Models of Local Governance: Public Opinion and Political Theory in Britain

Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction and Overview 1 1 From Local Government to Local Gov...

Author: William L. Miller | Malcolm Dickson | Gerry Stoker

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Contents List of Figures

vii

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction and Overview

1

1 From Local Government to Local Governance Two decades of institutional change Governance: a strange new world? What price local democracy? New Labour: reform beyond reform Normative models of local governance Conclusion

11 11 18 21 24 28 32

2 A Multi-Level Survey The test of public opinion Levels of opinion: the general public and rival local governance elites The survey

33 33 34 36

3 The Limits of Local Identity Objective links to locality Subjective links to locality Pride, responsibility and exclusion Conclusion: multiple identities and inclusive citizenship

45 46 51 64 68

4 The Role of Local Governance Minimalism National or local standards? The Tiebout thesis Local interests A mission to mobilize? What influenced ideas about the proper objectives of local governance?

71 72 73 74 75 76

5 The Image of Traditional Local Government Representation and responsiveness Interests Effectiveness Satisfaction and trust

85 86 87 90 95

v

79

vi Contents

Influences on images Conclusion: low on efficiency but high on honesty and trustworthiness

97 103

6 Institutional Preferences Localism Democracy Paying for services Rival institutions of local governance Influences Conclusion: a general preference for democratically elected governance

105 105 111 114 115 119

7 Governing Perspectives The local connection Party and ideology The role of local governance The image of local government Institutional preferences Conclusion: a governing consensus between rival elites but divisions within

130 131 140 141 148 168

8 Testing Models against Public Opinion Assumptions about local identity and citizenship Aims and objectives Images Institutional preferences Conclusion: winners and losers among the four models tested

188 190 202 213 220

9 Public Support for Local Democracy A democratic form of local governance Autonomous local governance Conclusion: defending local democracy on two fronts

242 243 251 259

Notes

262

Index

268

122

181

237

List of Figures 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 5.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 8.1 9.1 9.2

Objective links to locality Strength of local identities Regional patterns of identities Focus on those who need council jobs Provide as few services as possible Trust in councillors, board members and government Impact of local identification on institutional ratings Impact of ideology on institutional ratings Autonomous local governance Identifications Councils compared to private businesses Perceptions of each other’s efficiency Quango accountability Institutional ratings Testing models of local governance The impact of a good image of local councils The impact of ideology and pragmatic localism

vii

49 58 64 83 83 102 125 126 128 136 159 160 174 178 239 247 258

Acknowledgements We must thank the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) which funded this research under the Local Governance Programme grant L311253054 to William L. Miller and Malcolm Dickson. Iain Murray acted as our principal research assistant and the interviews were carried out by a team of Glasgow University students trained and supervised by him. Malcolm Dickson programmed the CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) system which they used. We must also thank the 2203 members of the public, 788 elected local councillors and 903 appointed members of local TEC/LECs or DHA/HBs (local enterprise and health boards) who gave up their time to participate in our long and searching interviews.

ix

Introduction and Overview

This is a book about attitudes towards local governance – the attitudes of political theorists, of practitioners and of the general public. The book focuses on Britain but it is widely recognized that the contemporary debate about local governance in Britain is only a part, though a very important part, of a worldwide debate about local governance. The issues that concern us are not limited to contemporary Britain.

Local governance And it is a book about local governance rather than local government traditionally understood. The system of elected local councils running a wide range of services that lasted, in Britain, from the 1930s to the 1980s is only one method of local governance. By local governance we mean the commissioning, organization and control of services such as health, education, policing, infrastructure and economic development within localities. There were alternatives to the so-called ‘all-purpose’ elected councils before the 1930s and there are alternatives now. Under the Conservative governments of 1979–97 Britain became the world’s ‘brand leader of local government’, ‘introducing a whole raft of new bodies at local level, mainly special purpose bodies, all appointed, whilst removing functions from elected local governments at the same time’.1 We pay particular attention to the alternatives to traditional local government that burgeoned during the Thatcherite years. We look at the attitudes of academic theorists and the general public towards local governance by appointed bodies, by consumer or producer self-management, and by private companies operating within a market, as well as their attitudes towards local governance by elected all-purpose councils. More than that, we investigate the view from the 1

2 Models of Local Governance

inside: the attitudes of elected local councillors from the traditional system of elected local democracy, and the attitudes of board members in the new rival quangocracy of appointed boards. Chapter 1 reviews the extraordinary period of change during the years of Conservative national government and provides a context for the analysis presented in the remainder of the book. The shift from local government to local governance is first examined in terms of institutional changes and developments. Elected local authorities were joined by a range of quangos, appointed bodies and partnership organizations in the work of providing local services, decisions and strategic visions. The new emphasis on ‘governance’ also brought into focus a range of new actors from the business world, from the voluntary sector and more broadly from among active citizens. These actors took prominent roles alongside the elected politicians and the permanent officials from traditional elected local authorities. The new emphasis on ‘governance’ sparked much debate and indeed controversy in the local government world. There were questions raised about the accountability and probity of the new institutions of local governance. In a broad sense it appeared that the system was fragmented and lacked overall coherence. It also lacked a fundamental legitimacy. Yet at the same time the standing and status of elected local authorities was at a low ebb. Low turnout in elections, near invisible political leadership and public disenchantment made claims for the democratic credentials of elected local authorities more difficult to sustain during the 1980s and 1990s than before. In short from the perspective of many academics, specialist journalists and informed commentators the Conservatives had presided over a period of change in local governance which saw the creation or extension of a local quango world that lacked legitimacy and a decline in the status and standing of the established institutions of elected local government. Prescriptions of how to address this crisis in local democracy have not been slow in coming forward. Indeed some ideas for radical change in the way that local politics works and operates have been taken up by the New Labour government elected in May 1997, notably the idea of introducing directly elected mayors.

Measuring attitudes towards local governance But the main thrust of this book is not to prescribe, nor to provide a detailed account of the trials and tribulations of local governance under the Conservatives or for that matter under New Labour. Rather

Introduction and Overview 3

our aim is to test the reactions of the public and practitioners inside the system to the new world of local governance that has been created over the last two decades. More than that we relate their views on local governance to the major themes in the debate on local governance stimulated by political theorists and informed observers. There is not one model of local governance but rather a variety of models. Throughout the book we refer to a broad distinction between localist, individualist, mobilization and centralist models of local governance. (Indeed in Chapter 8 each of these models is comprehensively tested against public opinion.) Our aim then is to test the reactions of public and practitioners to the world of local governance that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s and provide an understanding of how these two bodies of opinion would like to see a system of local governance constructed. What, from their point of view, is the ideal model of local governance? Chapter 2 gives a brief description of our methodology. We used a multi-level survey to investigate public and elite attitudes towards local governance. It comprised 2203 interviews with the general public, 788 with elected councillors and 903 with appointed members of boards charged with local business development and local health care – TEC/LECs (Training and Enterprise Councils in England and Wales, Local Enterprise Companies in Scotland) and DHA/HBs (District Health Authorities in England and Wales, Health Boards in Scotland). Rather than spreading our interviews with appointed elites across too wide and disparate a range, we chose to look only at members of TEC/LECs and DHA/HBs. These organizations constituted particularly wellorganized and powerful representatives of the local quango state. And restricting our attention to these two provided enough interviews within each to allow us to analyse opinion within specific kinds of quango, and contrast opinion between them. The contrast proves unexpectedly illuminating. It is difficult to deny that understanding the views of the public and those that work inside the local governance system should be one factor informing public policy discussion and decision. Yet investigating people’s views about issues such as local governance is problematic. For most members of the public – and indeed for many members of the local governance elite (board members and elected councillors) – general questions about the performance of the system or thoughts about how it could be reconstructed are not to the forefront of their daily lives. The interviewing system we used helped to address the difficulties raised by the relatively low salience of the issues that


concerned our respondents. CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) allows the researcher to vary wordings, putting variants of the same questions or testing out different scenarios using split and randomized samples. The flexibility and variety thereby introduced enables us, for example, to gain greater depth and understanding of the respondents’ replies, check when a particular wording changes the responses unduly, and gauge whether opinion is strongly or weakly held.

Local identity The main body of our findings starts with a look at the general public’s attitudes. Chapter 3 investigates the extent, depth and nature of the public’s perceived and felt community of place.2 We found a strong and widespread psychological ‘sense of belonging’ to localities of different kinds. But this sense of belonging peaked with respect to ‘Britain’. It was lower for regions (Scotland excepted), lower still for the local district or home neighbourhood, lower still for the workplace, and very low indeed for ‘Europe’. Nonetheless, among the public as a whole, local identification with region and district was far stronger than identification with any class, religion or political party. People felt a particularly acute sense of pride in the achievements of local people and shame at their misdemeanours. But this psychological identification with locality lacked one essential character of citizenship: it was simply not exclusive. Only a small minority felt that access to local services or participation in local elections should be restricted to those who had lived or paid taxes locally for at least two years – itself a ridiculously low threshold for entry into a genuinely meaningful ‘local citizenship’. Despite their own strong sense of local identification, the vast majority felt that local government should be the property of currently local residents, no matter how recently arrived nor how shallow their local roots. Citizenship is nothing if not a privilege. It is a meaningless concept if it includes everybody and excludes nobody. And a local citizenship that applies to anyone who happens to be in the locality on the day is not in any real sense a citizenship. Nor is a local community that automatically includes everyone who happens to be in the locality on the day, in any real sense a community. The vast majority of the public therefore base their attitude towards access to local elections and services on some wider and non-local conception of citizenship and community, probably focused on Britain, and perhaps wider still.


The role of local governance Chapter 4 deals with the general public’s attitudes towards the role of local governance, its aims and objectives. Should it provide only a minimal range of services? Should it provide local or national standards of service? Should it let the market provide? Should it attempt to mobilize local people or particular ‘disadvantaged’ groups, or leave them to get on with their own lives? Should the conflict between local and individual autonomy be reconciled by individuals moving to a different locality more in keeping with their ideal of local governance (a test of the so-called ‘Tiebout hypothesis’, see p. 74)? We found a wide diversity of views on these issues. There was evidence that they reflected, in part, the general political ideology of left versus right, big government versus small government. Such left–right ideology had a strong influence on attitudes towards the extent of public services but less upon attitudes towards issues that involved local autonomy. Attitudes towards local autonomy were themselves strikingly paradoxical. There was overwhelming public support both for ‘national standards’ and for local councils’ freedom to provide ‘whatever standard of services their local community wants and is willing to pay for’. Two-thirds of the public simultaneously supported both. Relatively few – only a quarter – supported local discretion without national standards, and even less supported national standards without local discretion.

The image of traditional local government Critics of traditional local governance by elected councils had claimed that councils were in fact neither representative, nor efficient, nor even honest. Chapter 5 investigates the general public’s image of locally elected councils – both in absolute and comparative terms. The public was ambivalent about how well councils represented local people’s views, but overwhelmingly positive about the good intentions of local councillors. However, more than four in ten felt their local council did not care about their views. Councils were seen as too much influenced by central government and local bureaucrats. Conversely they were seen as insufficiently influenced by local voters, by those who paid the most local taxes, by racial or ethnic minorities or by women’s groups. On balance, despite all the tabloid scandals that have afflicted local authorities, the public thought their own local council was less corrupt


than private business, and less wasteful than central government, though less efficient than private business. Although they rated elected councillors just as good at organizing things as appointed DHA/HB members, they rated councillors lower than appointed TEC/LEC board members in terms of organizing ability. And they were less satisfied with the services provided by local councils than with those provided by local doctors, electricity suppliers or tradesmen. But they trusted elected councillors slightly more than appointed board members, and far more than they trusted Parliament or central government. Moreover the public saw local government as capable of achieving locally defined goals at least to the same degree as central government was capable of achieving nationally defined goals.

The structure and institutions of local governance In Chapter 6 we investigate the general public’s attitudes towards the structure and institutions of local governance, and recent or proposed reforms to that structure. How local should it be? How autonomous with respect to central government? And how directly under the control of local voters? We found enormous (and perhaps unrealistic) public support for local autonomy against central government. But we also found enormous public support for direct public control of local government itself by means of referenda and directly elected mayors. Similarly there was overwhelming public rejection of the notion that appointed boards should be left to run their own affairs without some mechanism for democratic control, preferably local democratic control. Two-thirds of the public thought appointed boards should be responsible to locally elected councils rather than to central government, though a majority said the powers of locally elected councils should be limited to investigating the activities of appointed boards rather than controlling them on a day-to-day basis. A large majority said it did not matter who ran local services provided they were well run. But when asked about specific structures the public rated locally elected councils as by far the best way to run local services – far better than appointed boards, self-management by service users or providers, or control by market forces. Even more striking was the uniformity with which locally elected councils were given the top rating by all sections of the public. Across the ideological spectrum support varied sharply both for appointed boards and for private companies operating in the market. But it never came anywhere near the level of support for elected local councils at any point


on the ideological (or party) spectrum. Similarly the strength or weakness of local identification had only a very slight influence on support for elected local councils. Local governance by means of local democracy was by far the top choice even among extreme right wingers, even among the strongest of Conservative Party supporters, even among those who admitted they had not voted in the most recent local election, and even among those with the weakest sense of local identification.

The perspectives of rival elites Chapter 7 focuses on the attitudes of rival local governance elites, elected councillors and appointed board members, contrasting them with each other and with the views of the general public. Elected councillors identified particularly strongly with their locality, and they were particularly confident that services could be best run locally rather than nationally. Naturally enough, they took a particularly favourable view of elected local councils. Conversely they were more sceptical than the public about referenda and overwhelmingly opposed to the direct election of mayors. As the best way to provide local governance, councillors rated locally elected councils even higher than did the public, and they rated appointed boards or private companies even lower than did the public. But they were about as ambivalent as the public itself towards self-management by service users or providers. None of this should come as a great surprise. The views of appointed members of the quangocracy were less expected, however. To a remarkable extent, the views of appointed board members were similar to those of elected councillors. In particular, when asked to rate different institutions as the best way to provide local governance, appointed board members gave by far the top ratings to elected local councils. They were even more favourable than the public towards elected local councils (though not as favourable as councillors themselves). Appointed board members, unlike councillors, rated appointed boards higher than self-management by service users or providers, but they still placed appointed boards far behind elected councils. Moreover, there was little community of interest between those members appointed to different boards. TEC/LEC board members took a particularly negative view of DHA/HBs, and vice versa. And when they took a particularly positive view of appointed board members, as they did on the question of trustworthiness, they limited their positive


view to their own particular kind of board. Far more members of TEC/LEC and DHA/HB boards alleged that members of the other board ‘did not care about the views of people like me’ than made the same criticism of elected councils. And at the same time, appointed board members joined elected councillors in a highly critical attitude towards central government. So although we might characterize appointed board members and elected councillors as ‘rival local governance elites’ they had a surprising amount in common. Appointed board members were simply not antagonistic to the concept, institutions or personnel of local democracy even though they constituted a rival alternative to it.

