpropitious circumstances. Other local organisations, such as voluntary sector bodies and quangos, have less capacity to compete and work to shorter timescales. Such resilience has come to the fore in the period of fiscal austerity since 2009 when local authorities have had to manage severe declines in their budgets whilst taking on additional functions, such as council tax benefit. The organisational capacity and pragmatism of English local government create path dependence as its very efficiency at managing services may have shut off options for democratic renewal and participation.     

A Longitudinal Evaluation of E-Government at the Local Level in Greater Western Sydney (GWS) Australia

This research reviews and revisits the 14 local government websites to determine whether the GWS councils have improved their online services since 2009. The study has found that there have been significant developments and improvements in e-government services among the GWS councils, while these have been variable and in many cases there is scope for further improvement. This research is significant as a longitudinal evaluation can track the evolutionary paths of local e-government development and provides insights into the challenges and opportunities of e-government development at the local level in Australia.     

Determinants of Online Reporting of Accounting Information by Spanish Local Government Authorities

This paper examines the features of Spanish local governments that influence the degree of their voluntary reporting of financial information on the Internet. Following an agency theory approach, we propose five hypotheses regarding the relationship between voluntary financial disclosure and the size, leverage, capital investment, political competition and press visibility of a local authority. The empirical application of these hypotheses shows that size, capital investment and political competition are positively associated with the degree of online reporting. We also found a negative and significant relationship between press visibility and voluntary financial disclosure.     

Devolution and Local Government: Evidence from Scotland

Devolution in Scotland has had a major impact upon local government. Local government, at both political and managerial levels, perceives central government in the shape of the Scottish Executive to be closer (geographically and politically) and more open to local government in terms of access to ministers and civil servants. However, Scottish central–local relations continues to be characterised by a sense of mistrust of local government, especially among civil servants and a continuing desire for central control of key policy agendas. Equally, the policy process continues to display features of fragmentation across major policy areas. Moreover, Westminster has not yet departed the scene of Scottish politics in both financial and policy terms but also in the enduring presence of a Westminster ‘political culture’     

Local Political Leadership and the Modernisation of Local Government

Political leadership has been a key element of central government's attempts to ‘modernise’ local government over the past decade, within a discourse that emphasised ‘strong’ and ‘visible’ leadership and the role of leaders and leadership in driving change within local authorities. In the context of such an approach, and also taking account of academic discourse, this article draws upon interviews with nearly thirty individuals in leadership positions in local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales to assess their experiences of leadership and their views of some aspects of the role and work of councils. It suggests that whilst there is broad convergence between the aspirations of government and the narratives that emerge from these leaders on some aspects of local political leadership, there are also differences, perhaps most notably over the relationship between changes to decision-making structures and the loci of political power.     

The Dictator's New Clothes: The Relationship Between E-Participation and Quality of Government in Non-Democratic Regimes

It is often assumed that the development of e-participation and e-government initiatives aimed at stimulating citizen participation in the political process and fostering more efficient governmental services harbors a great potential for improved control of corruption and government performance. Thus, it is often argued that e-participation is an efficient instrument for increasing transparency and quality of government in non-democratic and developing countries. However, this article argues that these assumptions should be questioned on theoretical, empirical, and methodological grounds. The results of the empirical time-series cross-section analyses show that positive development in terms of e-participation in non-democratic countries does not lead to corresponding positive effects in terms of control of corruption and quality of government. Rather, in many cases the Internet offers political elites new opportunities in their quest for remaining in power.     

The view from below: Local government and Putin's reforms

Local government reforms in contemporary Russia are placed in the broader contexts of political reform under Putin and the historical relationship between local administration and the state. Reforms of local government thus help illuminate the architecture of contemporary state building in Russia and the degree to which contemporary Russia perpetuates political traditions. This study reviews the antecedent action in local government prior to the Putin era. It then examines the Kozak Commission and the new law on local government, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of these reforms. Finally, this study examines the challenges of implementing the reforms and what these challenges tell us about devolution and centralisation under Putin.     

Financial Discrepancies in Political Party Funding by Indonesian Local Government Authorities

Through different forms of decentralization variables, this study investigates Indonesian local government authorities' 2006 financial accountability reports in terms of local government authorities' contributing funds to political parties. Audit results by the Supreme Audit Body reveal that many articles were violated by these authorities in regard to the distributing, administrating, and reporting of assistance funds from them to political parties. Each rupiah committed by the 221 local government authorities involved in this study violated, on average, 1.8 articles, indicating a low level of compliance.