Testing theoretical models against public opinion In Chapter 8 we test four comprehensive theoretical models of local governance against our survey findings: • the traditional local democracy or localist model centred on allpurpose elected local councils; and three alternative models: • the ‘new right’ or individualist model centred on markets serving individuals as customers; • the ‘new left’ or mobilization model focused on human development and the mobilization of disadvantaged people or disadvantaged neighbourhoods; • the centralist model (the inverse of a local autonomy model) which stresses national identification, national standards and national democracy. Each of these four models bases prescriptions for forms and structures of local governance on assumptions about the public’s identities, aims and objectives, images of local government and institutional preferences. None of these models proves entirely consistent with our survey findings but, on a crude count of consistencies and inconsistencies, the local democracy and mobilization models fare best. The ‘new right’ individualist model proves highly inconsistent with the reality of the public’s identifications, aims and objectives, images and preferences. And the often overlooked centralist model comes somewhere in the middle.


The foundations of support for local democracy Finally, in Chapter 9 we address the question of why people support local democracy. That they prefer it to all alternative structures of local governance is not in doubt. But why? We use a series of multiple regression analyses to weigh the relative importance of four factors that might influence support for local democracy and its alternatives: 1. 2. 3. 4.

a psychological sense of local identity; pragmatic localism – a belief in small-scale government; left–right ideology; a good or bad image of existing local councils.

The strongest defence of a democratic form of local governance against all alternative (non-democratic or non-elective) local structures is the general, pervasive assumption that elective democracy is the right way to run any system of governance, be it central or local. But beyond that, other factors also have some influence upon support for local democracy or its alternatives. But local democracy also has to defend itself against the claims of a democratic central government. It has to defend a local form of governance against a national form. We investigate whether support for local autonomy is primarily spatial and geographic, or primarily ideological and partisan. Do people support local autonomy because they believe that small-scale government is best, or simply because they oppose the party and ideology that (for the moment) happens to control central government? Ideology clearly plays two roles simultaneously. In itself it does indicate a policy choice between public and private provision. But because central government in Britain always represents a clear position on this left–right spectrum, ideology also indicates whether people are ideologically sympathetic or unsympathetic to central government. Very few of us can fully separate our attitudes towards central government as a central authority from our attitudes towards the party and ideology that happen to control the centre at the moment. A left-wing ideology (as an ideology in itself) as well as a good image of local councils as representative, efficient and honest, both provide a defence for local democracy against alternative local structures of local governance. By contrast, pragmatic localism (belief in small-scale government), local identification and opposition sentiment (or an ideology opposite to that in control at the centre) all


provide a defence for local democracy against the rival claims of central government. Thus, at the time of our study, a left-wing ideology provided a strong defence for local democracy against the rival claims of a right-wing central government. But we suspect that a left-wing ideology would not provide a strong defence for local democracy against the rival claims of a left-wing central government. Full empirical confirmation of that must wait until New Labour has been in power at the centre for long enough to be identified with the centre, and to be faced with a range of Conservative-dominated local councils. But there is already some preliminary evidence that indicates a move in that direction: by 1998 Labour supporters no longer backed local autonomy to a greater extent than Conservatives, with the result that overall support for local autonomy had declined.3 In the longer term, it may be Conservatives and right-wingers that boost support for local autonomy once again if Labour continues to hold power at the centre. More immediately, our evidence shows that neither local identification nor pragmatic localism provided a defence for local democracy against the rival claims of other specifically local alternatives such as locally appointed boards, self-management by local service users and local producers, or even the provision of services through the market by local private companies. Conceptually, local democracy has to defend itself on two very different fronts with two very different weapons. Since it is both local and democratic, it is vulnerable to very different attacks from central government on the one hand and from the private sector on the other. It survives, and may yet prosper, because there is a general presumption in favour of local governance (whether democratic or not) albeit within a framework of national minimum standards, and also a general presumption in favour of democratic governance (whether local or not). In the public esteem this combination of general prejudices protects the concept of local democracy remarkably well against all its own shortcomings. Any other system of local governance is viewed as second best, a necessary evil perhaps to solve a short-term problem, but fundamentally incompatible with a culture that is both democratic and pragmatically localist. If local governance through appointed boards, market provision or self-management is to acquire legitimacy, it desperately needs some means of sheltering under the democratic umbrella of local democracy.

1 From Local Government to Local Governance

To refer to a shift over the last two decades from local government to local governance in Britain implies a recognition of two factors. First there has been a shift in the institutional structure of governing with a range of appointed bodies or ‘quangos’ gaining greater responsibility and prominence. Second there has been a change in the character of governing, a blurring of responsibilities, with appointed bodies and partnership organizations working alongside elected local authorities. Elected politicians and full-time local government bureaucrats have found themselves joined by a range of other actors. And major roles have developed for users, for interested citizens and for the private sector in this complex interplay of local actors To understand the world of local governance it is necessary to begin with a review of institutional change over the last two decades. The second part of this chapter then explores some of the key features of the new system that resulted from these changes and the tensions associated with it as a style of governing. The third section examines the debate about the need to revive local democracy, a debate which was stimulated by this shift from local government to governance. The fourth section looks at New Labour’s approach to ‘reform beyond reform’ in British local governance. And a final section summarizes a number of normative models of how local governance might be organized.

Two decades of institutional change The institutional structure of local governance changed substantially during the long period of national Conservative government between 1979 and 1997.1 The basic structure of local government shifted from a 11


largely two-tier to a unitary structure. Central control over local finance became far tighter and more detailed. The functions and responsibilities of elected local authorities were squeezed and restructured. Alongside elected councils there emerged new or reshaped appointed bodies or quangos that came to play a prominent role in the governance of localities. Finally reforms aimed at changing the way services were delivered encouraged a more indirect arm’s length style of management and introduced extensive internal differentiation. The two-tier system of local authorities which had been established during the local government reorganizations of the 1960s and 1970s did not stand the test of time. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a general shift towards a ‘unitary’ or single-tier system of local government. It was argued that a single-tier system would minimize wasteful bureaucracy and be easier for the public to understand. The process of reform began in 1986 with the abolition of the Greater London Council and the six English metropolitan county councils. This created a unitary system of local government throughout the main urban conurbations of England (though not of Scotland). However, not all functions previously performed by these upper-tier authorities could be undertaken by the lower-tier London boroughs and metropolitan districts. So a number of joint boards and committees which grouped authorities together in an ad hoc way had to be established for particular purposes. The abolition of the metropolitan counties led to the creation of a series of joint boards covering police, fire services, public transport and waste disposal. These boards consisted of councillors appointed by the constituent authorities but they had their own identity and legal status. The abolition of the Greater London Council led to the creation of a joint board for fire services. London Transport had already been removed from the control of the Greater London Council prior to abolition, and the (London) Metropolitan Police had always been directly accountable to central government through the Home Secretary. In other fields of London governance, including land-use planning and roads, central government took significantly greater powers than elsewhere. Under New Labour, the governance of London changed again in May 2000 with not only an elected assembly but also a directly elected mayor. Institutional restructuring was extended further, to Scotland, Wales and the non-metropolitan areas of England, in the early 1990s. In Scotland and Wales central government took direct responsibility for drawing up reform plans, ignoring public protests and creating ex-

From Local Government to Local Governance 13

clusively single-tier systems of local authorities. In England the reform was put in the hands of a semi-independent Local Government Commission. The government’s original purpose was widely believed to be the establishment of a single tier of unitary authorities throughout non-metropolitan England but a successful campaign against change was fought by many county councils. The first round of the Commission’s investigations eventually produced the abolition of four upper-tier county councils and the establishment of 14 new unitary shire councils. A second round led to the creation of more new unitary authorities. In the end, the reforms of the early to mid-1990s produced unitary local government in most of the major towns, cities and urban areas in England, along with the whole of Scotland and Wales. At the end of the Conservatives’ period in government the basic structure of elected local authorities in Britain was therefore as outlined in Table 1.1. The unitary authorities remained responsible for a wide range of services including education, social welfare, housing, environmental protection, planning and economic development. In the two-tier structure the upper-tier county councils retained their position as the dominant spenders taking responsibility for major services, while the lower-tier districts retained housing and leisure services as their main functions. However, the areas and populations covered by many upper-tier county councils had been reduced since, in many counties, the major county town or city gained unitary status. During their period in office the Conservatives also introduced a tighter and tighter financial system. The debacle of the Poll Tax added to the problems of local finance. 2 It undermined the public’s willingness to pay local taxes and, as part of a post-Poll Tax settlement,

Table 1.1

The structure of elected local government in Britain 1997/1998

Single-tier (unitary) 46 36 32 22 32 Two-tier (functions split between levels) 33 238

English unitary councils English metropolitan districts London boroughs (plus City of London Corporation) Welsh councils Scottish councils

English county councils English non-metropolitan authorities


national VAT was hiked 2.5 per cent to fund a further proportion of local services from central resources. Excluding user charges, local taxation (the Council Tax) accounted for at best only a quarter of total local authority income by 1997. The remainder of local authority income came from central government transfers and other nationally distributed sources. Apart from the post-Poll Tax settlement, the crucial shift occurred in 1990–91 when the government removed the control of local ‘non-domestic’ or business rates from local authorities. In the mid-1980s a combination of local domestic and business rates had meant that local government raised over half its own income. The heavy reliance on non-local revenue established in the early 1990s created a substantial opportunity for central government to dictate the level of local spending in aggregate terms. In addition it was able to influence the spending decisions of individual authorities by using annual Standard Spending Assessments (SSAs) to define what ‘needed’ to be spent and by using ‘capping’ powers over local authority budgets to ensure that they did not rise above government approved levels. These draconian measures led to an increasing degree of central control over local spending. Some local authorities had to make drastic cuts. Others protected programmes through a variety of strategems including what was called ‘creative accounting’. They became expert in juggling the books so that the figures for spending matched government targets but resources still continued to flow into local services. Over time, however, the scope for creative accountancy was reduced both by the introduction of new central controls and by the build-up of postponed costs. Although local government was still responsible for about a quarter of all public spending in 1997 it now operated under very controlled conditions. Elected local authorities were not only reorganized and restructured, they were bypassed. There was a growth in the number of appointed bodies or quangos at the local level. Training and Enterprise Councils took over local authorities’ responsibilities in further education and training towards the end of the 1980s. Institutions of further education along with sixth form colleges were constituted as corporate bodies in their own right, following the previous removal of what were then local authority controlled polytechnics and are now centrally controlled universities. In specific areas, urban development corporations, housing action trusts, housing associations and more broadly various partnership organizations assumed, with the support of central government funds, responsibilities for renewal and development. In Scotland, Local Enterprise Companies had a broad role in training and regeneration. For other functions local


authorities were required to set up companies to take over responsibilities in public transport, airports and waste disposal, sometimes as a step towards privatization. In England and Wales water and sewage was handed over to the control of private companies; in Scotland it was put under the control of appointed boards. Provisions for opting out of local council or local health authority control led to the creation of grant-maintained schools and hospital trusts as free-standing institutions. Free-standing police authorities were established in 1995. The government’s original intention was to change the composition of police authorities so that there would no longer be a majority of councillors on them. As a result of intervention by the House of Lords appointed councillors could get a bare majority on most police authorities but the intended weakening of local authority control nonetheless occurred. At the end of these reforms, local quangos covered vital functional areas. Some were appointed directly by central government. Others were ostensibly ‘self-governing’ in that they were not directly appointed by central government, but they were mainly funded by central government and very strongly influenced by central government policy. These appointed bodies operating at the local level were responsible for a substantial amount of public spending. By the mid1990s the key bodies appointed and funded directly by central government, together with self-governing bodies supervised and funded by the central government, were responsible for over £40 billion of public funds. That was a figure not far from the spending responsibilities of elected local authorities. Table 1.2 presents some basic information on the key agencies that were most prominent as part of this reformed institutional framework for local governance. A variety of factors explain why local quangos and non-elected bodies gained an increased role under the Conservatives. Each quango has its own history and particular reasons why it was established but it is possible to see a number of shared elements in the story of the growth of quangos. One significant factor was undoubtedly the desire to bypass traditional local government. Distrust of local authorities was evident from the early years of the Conservative government but it became more pronounced as the Conservatives lost political control at the local level. By the mid-1980s the Conservatives controlled fewer local councils than Labour. By the 1990s the Conservatives had been reduced to running just under two dozen local authorities (about 5 per cent of the total). Parties that control national government expect to lose seats at

16 Models of Local Governance Table 1.2 in £bn)

Key agencies in the Conservatives’ ‘local quango state’ (expenditure

Functional area

Government appointed bodies

Self-governing bodies

Education

City Technology Colleges Higher Education Corporations (7.56) Further Education Corporations (3.2) Housing Action Trusts (0.09) Urban Development Corporations (0.5)

Grant Maintained Schools

Housing Urban Development and Training

Health

Housing Associations (1.5) Training and Enterprise Council (1.4) Local Enterprise Companies (0.5)

District Health Authorities (12.9)b Family Health Services Authorities (6.8) Health Trusts (6.0)1

Source: Adapted from G. Stoker, ‘Quangos and local democracy’, in M. Flinders and M. Smith (eds), Quangos, Accountability and Reform (London: Macmillan, 1999). Some of these agencies were abolished by the incoming New Labour government after 1997.

the local level. But for the Conservatives, local government, especially in urban areas, become virtually a ‘no-go’ area. In such circumstances bypassing elected local authorities might well have appeared particularly attractive. A second factor behind the growth of local quangos was the desire to bring new participants into the process of local governance. It was argued that the electoral system and its demands discouraged many people with relevant skills and experience from being involved in local governance. Bringing business skills, knowledge and interest to local governance was a key theme for the Conservatives. But there was also a recognition of the value of enabling others from outside the traditional system such as service users, volunteers and active citizens to become involved in local decision-making. Finally there was a view that quangos would help to develop more business-like management of public services in tune with the ideas and arguments of the ‘New Public Management’. By developing more slimline and focused management teams to run organizations and by encouraging competition between these organizations to attract users


and/or public funds it would be possible to stimulate efficiencies and greater effectiveness through quasi-market incentives. Moreover because it controlled the purse strings more directly the centre would be able to dictate not only aggregate spending levels but also more detailed priorities in these organizations. To complete the picture of organizational change and continue the theme of greater fragmentation and complexity in the system of local governance it can be noted that alongside external differentiation came internal division. In both local authorities and the major local quangos a shift in the pattern of internal management was encouraged by ‘New Public Management’ ideas and by Conservative legislation.3 ‘New Public Management’ presented a complex set of ideas which have evolved and developed around different themes. The version most clearly embraced by the Conservatives provided a critique of existing forms of service provision and a prescription for improvement based on introducing market-like disciplines. Public service organizations, so the argument had it, were dominated by producer interests (the bureaucrats and the various ranks of other employees). And the power of the producer was not held in check by market incentives and demands as it was in private sector organizations. As a result public service organizations were alleged to be neither efficient in terms of saving public money nor responsive to consumer needs. The solution was to fragment ‘monopolistic’ public service structures and develop quasi-market forces to control them. Key reforms included the introduction of a purchaser–provider divide within organizations and the development of performance targets and incentives. The aim was to create an organizational ‘home’ for the client/consumer voice within the system in order to challenge the power of producers. Consumers – or more directly their surrogates – would have the power to purchase the services they required and to measure performance. A key reform was the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering which started with a focus on the main ‘blue-collar’ services of building, cleaning and refuse collection, though towards the end of the Conservatives’ tenure the focus shifted towards ‘white-collar’ services also. Tendering led to some services being undertaken by private sector providers under time-limited contracts. And even though most work remained ‘in-house’ it now had to operate on new terms. The purchaser part of the organization developed a client role both to specify the form of service required and to monitor the performance of the contractor. The contractor that took direct responsibility for service delivery, even when it was an ‘in-house’ direct service


organization (DSO), had to operate within its own finance and accounting provisions. Such DSOs also tended to demand a degree of flexibility in the management of their personnel and in the development of their own business plans. Moreover, rather than pay fixed or long-established overheads for central services such as salary management, financial information and computer support, many DSOs negotiated service level agreements with the central departments responsible for providing them. Competitive tendering requirements applied both to local authorities and to some appointed bodies. In education the introduction of devolved management responsibilities for schools created a similar pressure for more contract-oriented management. In social services a separation was introduced between the assessment of needs and the provision of services, which created a similar client–contractor dimension in their operations. What resulted from the introduction of ‘New Public Management’ reforms was a more differentiated system of internal management. Local authorities and to some extent other institutions in the world of local governance found themselves divided into a series of separate units with relationships conducted through contractual or semicontractual arrangements. The idea of the shift from local government to governance is in part captured by a recognition that institutions governing localities have been reshaped during the long tenure of the Conservative national government. Elected local authorities remain in place although since 1979 there has been a move towards single-tier rather two-tier local government. Various appointed boards, partnership organizations and local quangos have increased in prominence and they are responsible for a level of spending that nearly matches that of elected local authorities. And within local service delivery organizations, more contractstyle management structures have encouraged a process of internal differentiation.

Governance: a strange new world? The switch to the new concept of ‘governance’ implied more than a new set of institutional arrangements. It also implied a new set of practices which challenged traditional understandings of government and public management and brought in their wake new tensions and new difficulties. The Conservative reforms ushered in a strange new world of local governance which raised a number of issues in the minds of


the public and policy-makers. The complexity and blurred responsibilities of the system raised some doubts about its legitimacy. Questions were raised about standards of probity in public affairs. There was some concern that the system had lost a capacity for overall coherence and steering. Finally there were issues of accountability. The complexity of this new governance confirmed the divorce between our formal constitutional understanding of governing arrangements and the way they worked in practice.4 Throughout all of the postwar period local authorities have never been the sole governmental actors within localities. Health authorities, public utilities and other agencies always had a substantial impact on service provision and the physical shaping of localities. However, the increased intensity and prominence given to non-elected agencies under the Conservative governments of 1979–97 and the associated downgrading of the role of elected local authorities created a system that lacked strong legitimacy. The divorce between the normative codes used to explain and justify government and the reality of the decision-making in the system created tensions. As Guy Peters commented: ‘We must be concerned with the extent to which complex structures linking the public and private sectors … actually mask responsibility and add to the problems of citizens in understanding and influencing the actions of their governments.’5 The issue was more than there being a ‘cultural lag’ while public attitudes caught up with the new reality of public services. The public and more specifically the media lacked a legitimation framework in which to place the emerging system of local governance. The exercise of power needs to be legitimate. This argument is more than a normative assertion. It rests also on the pragmatic grounds that to be effective in the long run power-holders must be seen to be legitimate. A legitimation deficit undermines public support and commitment to programmes of change and ultimately undermines the ability of powerholders to mobilize resources and promote cooperation and partnership. Through their concern with performance, ‘governance-oriented’ reformers may have improved managerial efficiency but in the minds of many members of the public and indeed some policy-makers there was a blurring of overarching responsibility and clarity about who was responsible for what. ‘Governance’ lacked the simple legitimizing ‘myths’ of the traditional system. It no longer seemed so self-evident that it was ‘the council’ (town hall or county hall) that was responsible. The reforms may have created a system that was more difficult to understand and as a result appeared more difficult to influence (or perhaps more out of control).


Second there was a raft of concerns about the standards applied by appointed agencies in the conduct of their business.6 It was claimed that people were appointed to the boards of quangos not on the basis of merit nor as a reflection of their expertise but because of their political sympathies. In some instances, those who had failed to win public office by election were appointed to public positions through the ‘back door’. It was argued that the management and decision-making of many quangos was shrouded in secrecy, that they lacked openness in the conduct of their affairs when compared to elected local authorities. A further criticism was that appropriate standards in declaring interests or ensuring probity in the management of public finances had not always been put into effect, or had not been properly observed. Certainly, the traditional elected local authorities had not been immune from criticism about the way they conducted their affairs. But the issue of probity in public affairs become more prominent in the new era of ‘local governance’.7 And contemporary developments in central government reinforced the growing significance of probity in governance at all levels. Third there was a view that although quangos might be effective in their narrow area of operation, the existence of a diverse and complex range of such agencies exacerbated the problem of corporate governance – the bringing of the parts together. Increasing differentiation, along with the weakening of the relative position of local authorities, constituted fragmentation within the overall system. Differentiation has the strength of specialization and focus. Organizations have a clear if bounded task and bring relevant expertise to that task. But a system of governance has to have a capacity for integration as well as differentiation. The relative weakening of the position of local authorities in the system may have reduced the capacity for integration provided by traditional multipurpose authorities even if they had never been the ‘all-purpose’ authorities that they were so often called. Many of the new agencies of local governance were subject to direct influence from central government through the appointment of their controlling boards or by way of funding which came directly or indirectly from the centre. Central government, however, could not readily provide integrative mechanisms at the local level. The integrative mechanisms of central government, which have themselves often been criticized, focus on central government departments, on the Cabinet and its committees, and on processes of consultation. And these do not provide the necessary integrative mechanisms at the local level. The fourth batch of criticisms focused on accountability. Quangos were subject to strict financial and managerial accountability in many


instances but, it was argued, they lacked political accountability. The key point is that these other forms of accountability cannot replace the need for collective accountability for the policy and resource allocations of these bodies. The requirements of that further and more general accountability are not met by the framework of democratic control through Parliament. The effective control that can be exercised over so complex a machinery of bodies through this central route is inherently limited. Moreover the issue is whether in any event public accountability at national level is appropriate for appointed bodies at local level. If there are local choices to be made by appointed bodies about priorities or the setting of policy, even though these choices may take place within a framework of national policy, the argument is that where there is local choice there should be an opportunity for a local voice.

What price local democracy? The emergence of this new concept of ‘governance’ led to increasing concern about the quality of democracy at the local level. The accountability dilemma noted in the previous section was heightened by a recognition that during the Conservative period of rule the political legitimacy and relevance of elected local authorities seemed in decline. Initial recognition that politics was changing at the local level was reflected in the establishment of the Widdicombe Committee by the Conservative government in the mid-1980s. 8 The evidence and research presented to the Committee captured key elements of the changing world even if the Committee’s report was rather narrow in its focus and conservative in its recommendations. Even so the government ignored much of its analysis and went ahead with some minor tinkering reforms of local political practice in the Local Government and Housing Act 1989. The independent Commission for Local Democracy (CLD) published a series of research reports which laid bare the problems of existing local democracy and in its final report in 1995 it made radical proposals for change. 9 The sense that something was fundamentally wrong with local democracy in practice was confirmed by the report of the House of Lords Select Committee chaired by Lord Hunt. 10 The Commission for Local Democracy and the Hunt Committee shared some of the same analysis and a general vision of the way forward, although their detailed prescriptions varied. The problems of local democracy were not newly created by the Conservatives during their period of national government, as both


the CLD and Hunt reports recognized, but a number of weaknesses were exacerbated. The most obvious weakness was low turnout in local elections. Turnout figures varied considerably between and even within local authorities but a turnout of around 40 per cent on average put Britain at the bottom of the league in terms of European Union local government systems. Turnout had never been particularly high and there were signs of a slightly upward trend from the early 1970s for all authorities except counties. But since a peak in the early 1990s the trend has been downward again. Turnout at the 1998 local elections was under 30 per cent and turnout in the 1999 elections no better. Another set of concerns focused on who was attracted to stand as a councillor. According to a 1993 survey nearly half of all councillors were over 55 years old, about a third were retired and only a quarter were women.11 There were reports of increasing difficulty in getting people to stand for elections. The reasons for not standing provided by the overwhelming majority of the public were related to the perceived low status of councillors and the negative impact of the role on career and family. The role of party politics in local government raises a complex set of advantages and disadvantages. In any electoral system party politics makes a valuable contribution in structuring choices for the public. It also helps organize government by ensuring discipline and cohesion among elected representatives. However, there are problems. The influence of party too often takes place out of the public gaze and in closed party group meetings. In more public settings it can encourage an adversarial style in public debates. Party points are scored but the public are turned off. Above all there is a danger that accountability to the party can become a substitute for a wider accountability to the public. Networks of party activists are relatively thin and cut only a little way into their communities. Research suggests that for most local parties their ‘world’ was relatively small and closed.12 Local party networks are dominated by a relatively small number of activists. Typically in areas where one party dominates local politics the key exchanges take place between 40 and 50 individuals, of whom perhaps around 20 might be considered ‘key influentials’. A further difficulty is the existence of ‘one-party local states’ where one party is able to rule virtually unchallenged. In 1997 a third of all councils in Britain could be described as one-party monopolistic (70 per cent or more seats held by one party) and nearly a quarter of councils could be designated as one-party dominant (55–69 per cent of seats held by one


party). About 15 per cent of councils have some element of independent influence. That leaves just less that a third of all councils with a competitive two-party or multi-party system for the public.13 The relative absence of competitive party politics in so many localities helps to create the perception on the part of the public and media that local politics is an insular, petty, personalized, faction-ridden affair peppered with too regular instances of small-scale corruption. At the very least a healthy democracy demands a healthy opposition and the current voting system does not guarantee opposition parties a share of seats in proportion to their vote in many local authorities. So the prospect of an effective opposition is undermined. The influence of national factors and considerations on voting habits – which even the most ardent localists admit is the dominant element in determining local votes – makes the claim for legitimacy stemming from election on the part of councillors appear even thinner.14 Further, the way of making decisions in councils – the committee system – too often obscures where decisions are made and consumes a vast amount of councillor and officer time for only limited benefits. It also undermines the scope for visible and accountable local political leadership. In most authorities private party groups provide the key focus for decision-making. To some extent, council committees are therefore a charade. Yet councillors – according to survey evidence – spend about two-thirds of their time in these committees or preparing for them. The officer structure also devotes a huge amount of time and resources in this process. Time and capacity is taken away from the potential role of councillors as community representatives or scrutineers of the policy and performance of the authority or other bodies. For almost all authorities a political executive or leadership structure can be detected by insiders. What is lacking is visibility and accountability to the public for that leadership role. Finally the Conservatives found themselves criticized for creating a system of governance that limited local discretion to an excessive degree and put too much reliance on the role of the centre. Both the Commission for Local Democracy and the Hunt Committee emphasized the need to restore greater discretion to local authorities. Key proposals included: • local authorities should have a general power of local competence; • local authorities should be given a community leadership role, holding other institutions in the world of governance to account and helping to provide an overview of a community’s needs and priorities;


• there should be greater local control over spending decisions through the end of capping and the enhancement of the local revenue base. In short, the Conservatives presided over a decline in the quality of local democracy which led to a reform debate which emphasized two goals: (a) reorganization of the institutions and dynamics of local democracy itself, and (b) a shift in the balance of central–local relations to restore a greater degree of local autonomy.