Critically, the study finds that administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization decreases discrepancies. The less administratively decentralized provincial authorities, where decision making is a level of government farther from the people, are more likely than non-provincial local government authorities to make discrepancies with political party legislation and regulations. Fiscally decentralized local government authorities, who earn a higher fraction of their revenue from local sources, also tend to have fewer discrepanciesFinally, politically decentralized authorities with a higher percentage of elected officials from the decentralized supporting ruling coalition, also have fewer discrepancies.     

Indigenous Local Governments for Palestine: A Roadmap for Replacing Imposed Institutions to Build Stability and Confidence

Occupying empires and states and expatriates have imposed structures of local government in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, Palestinians have little confidence in the existing units of local government. That lack of confidence inhibits the development of a civil society. Proposed reforms must understand the history and actions that minimized opportunities for participation and the professionalism of bureaucracies that could produce and deliver the public services needed to sustain economic and social development. Establishing a stable civil state will require bureaucratic reforms anchored in theory and an understanding of the unique past that has left more than four million residents of Palestine without the public services needed for economic and social development. All parties to a resolution of the conflicts between Israel and Palestine and between Palestinians must help build new local structures of local government; the recommended steps presented here are grounded in theroy and histroy and also based on empirical research.     

Electoral and Political Changes: the Impact on Political Bureaucratic Relationships in Scottish Local Government

This paper explores a fundamental issue in public administration: the political bureaucratic relationship or political administrative interface. Much of the research and writing hitherto has been at central government level; and while important work on local government exists, relatively little exists on local government. The paper makes an important contribution to the field by researching aspects of the political administrative interface in the context of significant electoral and political changes in Scottish local government, which introduced single transferable voting and multi member wards. The research found an increase in intensity of senior bureaucrats' political management roles, a greater bureaucratisation of political and policy roles, increased scrutiny yet mixed findings about democratic processes. The approach and findings open up the research field and the paper concludes by suggesting some areas of future research potential.     

The Politics of Local Government Reform in Northern Ireland

A major review of public administration in Northern Ireland has resulted in proposals for radical reforms in health, education and local government services. Although originating from the devolved government of 1999, intermittent suspensions resulted in Direct Rule Ministers taking over responsibility for the review. This article traces the influence of a sizeable body of research evidence on the outcomes of the review, specifically controversial reforms to local government, and the significant influence attached to macro political factors in reaching key public policy decisions. It also highlights the asymmetry in power relations between Stormont and local government and how devolution has simply compounded regional centralism in Northern Ireland.     

Political Parties in the UK

The modernisation of English local government has created new forms of executive leadership. These aim to deliver better management and greater public engagement. Drawing from a recent study of the views of elected councillors in a sample of contrasting councils, this paper considers how far the new political management has succeeded in enhancing public interest and involvement in local government. It is suggested that executive and non-executive councillors differ in their perceptions of the new arrangements and that public interest is still largely perceived as relating to issues of immediate and personal concern. Backbench councillors may feel relatively powerless in taking up issues. Stepping down from elected office could even provide greater opportunities to be involved in public and political affairs. Equally, there are many examples of positive initiatives to involve the public, including area-based organisation and the effective use of scrutiny. Elected mayors were more optimistic than councillors in their perception of public involvement, tending to see themselves as having a direct line to the public and serving to 'reconnect' council and public. Overall, however, public engagement remains the great unfinished business of local government modernisation.     

The Paradox of Small Hydropower: Local Government and Environmental Governance in China

Small Hydropower is regarded by the Chinese state as a method for both poverty alleviation and environmental protection in rural areas. This paper finds that local government officials develop an ‘environmentally bundled economic interests’ approach that simultaneously fulfills the central state’s new political mission and local economic development demand. The small hydropower plants however have paradoxically become the destroyer of the environment as local government at different levels develop the plants in an un-coordinated manner. We use the growth of small hydropower in Yunnan province as an exemplar to show the new tendency and problems of China’s environmental governance.     

Majority Rule in Consensual Democracies: Explaining Political Influence in Norwegian Local Councils

Norwegian local government has traditionally been strongly rooted in the consensus ideal. When the new Local Government Act of 1992 allowed the municipalities to introduce parliamentary models and abolished the statutory requirement of qualified majority decisions in the councils, this therefore implied a significant change in the local government ideal. Even though the municipalities have been reluctant to formally adopt a parliamentary model, this paper argues that in practice a majority system is replacing the traditional consensual model, with functional roles for a governing majority and an opposition. The empirical analysis employs data on local politicians from 1994 and 1998 to test the proposition that representatives of the governing parties exert more influence on local policies than members of the opposition. Two different indicators of political influence are used: (1) the councillors' budgetary influence measured as the distance between the councillors' ideal point and the actual decision outcome, and (2) the councillors' ability to have initiatives accepted in the various local political bodies. In addition to the variable representing membership of the governing majority or the opposition, the model also controls for factors such as the representatives' formal institutional affiliation, individual characteristics and community context. Even when controlling for these determinants, the empirical results strongly support the hypothesis.     