New Labour: reform beyond reform Labour’s landslide election victory in 1997 brought a new agenda into play for local government. Local government in 1997 was largely Labour. Labour had outright control of about half of all authorities and was involved in the control of nearly another quarter. Labour’s stranglehold has been eroded at the local level since 1997 but only to a minor extent. It is likely to remain the dominant party at the local as well as the national level for a number of years to come, both in terms of its number of councillors and in terms of the number of authorities under its control. The strong presence of Labour at both national and local level has given central–local relations a different tone. There is much talk of partnership between central and local government. The local authority associations in England, Scotland and Wales undoubtedly enjoy increased access to ministers and some real influence over policy. Yet tensions remain. In part that reflects the dominance of New Labour at the centre and the substantial presence though not dominance of Old Labour in some local authorities. More broadly the tensions revolve around the demands made by the Blair government with respect to local authorities. As a pamphlet published by the Prime Minister in 1998 put it: ‘The people’s needs require you to change … so that you can play your part in helping to modernise Britain and, in partnership with others, deliver the policies on which this government was elected.’15 Local government is seen by New Labour as crucial to delivering its key election promises in education, social services, housing and many other areas. The modernization of local government is also seen as part of a broader programme of renewal for the political institutions and constitutional arrangements of Britain. Thus the politics of local government are important to New Labour. Local government as much as


national government provides a basis for the public to judge it. Failure at either level is judged to be unacceptable. New Labour’s agenda tackles head-on two issues that were ducked by the Conservatives: (a) the political organization of local government; and (b) its core role and purpose. The Prime Minister’s pamphlet indicates that the two issues are linked: ‘At the heart of local government’s new role is leadership – leadership that gives vision, partnership and quality of life to cities, towns and villages all over Britain.’16 However, there is seen to be a need for a considerable improvement in the quality of elected local government if that leadership role is going to be viable. Local government’s credentials to be community leaders are weakened by its poor base of popular support … Councils need to avoid getting trapped in the secret world of the caucus and the party group. They should let people have their say … But the heart of the problem is that local government needs recognised leaders if it is to fulfil the community leadership role.17 At the centre of Labour’s agenda is a concern to restore public trust and legitimacy to the political life of councils in order for them to take on a community leadership role. In broad terms Labour has taken on board many of the arguments of the Commission for Local Democracy and to a lesser extent those of the Hunt Report. The White Paper, Modernising Local Government: In Touch with the People, provides the most comprehensive statement of New Labour’s agenda for England and Wales.18 The heart of the reform package comes in four elements. First councils are expected to adopt new political structures. Contrary to the fears of some, the approach is not too prescriptive. A number of options are laid out – a directly elected mayor with a cabinet, a cabinet with a leader and what in effect is a city manager system. The White Paper makes it clear that ‘councils will choose which of these models they prefer and the detail of how they wish to operate within the broad definition of the model’. Equally, refusing to take forward change is not an option. The White Paper suggests that central government will take a reserve power to tackle councils that fail to develop any reform plans or neglect to implement their reform proposals. In addition local people are to be given the right to trigger a referendum on the directly elected mayor option. Legislation to implement these reforms forms part of the legislative programme for 1999/2000. The second major element in the reform package is a set of measures to improve local democracy. Again the emphasis is on enhancing the


accessibility and legitimacy of local government through ‘higher participation in elections and close and regular contact between a council and local people between elections’. Legislation is being introduced to enable councils to experiment with electronic voting, polling stations, postal voting and the timing of elections. Local authorities are going to be placed under a new statutory duty to consult on best value performance reviews and plans and the broader community plan. Legislation will also be introduced to confirm the power of councils to hold referendums. The third element in the reform package is the introduction of a range of new disciplines to be imposed on local authorities. The White Paper confirms that the surcharging (fining) of councillors will be abolished. But a new ethical framework will be imposed, overseen by an internal standards committee but backed up by an independent body to investigate allegations that a council’s Code of Conduct has been breached. Legislation establishing these procedures also forms part of a package of measures for the 1999/2000 parliamentary session. The most developed proposals in the White Paper relate to the disciplines associated with ‘Best Value’. Compulsory competitive tendering is to be abolished. But in its place there are proposals for a framework designed to encourage clarity about service standards, targets for continuous improvement, greater involvement for service users, and independent audit and inspection procedures. Central government is also to give itself powers to intervene in a ‘flexible and constructive’ way if service and performance failure is persistent or serious. Legislation containing these measures has already been passed and local authorities will have to operate these ‘Best Value’ procedures by April 2000. The final element in the reform package is a set of new powers and responsibilities for local authorities. The White Paper proposes to ‘enshrine in law the role of the council as the elected leader of their local community with a responsibility for the well-being and sustainable development of its area’. Along with this responsibility will come a duty on the council to provide a community strategy for its area. Councils are to be given a discretionary power to take steps to promote the well-being of the area (a sort of general competence facility) and a clear power to engage in partnership arrangements of various sorts, including participation in companies. On the financial side the government proposes a single capital pot, better asset management, the possibility of a supplementary business rate, the abolition of crude and universal capping and more stability in grant provision to councils.


New Labour has sustained a commitment to financial constraint although there are signs of some relaxation. The announcements on public spending made in July 1998 indicated substantially more money for local government’s education and social services responsibilities but limited growth in other areas. Capital spending is also likely to be increased above levels achieved under the Conservatives. Yet there is a strong element of caution in New Labour’s management of local finances. Major levers remain in the hands of the centre although there is considerable scope for local authorities to develop some modest additional revenue streams and some imaginative partnership-based capital projects and schemes to release resources through effective asset management. Labour has not abandoned the Conservatives’ belief in managerialism and consumerism in a general sense, although its emphasis is rather different. The ‘Best Value’ regime carries the potential of being a flexible and effective tool for improvements in local service delivery. There is also a strong theme in government circles on the virtue of developing ‘joined up’ or ‘holistic’ approaches to tackling social and economic problems.19 Local government with its range of responsibilities and leadership role has a particular contribution to make in this area. New Labour has shown a strong interest in continuing the process of change and reform for local government. It has, however, committed itself to developing a different reform style, one that is more experimental, involves more consultation and is less top-down. Yet in the education, employment and welfare policy arenas legislation and ministerial interventions seem designed to ensure that local government delivers the national objectives of the new government. In the words of the rising cabinet star, Stephen Byers, local authorities ‘have to prove they are part of the solution rather than part of the problem’. There is a more general ministerial concern with achieving action and an impatience with those that appear to be obstructing change. The substantial shocks to the system of local government in Britain under the Conservatives have led under New Labour to a reformulated and challenging redefinition of local self-government. The value of local government is not to be judged by the services it delivers (the dominant paradigm of the 1970s) but by its capacity to lead a process of social, economic and political development in local communities. Local government is above all a political vehicle for communicating, organizing and expressing the concerns, visions and problem-solving capacity of local people.


What is far from clear is whether central government – under the New Labour leadership – is prepared to will the means for local authorities to take on that community governance role. Local authorities may be given a general power of local competence to engage in activities that meet the needs of their community but they are not, for example, going to be given much in the way of specific powers to call local quangos to account. The emphasis is very much on building new partnerships. And local authorities are going to be subject to continued strict financial discipline. The New Labour government might, in turn, suggest that it is not clear to them that most local authorities have the will, the capacity or the imagination to open themselves up in the way that their community governance role demands. So the debate on local self-government in Britain runs the risk of becoming stuck in a Catch22 situation: to perform local authorities need to be trusted, but to be trusted they need to perform.

Normative models of local governance The sense of change started by the Conservatives and continued under New Labour implies an end to the traditional model of local government. This has helped to create an understanding that there is not a single model for local governance but rather a competition between a range of models. Without claiming comprehensive coverage it is possible to identify four models (see Table 1.3). The localist model is the one most associated with the traditional defence of local government and is commonly expressed in the formal outpourings of local government representative bodies and institutions. In broad terms it draws on a ‘liberal pluralist’ perspective in terms of political theory. For the localist the essential thing about local governance is that it should be seen as the expression of local choice.20 The institutions of local government must be accountable to the locality in order to ensure that they are responsive to local needs. They must have sufficient autonomy to make decisions that reflect the wishes of their local citizens rather than those of, for example, any higher tier or level of government. Localists give primacy to the ‘traditional’ representative institutions of local government which in the British case are multi-purpose (often incorrectly called ‘all-purpose’) elected local authorities. Local authorities are there to lead on service delivery. Direct in-house provision is not necessary for all services, all of the time, but most localists would argue that without some ‘hands-on’ direct provision local authorities would

Expression and meeting of local communities’ needs Ensuring individual choice and responsiveness in respect of services Developing a politics of change to ensure more effective influence of disadvantaged and excluded To maintain national standards and the primacy of national democracy

Individualist

Mobilization

Centralist

Key goals

Strongly in favour

Favours consumer consultation but not large-scale citizen participation

Supportive but gives primacy to elected representatives

Attitude to public participation

Dimensions

Strongly opposed Limited value

Strongly in favour as part of process of change

Inclined to favour but recognizes need for upper-level intervention to protect individuals

Strongly in favour

Attitude to local autonomy

Normative models of local governance

Localist

Model

Table 1.3

Agencies subject to substantial central control

Neighbourhoodbased and decentralized structures

Competitive range of servicespecific providers

Multi-functional elected local authorities

Key servicedelivery mechanism

National government: legislation, guidance and controls

Developmental participatory politics

Individual rights as consumer

Representative politics through local elections

Key political mechanism

29


lack the capacity, sensitivity and understanding to perform their role of meeting local needs. Some wider participation by the public is considered laudable and worthwhile but from a localist perspective priority is given to the judgement of elected representatives. Councillors should have the right to make the final decision because their electoral status renders them accountable and because they have a perspective that is broader than that offered by a single community association or lobby group. They can balance and weigh competing demands from the community and come to an appropriate judgement about the way forward. The individualist model is most clearly associated with ‘New Right’ political thought.21 Here the emphasis is not on facilitating collective choice by the local community but rather on ensuring that the system of local governance is designed in a way that ensures that individual consumers obtain the right bundle of services to meet their personal needs. The aim of the system should be to ensure that individuals get the choice of service they want, related to a willingness to pay taxes or charges. To meet the design challenge of creating government that is responsive in that manner makes the advocates of this individualist perspective inclined to favour very local institutions. Smaller-scale government where voter-consumers have an option of moving between jurisdictions is more likely to create a variety of service–tax mixes and facilitate choice. Smaller-scale government is also likely to be made more subject to the demands and wishes of individual consumers. This preference for small-scale government, however, is conditional on individual choices being met and individual rights being respected. The ‘individualist’ model favours competition between service providers. By setting up a market-like model, it is argued, the forces of consumer choice will ensure that producers are responsive and concerned to provide services tailored to individual needs. Collective political decision-making and large-scale participation is distrusted because it favours organized and vocal minorities who bargain additional resources and benefits for themselves out of the state at the expense of taxpayers and the unorganized ‘silent’ majority. Political processes should be kept to a minimum. The key challenge is to enable individual consumers to protect their rights and interests. Sophisticated systems of complaint and redress, citizens’ charters which lay out expectations and rights in relation to service delivery, the ‘right to buy’ council property, appeals to an ombudsman and, more broadly, a capacity to use the law to claim your rights are among the mechanisms to promote individual rights favoured by the New Right.


The mobilization model draws on a left-wing perspective. There have always been a variety of views on the left about local governance. Many have favoured national government intervention and dominance in order to overcome local inequalities and the limitations of action at the local level.22 But a counter-argument and one associated with the mobilization model is that any worthwhile left-wing politics involves doing things with people rather than for them. The local level provides an opportunity to organize the disadvantaged and mobilize them so that an active political alliance is formed to challenge inequality and exclusion. Local governance provides the base for an effective oppositional politics.23 As a form of political practice the mobilization model came to prominence in Britain in the early 1980s as a range of left-wing Labour councils – led by high-profile figures such as Ken Livingstone and David Blunkett – developed a campaigning style of local politics both as a challenge to the Thatcher government and as an attempt to reinvigorate and renew left-wing political alliances at the local level.24 A key element of the political process for the mobilization model is that there is sufficient scope for local autonomy to allow a dynamic local politics to develop which is involving and creates multiple opportunities for participation by the public. The key overarching challenge is seen as using the local political arena to encourage a developmental participatory politics in which the disadvantaged and excluded learn and put into practice the arts of organization, campaigning and mobilization. In terms of service delivery there is a preference for a structure decentralized right down to the neighbourhood level. First, breaking down bureaucracies makes them more susceptible to the influence of the traditionally excluded. Neighbourhood offices provide accessible service delivery outlets that are more likely to be responsive to the demands of disadvantaged local communities. Moreover decentralized structures may provide a focus and resource for the various disadvantaged communities within any local authority area. The final model of local governance is not one that favours a strong local politics. The centralist model only rarely finds explicit expression in the world of political theory but in the world of political practice, especially in Britain, it has a sustained presence.25 The model rests on a fundamental preference for the primacy of national democracy. The key challenge is to ensure that all citizens receive a similar access to quality services and that national standards are raised and maintained. As such, local autonomy is opposed and local participation is not highly valued.


The key issue in service delivery is that local agencies of service provision are subject to central control and direction in order to ensure that national objectives are achieved and nationally set performance targets are met. The overarching democratic priority rests with the superior national parliament and government. It has a responsibility to use legislation, guidance and controls to ensure that the national will of the population is successfully imposed. Local agencies have a role and can provide a valuable service. However, their key task is to support the achievement of national objectives and standards.

Conclusion The shift from ‘local government’ to ‘local governance’ has brought into play new institutions, a range of local appointed governors operating alongside elected colleagues, and a variety of new practices and ways of working. Since 1979 a range of reforms have been introduced that most observers argue have led to profound changes. But what do the public and those who are in charge of the new system of local governance make of it? What are their views about how our local governance system could be reconstructed for the better? These are the issues that dominate the remainder of the book.

2 A Multi-Level Survey

Arguments for and against the traditional model of local governance, for and against the innovations of the 1979–97 Conservative governments or for and against New Labour’s reforms all raise questions about identification with locality, the proper purposes and objectives of a system of local governance, perceptions of the performance of different institutions and preferred prescriptions for institutional structures.

The test of public opinion These questions can be investigated in many ways – for example, by looking for internal contradictions in the logic of theories of local governance1 or by empirical studies of how the old and the new systems worked in practice.2 But they should also be tested against public opinion. Of course the test of public opinion is only one element of any well-rounded assessment of alternative models. Margaret Thatcher often took the view that she should act first and win the support of public opinion afterwards. Public support for traditional systems may reflect nothing more than a conservative (with a small ‘c’) reluctance to contemplate change. The public may come to like a radical new system only after its virtues have been demonstrated in practice. But, as the public reaction to the Poll Tax showed, public opposition may also reflect a ‘settled will’ of the people, a genuine position on the substance of the issue in question. In a democracy we should at least take note of public opinion about the structure of government. Public acceptability lies at the moral heart of democratic legitimacy. And in purely practical terms, public acceptability makes a system much easier to run. Moreover, the public’s collective judgement may be better than that of a handful of enthusiastic ideologues in a ‘think tank’.3 33


Public opinion is relevant in two ways to the arguments about local governance that we presented in the previous chapter. First, and most obviously, the public has its own preferences about the aims, structure and institutions of local governance, and these may conflict with the prescriptions of rival theoretical models. Does the public feel, with John Stuart Mill, that elected local government should contribute to national democracy by training people in democratic methods or by dispersing power throughout the land? Does it accord legitimacy to the decisions of locally elected authorities? And, if so, is that primarily because these authorities are local, or because they are elected? What rights should be granted to the minority within a locally elected authority? What is the public’s attitude to market provision of local services? Or to user charges? Or to user or provider control of local services? How does the public weight the competing claims of local autonomy and national standards? But there is a second way in which public opinion is important. Prescriptive models of local governance are usually based in part on assumptions about the public’s perceptions and perspectives as much as on their institutional preferences. Thus, for example, it matters whether people really are willing to move house just in order to live under a preferred local service/tax regime as some public choice theorists suggest. And it matters whether they really do feel a strong sense of local identity as some of the defenders of traditional local government suggest. It matters whether the public really does regard the traditional locally elected authorities as representative. Or as corrupt. And it matters whether the public really does regard the new appointed boards as more or less representative, more or less corrupt than the elected councils. Or more efficient than elected councils. There is no point in designing a system to fit assumed local identities that do not really exist, nor to meet an assumed public discontent that does not really exist. In so far as prescriptive models are designed to fit the contours of public perspectives on local governance, it is important to know what those perspectives are.

Levels of opinion: the general public and rival local governance elites But in addition to outlining the views of the general public, we will contrast their views with the views of those who participate in the process of local governance at a higher level, the local governance elite. More than that, we will contrast the views of rival local governance

A Multi-Level Survey 35

elites, the old and the new, the elected and the appointed, local authority councillors and quango board members. Both elected councillors and appointed board members are part of the local governance elite. As such they could be expected to differ from the general public. They have far more experience of the problems and processes of local governance than the ordinary citizen. They should have far more interest in local governance, and far more information about it, than the ordinary citizen. We anticipate some evidence of a ‘governing perspective’ among the elites, whether elected or appointed. But we also anticipate differences between these elites. They are, at least potentially, rival elites within the overall structure of local governance. They owe their place to different processes of selection. And Jones, Stewart and Regan argue that election and appointment affect behaviour at the level of the authority itself. Election creates an active relationship between the councillor and his locality: appointment on the other hand creates no such relationship … The elected member may or may not differ from the appointed member in ability, in experience or in background. The critical difference lies in the [mere] fact of election.4 In their view, appointed local governance elites should differ significantly from elected elites simply because their role and their office is different, irrespective of their personal background or original opinions. So how do rival local governance elites differ from each other? How do appointed board members differ from elected councillors on their commitment to the locality, on their views about the proper objectives for local governance, and on the best institutional structures and mechanisms available to achieve those objectives? It would be surprising if appointed board members did not have an unusually positive insider’s view of appointed boards. But whether they have an unusually negative attitude towards elected councils is a more open question. Appointed board members may see their boards as a superior replacement for elected councils, the way of the future. That was certainly how the Thatcherites viewed them. But, on the other hand, board members may see their boards more as a useful adjunct to elected councils, useful only in limited areas where there is more need for specialist technocratic expertise than for democratic representation. And members of different types of appointed board may also differ significantly from each other on some issues at least. In particular,


board members may see their own particular kind of board as ‘exceptional’, and take a positive view of it, without feeling any wider commitment to the general principle of appointed boards. Indeed they may be quite critical of other types of appointed boards.

The survey In 1994–95, towards the end the Conservatives’ radical restructuring of local governance, we conducted a wide ranging survey of public attitudes. The timing is important. By that time the issues in the move from local government to local governance were becoming more familiar to the general public. Many aspects of public attitudes towards questions of local governance were well informed by the mid-1990s and our survey is likely to provide insight into informed and stable public attitudes to fundamental questions. But in one respect, any survey of public attitudes towards local governance is likely to reflect attitudes that are changeable, though changeable in very predictable ways. In the mid-1990s, after almost two decades of Conservative central government, the public found it difficult to distinguish clearly between ‘central government’ and the ‘Conservative Party’. As we shall show, this had some important implications for attitudes towards local autonomy. If New Labour succeeds in its ambition to win a second (or even a third) term, then ‘central government’ will once again come to be identified with a particular party, though with a different one. In that case we hypothesize that some of the partisan patterns of opinion that emerge so clearly in this survey will remain the same in character and intensity, but will reverse in sign. We looked at four different elements of public opinion: the general public plus three different kinds of local governance elite. We interviewed 2203 members of the public, 788 elected local councillors and 903 appointed members of local quango boards. The target populations of the general public and elected councillors presented no conceptual problems though there were, of course, some practical problems involved in drawing a sample and persuading selected individuals to give us an interview. In the case of local quangos, however, we faced a dilemma caused by the number and variety of such organizations. 5 We felt it was important to avoid a heterogeneous, fragmented and ill-defined sample of too many non-elected quangos. So we focused on only two: Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) and District Health Authorities (DHAs), both of which operated in England and Wales, together with the


Scottish Local Enterprise Companies (LECs) and Scottish Health Boards (HBs), which were their near-equivalents in Scotland. TEC/LECs and DHA/HBs represented the two most extensive, well-defined, visible and accessible alternatives to local governance by locally elected councils. Following the 1989/90 reforms TEC/LECs were charged with fostering local economic development and with assessing and meeting skills and training requirements within their local areas. DHA/HBs became purchasers of health care services, responsible for assessing health care needs within their area and meeting these needs by purchasing services from competing providers such as Hospital Trusts. These were very important local public services and even before the 1989/90 reforms, the existence of appointed quangos in training and health was highly controversial. Jones and Stewart, for example, argued that ‘in the NHS the rationale for the existing appointed health authorities [DHAs] is feeble. They contribute little to management, have no legitimate basis for representation and confuse accountability.’6 So elected local authorities ‘should be given responsibility for the local government of health, taking over the responsibilities of DHAs’. At the same time they also argued that ‘the training functions of the Manpower Services Commission [later exercised by TEC/LECs] should be transferred to local authorities’ and that even the remaining functions of the MSC should ‘be considered for transfer to local authorities’. 7 Our focus on only two types of quango was intended to provide enough interviews with members of each type for us to say something about opinion within each specific type and thus to contrast boardroom opinion between the two types of quango. We excluded executive members of quango boards from our survey, since they were essentially employees, equivalent to civil servants or council officials rather than elected councillors. Our target population of appointed quango board members was therefore the non-executive members appointed to TEC/LEC or DHA/HB boards. There were few prescriptions regarding the selection of TEC/LEC board members, though two-thirds of seats had to go to the private sector. Members had to be chosen, and subsequently had to act, as individuals, not as representatives of their respective organizations or companies. TEC/LECs were private companies, so responsibility for board formation was left in the hands of the private sector and remained largely unstructured. Typically a core private sector group was drawn from local private sector networks. This dominant core group then selected individuals from organizations such as local authorities, voluntary groups and trade unions to fill the remaining third of seats on the


board. Boards were not required to reflect the composition of local communities. They were proudly and unashamedly business-centred and business-oriented. Non-executive members of DHA/HB boards were expected to bring an independent view to the work of the board and a broader perspective than might be available from the executive members but they were also seen as crucial in the development of a more business-like approach to running the boards. Each District Health Authority comprised a chairman appointed by the Secretary of State, up to five executive members and five non-executive members appointed by the Regional Health Authority. The District Health Authority was accountable to the Regional Health Authority, which in turn was accountable to the Secretary of State. Non-executive members were required to: (a) live, work in or have connections with the area encompassed by their authority; (b) include individuals linked to community groups; (c) have backgrounds in the business sector, voluntary sector, community organizations, local authorities or the NHS (but excluding current employees of the authority). Scottish Health Boards differed somewhat in composition and structure from DHAs. They had a maximum of 12 members including the chairman. The Secretary of State for Scotland appointed the chairman, and also aimed to appoint six non-executives, on the advice of the chairman though after consultation with elected local authorities, universities and professional organizations. These appointments were strongly criticized, especially in Scotland, where the the Secretary of State for Scotland and his party had a very weak democratic mandate based upon only 11 out of 72 Scottish MPs and 22 per cent of the Scottish vote at the 1992 General Election. The system of appointment in Scotland has since been modified to meet that criticism, and the Secretary of State for Scotland now has a less direct role in these appointments than at the time of our survey. But our survey reflects the opinions of board members appointed in the first ‘white heat’ of the Conservatives’ commitment to appointed rather than elected local governance. In the event, our strategy of selecting all our appointed board members from just two kinds of quango did provide large enough samples – 569 members of TEC/LEC boards and 334 members of DHA/HB boards – to provide reliable evidence about the views of these two types of board members. That meant we could compare and contrast the views of members appointed to different boards. Moreover, we worded our questionnaire to ask questions specifically about these two kinds of quango. So we can reliably contrast the views


of quango board members not just towards elected councils and appointed boards in general, but also distinguish their views about their own type of quango (TEC/LEC or DHA/HB) from their views about the other kind of quango. As we shall see in later chapters, how board members on these two different types of quango viewed each other proves almost as interesting and enlightening as the way both groups of appointed board members viewed elected councils. Sampling All interviews were conducted by telephone from Glasgow University. Over 90 per cent of adults in Britain were accessible by phone at the time.8 For our sample of the general public we drew a random sample of listed telephone numbers from BT directories throughout Britain, and then made a random selection of those present at the selected number. While that strategy did not give access to the increasing number of ex-directory numbers, it allowed us to mail advance letters of introduction to each selected household a few days before phoning for an interview. People are naturally reluctant to submit to a long and searching interview without advance warning. 9 We estimate these letters of introduction reduced the refusal rate by almost a third. The sample was weighted to bring it into line with the 1991 Census and 1995 Labour Force Survey on age, gender, housing tenure, education, economic activity and region. For our sample of councillors we drew a random sample of names from the 1995 Municipal Yearbook. There were 82 Training and Enterprise Councils in England and Wales and 22 Local Enterprise Companies in Scotland. Only one TEC, Sheffield, failed to provide a list of board members and contact details when we approached them directly. Since there was evidence of a high turnover of board members we interviewed some recent past members as well as those who currently held seats. The 1994 Health Services Yearbook provided a list of the non-executive board members for all DHA/HBs and we supplemented this by approaching each board to confirm membership and get contact details. During the survey, DHAs were undergoing a reorganization which encouraged the merger of DHAs and Family Health Service Authorities (FHSAs). In addition, there were mergers between DHAs. This complicated the sampling process. But in the end, 90 authorities provided us with the details we requested while only 11 refused, though several failed to reply by the end of the interviewing period, mostly because of the upheaval caused by reorganization. In order to minimize the transient effects of particular events on public opinion, interviews with the general public were conducted


over an eight-month period from November 1994 to June 1995, and interviews with TEC/LEC and DHA/HB board members over the six months from February to July 1995. However, it was impracticable to attempt contact with councillors prior to the May 1995 local elections, as most were unavailable due to campaigning. As a result, interviews with councillors were conducted over a much shorter period than the other samples: in June and July 1995. The sequence of interviews with members of each sample was randomized. Thus, whatever the cut-off point at which we stopped interviewing, those interviewed were an approximately random subset of our full sampling frame. The unusual political significance of ‘don’t knows’ and refusals Patterns of ‘don’t knows’ and refusals in surveys are usually only of methodological interest. But on this occasion they have some political significance. Although our questionnaire routinely included a ‘don’t know’ answer category, respondents were never prompted for this during the interview. Our intention was to counteract the tendency for survey respondents to opt out of thinking about challenging questions by retreating into the ‘don’t know’ category. This is a considerable problem in postal or other self-completion surveys which inevitably have to make the ‘don’t know’ option visible. Our design allowed us to accept genuine ‘don’t knows’ while avoiding this opt-out tendency. ‘Don’t know’ responses were neither discouraged nor encouraged. As might be expected, this approach produced relatively low levels of ‘don’t know’ responses. The incidence of ‘don’t knows’ was greater amongst the general public than in the elite samples but, even so, there were only ten questions where the level of ‘don’t know’ responses exceeded 15 per cent among the general public. Seven of these ten were questions about TEC/LECs, as were five of the six questions that exceeded the 15 per cent ‘don’t know’ threshold in the councillors’ sample and all four that exceeded the threshold in the DHA/HB members’ sample. Conversely, the only question which exceeded this threshold in the TEC/LEC sample was a question about DHA/HBs. Quango boards therefore had a relatively low profile. They were relatively invisible, not just to the public at large but also to local governance elites. And this relatively private governance of public institutions itself raises questions of democratic accountability. The overall response rate was 52 per cent in our sample of the general public. Naturally, it was much higher among elites of all kinds. But it varied significantly between elites. It ran at 88 per cent in our


sample of councillors, and 91 per cent in our sample of DHA/HB members, but only 73 per cent among TEC/LEC members – which seems to confirm the allegation that the business-oriented TEC/LECs were particularly secretive. Since we had the business address of each TEC/LEC board member we could identify with a fair degree of accuracy the sector in which each member was employed. The response rate varied according to the sector. Among TEC/LEC board members employed in the public sector it ran at 88 per cent, and among those TEC/LEC board members who were themselves elected councillors it reached a truly remarkable 99 per cent. But conversely, among TEC/LEC board members employed in the private sector it dropped to 69 per cent. So it was specifically the dominant element of businessmen on TEC/LEC boards that was so unusually secretive. Since two-thirds of TEC/LEC board members came from the private sector this variation in response rates among TEC/LEC members hardly biased the TEC/LEC sample as a whole, and it is not of any great methodological importance. But it is of some political significance. It seems to indicate something about the distinctive culture of the businessmen (as compared to academics and politicians) who predominated on the TEC/LECs. And it suggests that the relative invisibility of TEC/LECs to the public was not entirely the fault of the public. How to interpret findings based on randomized question wordings We should say something about our system of interviewing by CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing). Each interviewer worked with a desktop computer. The questionnaire appeared, question by question, on the computer screen. But many of our questions came with two or more variants of question wording. And during an interview, the computer would randomly select one form of words to put up on the screen, silently recording which form of question wording was used on that occasion, along with the respondent’s answer. Provided we interpret the answers properly, this can be a revealing way to ask questions. We can get much nearer to a conversational dialogue than in conventional surveys. First we can investigate whether opinions were lightly held, whether they are easily influenced by question wording (especially simple inversions of question wording) or prone to amendment when challenged by argument. We also used varied computer-controlled ‘scenarios’ (hypothetical situations in which the respondent was asked to say what should be done in particular circumstances) to determine what people really meant by local citizenship, how exclusive it was, and how it related to national citizen-