Opportunities for Collaboration and the Adoption of Local Government Investment Pools

This study examines the determinants of state adoption of local government investment pools (LGIPs) for commingling public funds for investment. It uses aggregate local government panel data from 41 states over a 40-year period and conditional fixed-effects logistic regression. The study finds that opportunities for collaboration, the extent of interlocal collaboration, local financial/economic conditions in a state, and proximate coterminous neighbors increase the likelihood that a state will adopt an LGIP. The finding that opportunities for collaboration contribute to the likelihood of LGIP adoption is an important evidence in support of the collaboration idea and extends the theory to interlocal cash management.     

Modernising Local Government: Micro-Organisational Reform and Changing Local Structural Configurations

This article takes an indicative group of county, metropolitan and unitary authorities located in the English West Midlands to examine how effectively local government is grappling with modernising’ reforms in a context where the appropriate unit of analysis has become problematic because of broader changes to local governance. Sub-national territorial structural variability is becoming more pronounced while, paradoxically, what stands out in the micro-organisational dimension is the extent to which local authorities are increasingly working to a common reform agenda, notwithstanding the need to resolve incoherences in New Labour's modernisation project. The explanation for these observed (contrary) changes lies not only in the vagaries of top-down pressures emanating from central political and regulatory infiuences, but also in local institutional dynamics, as well as in lateral or peer dissemination of ‘good’ practice within local government.     

Local Councillors: Between Local 'Government' and Local 'Governance'

With a two-dimensional concept of 'New Public Management' as its point of departure, the article points to the development of a specific Danish model of NPM at the local level of government. In the municipalities the market-oriented NPM dimension has been almost absent and the managerial dimension has been interpreted and translated into a 'governance'-oriented model that combines decentralized self- and user-governance from below with centralized goal-steering from above. This combined model institutes new governing roles including a new leadership role for elected councillors as central goal-steering decision and policy makers. Rather than strengthening the local councillors, the new leadership role has turned out to be problematic for the elected councillors. The problems inherent in the new institutional role as goal-steering decision makers are discussed and arguments are put forward in favour of a more 'governance' and less NPM and government-oriented role for elected councillors. What seems to be needed is another new role that stresses local councillors as co-governors and guardians of an inclusive and democratic form of local governance.     

Local Government Modernization in Germany: Between Incrementalism and Reform Waves

In taking a historical-institutionlist approach, this paper looks at the development of administrative reforms in German local government which, because of the comparatively high degree of political and administrative decentralization of the Federal Republic has played a crucial role in the latter's entire politico-administrative setting and, hence, in its institutional reforms. The paper mainly identifies three stages in the post-war development of administrative reforms. During the 'planning movement' of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Germany's local level government and administration underwent significant and, to a considerable degree, lasting institutional changes. The 1980s were a period of incrementalist adaptation. Since the beginning of the 1990s, conspicuously later than in the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries, but earlier and faster than the federal and the Länder levels, Germany's local government has embarked upon dramatic changes particularly on two scores. First, in a growing number of municipalities and counties, administrative modernization was incorporated under the heading of a 'New Steering Model' (NSM) that largely drew on the dominant international New Public Management (NPM) debate. The dynamics of the ongoing administrative reforms are marked by an 'amalgamation' of NPM/NSM and earlier ('traditional') reform concepts. Secondly, at the same time, the political institutions of local government have under-gone a significant shift as a result of the introduction of direct democratic procedures (direct election of mayors and heads of counties, binding local referenda). The paper argues that it is this co-incidence and co-evolution of administrative and political reforms that make for the peculiarity of Germany's current modernization trajectory, distinguishing it from the Anglo-Saxon and, to a lesser degree, from the Scandinavian modernization paths.     

Local E-Government and Devolution: Electronic Service Delivery in Northern Ireland

There are billions of annual transactions between citizens and government; most of these are between citizens and local government. Both central and local government share the same target for electronic service delivery: 100% of key services online by 2005. In Northern Ireland, however, district councils are being left behind on the e-government agenda. The Northern Ireland Assembly, currently suspended, has no provisions or recommendations for local e-government, although many transactional services of interest to ordinary citizens are provided by local councils. The absence of a strategy for local e-government means that district councils are left to their own devices, and this contrasts with the rest of the UK. A snapshot of local councils is used to assess the extent of provision of electronic service delivery, highlighting examples of innovation, and indicating significant challenges for Northern Ireland local e-government during a period of suspended devolution.