ship. Randomly varying question wordings across subsamples in this way allowed us to pack more questions into a thirty-minute questionnaire than would otherwise be possible if everyone was asked every question. It also allowed us to investigate closely related topics while avoiding contamination effects (where answers given to one question affect those given to a similar but subtly different question). Useful though it is, our use of the CATI method produces results that can be confusing if they are wrongly interpreted. Let us take a concrete example. One question read: Local councils like the council in [council district] generally take decisions that [represent / do not represent] the views of local people. Do you agree or disagree? In this example, the actual district name was automatically inserted instead of council district. In addition, a randomly selected half sample was asked to agree that the local council did represent local views, while the other half were asked to agree that it did not represent local views. This is indicated in the text by putting both forms of words in square brackets, separated by a slash. If there had been three forms of words in the square brackets, divided by slashes, it would indicate that each version was put to a randomly selected one-third of respondents. But no respondent was ever asked to choose between the alternatives laid out within the brackets. Each respondent was only asked one version of the question. If people had no strong views but just tended to be generally agreeable, we might find that two-thirds would agree to the [represent / do not represent] proposition no matter which way round it was put. In fact that did happen when this particular question was put to our sample of the general public, though not when it was put to our samples of local governance elites. That indicates that the general public did not have clear and firm views on this question, but that local governance elites had more well-defined views on it. Wherever the percentages agreeing to such directly contradictory propositions together exceed 100 per cent, it indicates a lack of clearly formed opinions among the public, not an error in our tabulated percentages. Where our findings are based upon agreement with alternative propositions put to random subsamples rather than on a choice between alternatives offered to all respondents, we indicate it by means of an asterisk in our tables as a warning against misinterpretation. And where this method produces results that indicate only weakly held views we draw attention to that fact in the text.


Out CATI method of randomly varying question wordings is not equivalent to the more traditional method of using split-half samples. In the traditional method there are only two half-samples, A and B, each with its own questionnaire (though both questionnaires may share a common core of questions). In consequence when a question Q occurs in two versions, one is assigned to questionnaire A, the other to questionnaire B. However, version A of question Q occurs in the context of questionnaire A, which differs in many respects from the context of questionnaire B, and the context may affect the answers. In our CATI method, however, versions A and B of question Q are assigned randomly to interviews, irrespective of how different versions of other questions are assigned. Thus versions A and B of question Q occur in the context of interviews which, on average, do not differ at all from each other. The wording of other questions certainly varies a great deal among all the interviews that include version A of question Q, but it varies in the same way among all the interviews that include version B of question Q. The significance of this somewhat complex point is that we can attribute the difference between answers to versions A and B of question Q entirely to the difference in the wording of versions A and B of question Q itself. In the more traditional method of split-half samples, the difference in answers to versions A and B of question Q may not be caused by the difference in wording of this question itself so much as by the different context in which it was asked. Thus the validity of comparisons between answers to versions A and B of question Q is much greater in our CATI method than in traditional split sample surveys. Finally, although this text makes frequent use of the terms ‘district’ and ‘region’ even in descriptions of question wording, these terms seldom occurred in that form in the CATI interviews. At the start of each interview we asked ‘which part of Britain do you live in?’ and offered ten options: ‘Scotland, Wales, London, the South East (of England excluding London), South West (of England), the Midlands, East Anglia, the North East (of England), the North West (of England), and Yorkshire/Humberside.’ Thereafter the computer automatically replaced the word ‘region’ where appropriate with the actual region indicated by the respondent at the start. Next we asked: ‘What is the name of your local council, that is your district or borough council?’ And thereafter the computer automatically replaced the word ‘district’ where appropriate with the actual district name that the respondent had given at the start. Only those very few respondents who did not know the region or district where they lived were asked about ‘your


region’ or ‘your district’ rather than these specific named regions or districts. Apart from anything else, this approach avoided the problem of irritating Scottish and Welsh respondents by repeatedly describing Scotland and Wales as ‘regions’. For them, our questions about regions simply asked about ‘Scotland’ or about ‘Wales’. But perhaps more significantly it meant that our questions focused each respondent’s mind onto their own specific district or region, not onto some vague notion of districts and regions. The distinction is important. Americans reputedly trust their senator but distrust the Senate. Newspaper readers, in the many countries where we have posed the question, tell us that they trust the daily newspaper that they buy much more than they trust ‘the press’ in general. So it is important to bear in mind that when we asked in this survey whether respondents thought local councils ‘represent the views of local people’, or ‘are generally more or less corrupt than private businesses’, our CATI system focused their minds onto ‘Harrogate’, ‘Milton Keynes’, ‘Newbury’, ‘Oxford’, ‘St Albans’ or wherever they lived rather than onto some unspecified district council. And when we asked how strongly respondents ‘felt a sense of belonging’ to their district or region, our CATI system posed the question in terms of ‘Harrogate’ or ‘Yorkshire/Humberside’ rather than some unspecified district or region. Images and identifications in particular were keyed to actual councils and actual places. These are, we believe, the images and identifications that matter most for a study of the principles of local governance. An image of the ‘London loony left’ (whether well-founded or not) might once have had an impact on party choice in elections far beyond London, and in national elections as well as in local elections. But this is not a study of electoral behaviour and it is the public’s current image of their own local council that is more relevant to theories of local governance.

3 The Limits of Local Identity

Alternative models of local governance make different assumptions about whether the relationship between citizens and their locality is affective, instrumental or irrelevant. Were people emotionally committed to their locality and willing to contribute to it, or did they expect benefits from it, or did they think in purely individualistic and/or national terms and therefore not in terms of locality at all? In this chapter we examine the evidence on public commitment to localities, especially to the localities defined by the structure of elected local governance, though we also look at the degree of public commitment to wider regions. Conflicting assumptions about the significance of locality underpin alternative theories of local governance. Even if people are not strongly rooted in their localities they may still need local services, but their attitude to those services will either be that of individual consumers or of citizens of the (national) state. Their attitude will not be that of members of a local community and the concept of local citizenship will be empty or irrelevant. Clarke and Stewart argue, however, that ‘the primary role’ of local authorities is ‘local government and not local administration [and] that role must have its basis in citizenship’.1 And in their view, ‘the structure of local government should be based, not on the alleged efficiencies of administration, but on the perceived and felt community of place [our emphasis].’2 There are some reasons why psychological commitment to localities should be strong compared to other commitments. Locality structures personal experience and face-to-face contacts. To those who live in the Jesmond ward of Newcastle upon Tyne, Jesmond – and perhaps Newcastle – is a daily reality while Europe is an abstraction.

45


But there are also very good reasons why psychological commitments to localities should be weak compared to other commitments. The smaller the locality the more likely people are to leave it, either temporarily or permanently. Most residents of Jesmond probably leave that neighbourhood every week to work, to go shopping, to visit friends or to go to the cinema. They are likely to leave Newcastle somewhat less frequently, though the huge Metro Centre shopping and entertainment complex lies outside Newcastle, just across the Tyne, in Gateshead. Conversely, many residents of Newcastle would have lived outside Newcastle at some time in their lives. By contrast, relatively few would have lived for long outside Britain, and few would have moved from one religious faith to another. So a local community – as defined by local government boundaries – is likely to be less stable, as well as being less bounded, than the national community or a religious community. Moreover, British local authority boundaries have been revised quite frequently in recent decades, with major reforms in London during the 1960s, throughout the rest of the country in the 1970s, in metropolitan England in the 1980s and throughout the rest of the country again in the 1990s.3 So even if people stayed rooted to one place, local government boundaries would frequently have shifted past them.

Objective links to locality For analytic purposes, we divided Britain into ten regions: Scotland, Wales, London, the South East, South West, North East and North West of England, the Midlands, East Anglia and Yorkshire/Humberside. In our survey, 92 per cent of the public said they had been born in Britain, but only 67 per cent had been born in the region where they now lived and only 36 per cent in the local council district where they now lived. On the other hand, 80 per cent had lived for more than 20 years in their region and 60 per cent had lived that long in their district; 47 per cent said all their relatives lived in the region though only 19 per cent said all their relatives lived in their district; and 59 per cent said all their friends lived in the region though only 34 per cent said all their friends lived in their district. Thus objective links to the region were 31 per cent stronger than links to the district when measured in terms of birthplace, 28 per cent stronger when measured in terms of relatives, and 25 per cent stronger when measured in terms of friends. For a large majority of the public, the local council

The Limits of Local Identity 47 Table 3.1

Objective links to locality %

%

Born in Britain

92

Born in region

67

Born in district?

36

Lived in region for 20 years or more

80

Lived in district for 20 years or more

60

Relatives in region none under half over half all Friends in region: none under half over half all All shopping and leisure within region

11 23 19 47 2 12 27 59 82

Relatives in district none under half over half all Friends in district: none under half over half all All shopping and leisure within district

50

Workplace located: within district outside district both no job

38 27 3 31

27 36 17 19 5 29 32 34

Note : For simplicity, throughout this book we have routinely excluded ‘don’t know’ answers before calculating percentages. Thus, for example,the figure of 82 per cent (of those who answered the question) saying that they restrict all their shopping and leisure to within the region implies that 18 per cent (of those who answered the question) said they did not restrict such activities to within the region. Very occasionally the number of ‘don’t know / can’t say’ is sufficiently large to merit comment as a significant finding in itself.

district was simply too small to mark the boundary of their connections to family and friends. Work, leisure and shopping were somewhat more local than family and friends: half the people in our survey did not make regular use of shopping or leisure facilities outside the district. And, among those who had a job, almost three-fifths worked within their local council district. Many had no job of course. So at most, less than a third of the public had jobs outside their local district.

48 Models of Local Governance Table 3.2

Objective links to locality strengthen over time Number of years lived in the local council district

All friends in region All friends in district Work in district (% of those in work) All shopping/leisure within district Born in region Born in district All relatives in region All relatives in district

0–4 %

5–9 %

10–19 %

20–29 %

30–39 40–49 % %

50+ %

42 11 47

47 18 42

50 24 59

65 40 56

65 41 63

66 43 69

68 51 80

39

46

53

45

49

51

62

45 10 30 4

50 8 34 6

57 14 41 7

64 30 49 21

80 49 57 30

83 62 54 31

85 71 58 33

The longer people had lived in the locality the more roots they had put down there. Or perhaps it was the extent of their local connections that tied them to the locality. Either way, length of residence in the locality proved to be a key variable. If we divide people into seven categories according to their length of residence in the local council district, the per centage with all their friends living in the district rose steadily from 11 per cent to 51 per cent as length of residence increased (and the percentage with all their friends living in the region rose from 42 per cent to 68 per cent). People seemed to acquire local friends as time passed. In addition, the percentage whose job lay within their local district rose from 47 per cent to 80 per cent as their length of residence increased. Similarly, the percentages having all their relatives in the region or district also rose steadily with the number of years spent living in the locality. The percentage with all their relatives in the district rose steadily from 4 per cent to 33 per cent and the percentage with all their relatives in the region from 30 per cent to 58 per cent. Only the use of shopping and leisure facilities failed to conform so clearly to this pattern of increasingly local orientations as time spent in the locality increased. What kinds of people were the most locally oriented? A good indicator is the percentage who had lived for over 20 years in the district. As we have seen, the longer people had lived in an area, the more roots they had there. So what affected long-term residence?

The Limits of Local Identity 49 Figure 3.1

Objective links to locality.

70 60

All shopping/leisure in district

Per cent

50 40 30 20 All friends in district

All relatives in district

10 0

0–4 yrs

5–9 yrs 10–19 yrs 20–29 yrs 30–39 yrs 40–49 yrs

50+ yrs

Years lived in district

Table 3.3

Social bias in objective links to locality Lived in district for 20 years %

Under 35 yrs old 35–54 yrs old 55 and over Middle-class self-image Working-class self-image Self-employed Management Professional Non-manual worker Manual worker Renting privately House owner Renting from the council No school certificates School certificates but no degree University degree

42 58 76 50 67 56 52 57 60 76 43 59 79 74 56 39

Lived in region for 20 years % 67 82 88 73 84 79 77 77 82 89 58 81 88 89 79 63

Obviously age itself made a difference. The old (over 55 years) were 34 per cent more likely than the young (18–35 years) to have lived in


the local district for over 20 years. Other social patterns were less obvious. The self-described ‘working class’ were 17 per cent more likely than the self-described ‘middle class’ to be long-term residents. Compared to people with managerial jobs, manual workers were 24 per cent more likely to be long-term residents. Council tenants were the most likely to be long-term residents and those in the private rented sector the least. More striking still, compared to those with university degrees, people without educational qualifications were 35 per cent more likely to be long-term residents of the district, and 26 per cent more likely to be long-term residents of the region. So there was a strong class and educational bias, as well as the obvious age bias, in patterns of long-term local residence. In addition, there were regional biases. Judged by long-term residence in the region, those in Scotland were the most likely to be longterm residents, closely followed by people in the north of England. Conversely people in London and the South West (but not the South East) of England were the least likely to be long-term residents. But judged by a still more local criterion, long-term residence in the local council district, people in all the northern regions of England and in Wales were more likely to be long-term residents than those in Scotland though, once again, the people of London and the South West of England were the least. Scottish residents tended to move around within Scotland and, indeed, beyond it, but relatively few came into Scotland from outside.

Table 3.4

Regional bias in objective links to locality Lived in district for 20 years %

NE England NW England Yorkshire/Humberside Wales Scotland Midlands East Anglia SE England SW England London

73 69 69 68 61 59 57 55 52 40

Note: Sorted by percentage of long-term residents in local district.

Lived in region for 20 years % 88 85 84 83 90 78 79 80 64 66

The Limits of Local Identity 51

Subjective links to locality Local interest and awareness We asked respondents to rate their interest in various issues by giving a ‘mark out of ten’ for their degree of interest, drawing attention to a mark of ‘five out of ten’ as the dividing point between being ‘very interested’ and ‘not very interested’. For analytical purposes we subtract five from the score, so that the dividing point becomes zero, and the scale runs from minus five (extremely uninterested) up to plus five (extremely interested). Using this scale we can compare public interest in: • ‘national issues and what parliament and government does about them’; • ‘local issues and what your local council does about them’; • ‘European issues and what the European Community does about them’. On average the public rated their interest in local and national issues about the same – at close to +2 on the ±5 point scale. But they rated their interest in European issues at close to the mid-point, zero. By that standard, people were as interested in local as in national affairs, and far more interested in local than European affairs. Three-fifths also claimed that, in local elections, they voted more on local issues than on national issues. On the other hand, twice as many admitted they had not voted in the last local elections as in the last parliamentary General Election.4

Table 3.5

Interest in local issues Mean score on ± 5 point scale

National issues and what parliament and govt do Local issues and what local council does European issues and what European Community does

2.0 1.9 0.4 %

In local elections, vote on: national issues local issues Claimed they voted in the last parliamentary election Claimed they voted in the last local elections

34 57 87 74


Almost half read a local evening paper regularly and four-fifths claimed to follow local news on radio or television regularly. Only a minority, but in absolute terms a very substantial minority of 24 per cent, claimed to have attended a public meeting on a local issue ‘within the last few years’ and 33 per cent said they had attended a parents’ meeting at a local school. The extent of their knowledge about local governance was limited, however. Fully 92 per cent knew the name of their local district council, but only 26 per cent knew even approximately how much of its revenue came from the local council tax. We offered a choice of ‘around a quarter or less, around a half, or around three-quarters or more’. (The correct answer at the time was ‘a quarter or less’.) We used our CATI system to permute the order of the options in this question but it had little effect on the answers. Most of the public thought their local council tax was more significant than in fact it was. As a further check on the extent of public information we asked people to tell us whether various local services were ‘controlled mainly by your local council; mainly by private companies; or mainly by committees appointed by government?’ Correctly, very few thought local

Table 3.6

Local information %

Regularly follow local news on radio or TV Regularly read local weekly paper Regularly read local evening paper

78 70 44

Attended parents’ meeting at school in last few years Attended public meeting on local issue in last few years

33 24

Know district name Know council tax funds only quarter of LG spending

92 26

Attribute control of the following services mainly to local council: schools policing refuse collection help for local businesses water and sewage hospitals unemployment benefits electricity

78 68 63 48 37 31 29 9

Note: Entries for perceived control of services sorted in descending order.


councils controlled electricity. And a majority thought that local councils controlled schools, refuse collection and the police – for which there was some, though not complete, justification. But between a quarter and a third incorrectly held their local councils responsible for hospitals, water and sewage, and unemployment benefits. And of those who expressed a view, almost half held their local councils responsible for help to local businesses – though on this point an unusually high percentage (30 per cent) of the public spontaneously declared that they simply did not know who was responsible. Although local authorities have had some economic development powers since the late 1980s, a ‘general competence’ for local affairs has never been part of the British system of local governance. Our evidence suggests a specific and conscious lack of knowledge about responsibilities for local economic development. But more broadly it suggests a consistent tendency for the public to attribute greater responsibilities to elected councils than they actually possessed – a tendency, far from complete but visible nonetheless, towards holding elected councils ‘generally accountable’ for services within the locality. Once again, long-term residence in the district proved a key explanatory variable. Dividing people into seven categories by length of residence in the district showed that reading a local evening paper rose steadily from 37 per cent to 49 per cent as length of residence increased. Following local news on radio and television rose from 71 per cent to 84 per cent. Knowledge of the district council name rose from 80 per cent to 96 per cent. And reported (albeit over-reported) voting in local elections rose from 56 per cent to 84 per cent. Most striking of all, the ratio of claimed voting on local rather than national issues in local elections rose from approximately 1 : 1 up to 3 : 1 as length of residence increased, from an equal stress on local and national issues to three times as much stress on local as on national issues. Multiple identities In his discussion of Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Hobsbawm argued that ‘the modern nation, either as a state or as a body of people aspiring to form such a state, differs in size, scale and nature from the actual communities with which human beings have identified over most of history.’5 For a comparative measure of the degree of identification with different scales of community we asked people about identifications with a dozen different reference groups or areas. Hobsbawm himself contrasted spatial identifications with ‘supra-local forms of popular identification’ such as Catholicism. We did the same.


Local knowledge strengthens over time Number of years lived in the local council district 0–4 %

5–9 %

10–19 %

20–29 %

30–39 %

40–49 %

50+ %

Regularly follow local news on radio or TV Regularly read local weekly paper Regularly read local evening paper

71

77

71

75

81

86

84

58

68

70

75

69

75

71

37

39

41

45

49

43

49

Know district council name Claimed they voted in the last local elections

80

90

92

92

94

96

96

56

68

69

76

79

80

84

46

43

33

39

31

29

23

44

49

59

52

62

63

68

Local voting choice influenced mainly by national issues Local voting choice influenced mainly by local issues

But we asked in particular about identification with a range of seven spatial entities: • • • • • •

Europe; Britain; the region where the respondent lived; their local (council) district; the neighbourhood where they lived; the neighbourhood where they worked (which we shall call the ‘workplace’ to distinguish it from the ‘neighbourhood’ of residence); • the place where they were born. We asked respondents to rate ‘how strongly you feel a sense of belonging’ to these areas using a ‘mark out of ten’ in each case. We focused attention on ‘five out of ten’ as the dividing point between a ‘weak’ and a ‘strong’ sense of belonging, and for analytic purposes we have subtracted five from these ‘marks out of ten’ scores. Zero then becomes the dividing point. Negative scores indicate weak


identifications and positive scores strong identifications. The scale ranges from plus five to minus five. Following Hobsbawm we also asked respondents to rate, ‘on the same scale’, their sense of belonging to: • • • • •

‘a class such as the working class or the middle class’; ‘your circle of friends’; ‘your family’; ‘a religion of any kind’; ‘a political party of any kind’.

Identification with family came top with an average score of almost 4 (against a maximum of 5). The respondent’s ‘circle of friends’ scored close to 3. Class scored a dismal 1.0, and both party and religion got slightly negative scores. That merely calibrates our scale. Our principal concern was: where did the various spatial referents fit on this scale? Identification with Britain came top. It was followed, in order, by identification with the region, the home neighbourhood, the district, the birthplace and, finally, the workplace of the respondent. At 3.0, identification with Britain scored slightly higher than identification with friends, though substantially lower than with family. Region came close behind at 2.7. The district, at 2.0, was some way behind

Table 3.8

Identification: a sense of belonging Mean score on ± 5 point scale

Strength of feeling of belonging to: family Britain circle of friends region home neighbourhood district birthplace a social class work neighbourhood Europe a religion a political party Note: All scores measured on a scale from minus 5 to plus 5.

3.9 3.0 2.8 2.7 2.3 2.0 1.8 1.0 0.5 –0.1 –0.2 –0.4


Britain but slightly ahead of birthplace at 1.8. Workplace was far behind that, at 0.4. And Europe came close to zero. So, contrary to Hobsbawm’s speculation, our findings suggest that identification with smaller areas was not consistently stronger than with larger areas. Indeed, identification increased as the area widened within the British state, though it collapsed as the area was extended beyond Britain to include Europe. Yet we should not swing too far to the opposite extreme. Although the strength of local identification did not exceed the level and intensity of national identification, regional identification rivalled national identification very closely. And identification with neighbourhood and district was also moderately strong – less strong than national identification, but certainly stronger than class, religious or party-political identification. Moreover, identifications with wider or narrower geographic areas were not mutually exclusive. Indeed the correlations between identifications with all of the seven geographic areas mentioned in our questions were positive without exception, though some were strong and others very weak. There was a particularly strong set of positive correlations between the various subnational identifications – between regional, district and neighbourhood identifications. There were particularly weak, almost negligible, correlations between subnational identifications and a supra-national identification with Europe. But there was a moderately positive correlation of 0.21 between identifications with Britain and Europe, and a stronger positive correlation of around 0.30 between identification with Britain and the localities – region, district and neighbourhood – within Britain. We did not force people to make unwelcome and unnatural choices between these

Table 3.9

Correlations between identifications (¥100)

Identification with: Europe Britain Region District Neighbourhood Workplace Birthplace Family Friends

Europe Britain Region District Neighbourhood Work- Birthplace place 100 21 7 7 4 5 4 5 10

100 31 26 30 19 15 22 14

100 64 52 33 28 26 27

100 64 36 28 20 21

100 45 26 18 24

100 23 16 17

100 23 17


different breadths of space, and many clearly did not choose to do so voluntarily. A factor analysis of all 12 identifications produced three factors. The first, which was centred on identification with the district, grouped together identifications with the district, the neighbourhood, the region and the workplace, and could be described as a localism factor. The second, which centred on identification with the family, grouped together identifications with family, friends and, much more loosely, class. It might be interpreted as a personal relationships factor. The third, which centred on identification with Europe, grouped together identifications with Europe, political parties and religion, and could be viewed as a supra-local factor. Only two of the original 12 identifications could not be classified unambiguously under one or other of these factor groupings. Identification with birthplace was almost as strongly (or as weakly!) linked to the localism as to the personal relationships factor. And identification with Britain was weakly linked to the localism factor though more strongly to the supra-local factor. Table 3.10

Local connections and local identities

Lived in region (district) for: 50 years or more 40–49 years 30–39 years 20–29 years 10–19 years 5–9 years 0–4 years Lived for 20 years or more: in district in region but not in district neither under 35 yrs old 35–54 yrs old 55 and over

Identification with region mean score

Identification with district mean score

3.7 3.3 2.8 2.4 1.7 1.2 –0.1

2.9 2.6 2.1 1.5 1.1 0.4 –0.3

(3.7) (3.5) (3.1) (2.6) (2.3) (2.0) (1.5)

(3.4) (3.1) (2.6) (1.7) (1.5) (1.0) (0.1)

Identification with Britain mean score

3.5 (3.5) 3.0 (3.3) 2.5 (3.0) 2.7 (2.9) 3.0 (2.8) 2.7 (2.8) 2.6 (2.5)

3.1 2.9

2.6 1.4

3.1 2.6

1.2 2.2 2.7 3.2

0.6 1.2 2.0 2.6

2.8 2.2 2.9 3.6

58 Models of Local Governance Figure 3.2

Strength of local identities.

Mean scores on ± 5 point scale

4 3.5 3

With Britain

2.5 2

With region

1.5 1 0.5 0

With district

0–4 yrs

5–9 yrs

10–19 yrs 20–29yrs 30–39 yrs 40–49 yrs 50+ yrs Years lived in district

Who identified most with the locality? It was useful to contrast the patterns of identification with state, region and district. The old identified more strongly than the young with all three. Partly as a result of that, those who had lived longer in the region or district also identified more with Britain as well as with the region or district itself, though only a little more. Suppose we contrast those who had lived in the district for under five years (‘recent arrivals’) with those who had lived in it for over 50 years (‘very long-term residents’). ‘Very long-term residents’ differed from the ‘recent arrivals’ by 3.3 points (on the ±5 point scale) in terms of identification with their district, but by only 2.2 points in terms of identification with their region, and by only 1.0 points in terms of identification with Britain. The effect was not limited to the newest arrivals nor to the longest residents. Figure 3.2 shows that the length of residence in a particular locality generally had its most powerful influence upon identification with that very particular locality, with the district rather than with the region or with Britain. Analysis of the data from two Local Government Commissions in the early 1990s found a similar pattern of attachments. The researchers found that length of residence in a particular local area was the predominant factor in driving attachment not only at that level, but at


higher levels also. They speculated that what they might be measuring was a sense of ‘being settled’.6 Multiple regression analysis confirmed that age itself had no influence upon identification with region or district once the length of local residence had been taken into account. We used stepwise multiple regression to predict the strength of identification with five areas – Britain, the region, the district, the neighbourhood and the workplace. As predictors we took age in years, plus 13 measures of objective local connections: whether people were born in Britain, in the region or in the district; the number of years lived in the region and district; the proportions of relatives and friends who lived in the region and district (on four-point scales); whether the respondent’s workplace was outside the district; and whether they paid regular attention to local evening papers, local weekly papers or local evening news on radio and television. Six of these had no impact, once other influences were taken into account: attention to local news media, the proportion of relatives in the locality and whether people had been born in the district. Only age and being born in Britain – and age more than British birth – affected the strength of identification with Britain. Indeed, since so many had been born in Britain (92 per cent), birthplace could hardly explain much of the variation between people in the strength of their identification with Britain or anything else. But identification with Britain increased sharply with age. Being born in the region, having a high proportion of friends in the region and being a long-term resident in the region all increased the strength of identification with the region. But by far the strongest of these influences was simply long-term residence in the region. Having a high proportion of friends in the district and being a longterm resident in the district (or even in the region) increased the strength of identification with the district. But the strongest of these influences was long-term residence in the district itself, even when long-term residence in the region was taken into account. Age, having a high proportion of friends in the district and being a long-term resident in the district all contributed towards the strength of identification with the neighbourhood. Although age itself had no effect upon identification with either the region or the district, it had as much effect as long-term residence on identification with the neighbourhood. Older people had a noticeably stronger identification with the very limited space of their very local neighbourhood. Finally, our multiple regression analysis suggested that identification with the workplace was highly dependent upon the location of the


workplace and, in fact, derivative from identification with the place of residence. Identification with the workplace was influenced both by long-term residence in the region and by its precise location. But by far the strongest influence on identification with the workplace was its location within the district of residence: people identified with their workplace if it was close to where they lived and therefore if they already identified with that same place for other reasons. It was significant that the location of the workplace, inside or outside the district of residence, had a very strong influence upon identification with the workplace, but no influence upon identification with the place of residence – clear evidence that it was residence, not workplace, that determined local identification. The self-described working class were more likely to identify strongly with the region and the district while the self-described middle class were slightly more likely to identify strongly with Britain. Those who rented their house from a private landlord were much less likely than council tenants to identify strongly with the region (by a 1.3 point margin) and very much less likely to identify strongly with the district (by a 2.0 point margin) – although they were only slightly less likely to identify strongly with Britain (by a 0.6 point margin). And compared to university graduates, the educationally unqualified identified much more strongly with the region (by a 1.5 point margin) and with the district (by a 1.6 point margin) but only a little more strongly with Britain (by a 0.6 point margin). Both education, and the mobility implied by renting from the private housing sector, encouraged a more cosmopolitan and less parochial perspective but more in terms of eroding localism than in terms of eroding state nationalism. Adherents of the Church of England identified especially strongly with Britain (mean score 3.5), while adherents of the Church of Scotland identified especially strongly with their region, Scotland (mean score 3.7 – though that was lower than for the Scottish sample as a whole: within Scotland, Church of Scotland adherents actually identified a little less than others with Scotland, and a little more with Britain). The irreligious identified relatively weakly with the district (mean score 1.3), region (mean score 2.2) or Britain (mean score 2.3). But perhaps just as significant as the social and political factors that influenced local identifications were the social factors that did not. Gender had no detectable influence: women were scarcely any more parochially oriented than men. Those who lived in rural areas were scarcely any more parochially oriented than those who lived in big


Social patterns of local identity Identification with region mean score



Middle-class ID Working-class ID

2.4 3.0

1.7 2.3

3.1 2.9

Self-employed Management Professional Non-manual Manual

2.7 2.5 2.5 2.8 3.2

1.7 1.9 1.8 2.1 2.5

3.0 3.2 3.0 2.9 3.0

Own house Private rent Council rent

2.7 1.9 3.2

2.0 0.7 2.7

3.0 2.3 2.9

No school certificates No degree University degree

3.3 2.6 1.8

2.6 1.9 1.0

3.2 2.9 2.6

towns and cities. Those who worked for local government (except for school teachers), or had family or friends employed by local government, did not identify with the district any more strongly than others. The strength of local identification hardly differed between those who felt they ‘knew enough’ to use their local election votes wisely or to assess whether the local council was taking the right decisions and those who did not. Nor between those who made much use of local government services and those who did not. Nor between those who felt their region or district was relatively well or badly off. Nor between those who lived in politically competitive and politically ‘safe’ districts. Nor between those who placed themselves at different points on the left/right ideological spectrum (except for those on the extreme left). Nor between those with Conservative, Labour or Liberal voting preferences – though, unsurprisingly, Scottish and Welsh nationalists were more locally oriented. Those who lived in districts that were nearly always controlled by Labour councils tended to identify more with the locality and less with Britain than those who lived in normally Conservative districts, however. Within both parties’ citadels, individual Conservative voters identified with Britain much more strongly than individual Labour


voters. But individual Conservative voters were only more likely than individual Labour voters to identify strongly with their district if they lived in a local Conservative stronghold. And conversely, individual Labour voters were especially likely to identify much less than Conservative voters with their district if they lived in a local Conservative stronghold. Those who had considered moving to another district with better local services or lower local taxes but had not actually done so – and who therefore still lived in a district they had considered leaving – had a particularly weak identification with that district. The pattern of spatial identifications varied dramatically across the different regions of Britain. Identification with the district ranged only between 2.1 and 2.4 across all the northern regions of England, the Midlands, Wales and Scotland. But it sank lower in southern England and dropped to a mere 1.2 in London. Similarly, identification with Britain ranged only between 3.1 and 3.5 across the whole of England except for London where it dropped to 2.6. But it dropped to 2.0 in Wales and to a dismal 1.4 in Scotland. Conversely identification with the region peaked at 3.9 in Scotland (where, of course, the word ‘region’ in our question was replaced by ‘Scotland’). But it was also high throughout northern England and Wales where it ranged only between 3.1 and 3.4. By contrast, it was low throughout the Midlands and the south, including London, where it ranged between 1.9 and 2.3.

Table 3.12

Local identity and political incompatibility Identification with region mean score



District always Cons: and Cons pref. and Lab pref.

2.3 2.7 2.1

1.7 2.3 1.4

3.2 3.8 3.0

District always Lab: and Cons pref. and Lab pref.

3.2 3.4 3.1

2.3 2.7 2.5

2.8 3.6 2.7

Geographic exit done considered not even considered

3.1 2.5 2.7

2.2 1.0 2.1

2.9 2.6 3.0


Thus an overall tendency for identification to be strongest with Britain and weakest with the district applied throughout the Midlands and south of England including London. But this simple pattern did not extend to the north of England, Wales or Scotland. Across the whole of the north of England, including Yorkshire/Humberside, identification with the region rivalled that with Britain, though identification with the district remained weaker. In Wales, and more strikingly in Scotland, there was a third pattern: identification with the ‘region’ (‘Wales’ or ‘Scotland’ in this case) was strongest, identification with Britain was weakest and identification with the district was intermediate. Several recent surveys have shown that a majority in Scotland choose to identify with Scotland rather than Britain when asked to choose between them.7 That could be the result of either an unusually strong identification with the ‘region’ (‘Scotland’), or an unusually weak identification with Britain. Our survey suggests that it was the result of both. But in Wales, by contrast, identification with the ‘region’ (‘Wales’) was no stronger than in the north of England, though identification with Britain was weaker. Despite the SNP’s attempt to link Scottish and European identifications together by articulating the slogan ‘Scotland in Europe’ – implying that Scotland should cut free from Britain but draw closer to the rest of Europe rather than adopt a policy of national isolation –

Table 3.13

Regional patterns of local identity Identification with region mean score

Scotland NW England Yorkshire/ Humberside Wales NE England Midlands SW England SE England East Anglia London



Identification with Europe mean score

3.9 3.4

2.3 2.4

1.4 3.3

–0.2 –0.3

3.3 3.2 3.1 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.0 1.9

2.2 2.3 2.3 2.1 1.8 1.7 1.5 1.2

3.5 2.0 3.1 3.3 3.2 3.3 3.3 2.6

–0.1 –0.3 –0.3 0.1 0.1 –0.2 –0.2 0.5

Note: Sorted by strength of identification with the region.

64 Models of Local Governance Figure 3.3

Regional patterns of identities.

4.5 With region

3 With Britain 2.5 2

With district

1.5 1 0.5 0

nd la ot

gl

es Sc

W al

W

En

En N

E N

Yo r

ks

/H

la

um

gl

b

s nd

gl id M

En

En

SW

E

SE

nd Lo

ia

gl

An

gl

–0.5 With Europe –1 on

Mean scores on ± 5 point scale

4 3.5

identification with Europe was no higher in Scotland than elsewhere. In our survey, it was those who lived in London that had the most European identities – driven as much we suspect by cosmopolitanism as by anti-British nationalism, though we also found identification with Britain to be weaker in London than in any area apart from Scotland and Wales. Within every region, identification with Britain correlated positively with regional identification. The correlation was much weaker in Scotland than anywhere else. Nonetheless, even within Scotland, the strength of identification with Scotland correlated weakly but still positively with both British and European identification. So our evidence does not support the romantic notion that strong Scottish identifiers might be either peculiarly pro-European or anti-British.8 However, less dramatically, it does reveal the lack of a strong correlation between ‘regional’ and British identities within Scotland.

Pride, responsibility and exclusion Using randomly selected split-half samples, we asked whether people felt proud or ashamed when they heard of something good or bad that had


Local pride and responsibility % Pride/shame

*Feel [pride / shame] when something [good / bad] was done by people: from district from region from rest of Britain

% *Pride

% *Shame

70 67 59

50 43 38

60 55 49 % More responsibility

*District people have more responsibility for welfare of others in district (than for those who live in the rest of the region) *Region people have more responsibility for welfare of others in region (than for those who live in the rest of Britain)

61

47

Note:* These two versions of the questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples. Figures are the percentages who answered with an unqualified ‘yes’.

been done by someone from their district, from their region or from the rest of Britain. Half were asked about pride when hearing about ‘something good’, half about shame when hearing about ‘something bad’ – which avoided any pressure to take equal responsibility for the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. The public was always about 10 per cent more willing to feel pride in others’ achievements than to feel shame for their misdeeds. But what was most significant in this context was that the public was most inclined to feel either pride or shame when hearing about someone from the district, and least inclined to feel these emotions when hearing about people from outside the region. Emotional involvement seemed to increase as the scale of the locality decreased. People felt a special responsibility for their local areas and that sense of responsibility clearly strengthened as the area diminished. Only 47 per cent agreed that people who lived in their region had more responsibility for the welfare of others in that region than for the welfare of others in Britain as a whole. But 61 per cent agreed that people who lived in their district had more responsibility for the welfare of others in that district than for the welfare of others in their region as a whole.


Thus, although identification with Britain was generally stronger than identification with the region or district, responsibility for welfare, like pride and shame, seemed to increase as the scale of the locality decreased. Despite that, pride and responsibility correlated with local identification quite markedly. Feelings of pride (or shame) about people from their own district correlated at 0.24 with district identification. And pride (or shame) about people from their own region correlated at 0.27 with regional identification though pride (or shame) about other British people correlated at only 0.13 with the strength of British identification. Similarly regional identification correlated at 0.18 with feelings of special responsibility for people in the region (contrasted with those in the rest of Britain), though local district identification correlated much less well with feelings of special responsibility for people in the district (contrasted with those in the region). All five of these measures of emotional or rational responsibility correlated better with the strength of local identity than with the mere length of local residence, however. Yet the dominance of a British perspective was revealed when it came to erecting barriers against people from outside their region or district. We asked whether people from the rest of Britain should be excluded from voting in local elections if they had not [lived/paid taxes] for two years within the relevant [district/region]. We put each variant of the question to randomly selected subsamples, but it made little difference whether we asked about mere residence or about taxpaying, nor whether we asked about the region or the district. Only 23 per cent of the public were willing to take an exclusive approach to the local

Table 3.15

Correlations with pride and responsibility Pride/shame about people from: Britain region district

correlation Identification: with Britain with region with district

13 11 10

correlation

correlation

7 27 20

10 22 24

Responsible for welfare of: region district versus versus Britain region correlation correlation

–2 18 12

0 3 8


franchise. If we had set the term at over two years – at say five or ten years – we presume the public would have taken an even less exclusive and even more inclusive stance with regard to the local franchise. Secondly, we asked about barring access to local schools and hospitals until incomers had lived or paid taxes locally for at least two years. (Again we varied the question wording between region or district and between residence and taxpaying, putting each variant of the question to randomly selected subsamples.) This second approach to the issue of local exclusion won even less public support: a mere 18 per cent. Overwhelmingly the public took the view that local services should be accessible to the national citizenry. And in so far as they differed at all on this issue, their attitudes towards local exclusiveness correlated better with mere length of local residence than with the strength of local identity. The weakness of the correlation between local exclusiveness and local identification merits some emphasis. Even among those who fell into the top quintile in terms of the strength of their identification with the local district, the numbers who took an exclusive attitude on the right to vote in local elections only reached 27 per cent. And in that top quintile the numbers who took an exclusive attitude on rights of free access to local schools and hospitals only reached 19 per cent. There was a detectable correlation with local identification but it was so weak as to be barely detectable – statistically significant (in our large sample) but certainly not politically significant.

Table 3.16

Exclusion

Only if they have [lived/paid taxes] for at least 2 years in [region/district] should people from other parts of Britain who come to live in [region/district] … be able to vote at local elections % If identification with district falls into the… lowest quintile (score < 0) second (score 0) mid quintile (score 1, 2) fourth (score 3, 4) highest quintile (score 5)

get free access to local schools and hospitals %

23

18

19 18 26 22 27

12 18 19 19 19

Note: Figures are the percentages who positively agree.


Conclusion: multiple identities and inclusive citizenship The concept of local democracy would imply that the locality, or more broadly the ‘territory’, has some significant meaning for people. The phenomenon of globalization and the development of a more geographically mobile society have led some to question whether a basis for local democracy remains. Was there enough sense of attachment to sustain local politics? Our findings suggest the need to recognize a complex response to that apparently simple question. Identification with the family was considerably stronger than the other identifications we investigated, but it was far from an exclusive identification. It did not prohibit strong identifications with wider communities. Indeed, identification with family on the one hand correlated quite strongly with identification with Britain, region, district and birthplace on the other. People identified as strongly with their home neighbourhood as with the district, but much more strongly with the district than, for example, with a social class. Identification with Britain was clearly stronger than with local districts but not much stronger than with regions except in the south of England. In the north of England identification with Britain was about the same as with the region. And in Scotland and Wales, identification with Britain was much weaker than with the region, and even somewhat weaker than with the district. So local identification at various levels was certainly strong enough to suggest that people should not be regarded merely as individualistic consumers of local services. They did have a psychological basis for a concept of local citizenship but, very significantly, it was an inclusive rather than an exclusive concept. Only a small minority of the public would deny recent incomers access to local public services or the right to participate in local decision-making. And yet it may be difficult to give real content to the notion of citizenship without distinguishing between citizens and non-citizens. A federal system like the United States permits the possibility of a sharply defined local citizenship, at least at the level of the different states within the Union. State universities in the USA, for example, have different scales of fees for ‘in-state’ and ‘out-of-state’ students. Conversely they often make no distinction between a student arriving from another state of the USA and a student arriving from Europe or Asia. That is very definitely not the way the British public views access to local authority funded services. Yet, even in Britain, it may be unreasonable to expect the residents of a locality to pay additional


taxes for a significantly higher level of investment in local services if those services are then going to be accessible to those who have not made the tax investment. Conceivably this problem might not arise if the additional local taxes were for immediate operating costs rather than investment since the extra taxes, in that case, would correspond to immediate and transient extra benefits. But otherwise, mobility would destroy the connection between extra local taxes and extra local services. Since mobility between regions was so much less than between districts, truly local policies might be sustainable without explicitly exclusionary provisions if the locality were a region rather than a district. But a non-exclusive perspective inevitably pushes the boundaries of real local autonomy outwards, well beyond district boundaries and at least as far as regional boundaries. Our findings about objective links to locality are important. Fully 90 per cent had lived for over ten years in their region and almost 80 per cent in their district. But only two-thirds were still living in the region where they had been born and only one-third in the district where they were born. Two-thirds had friends outside the district, fourfifths had relatives outside and almost half regularly travelled outside the district for leisure or shopping. People’s lives were not, in general, constrained within local council districts. What happened in one district, what facilities were provided in one district, affected many people beyond its boundaries to a degree that was much less true for regions and is, of course, still less true for states. Mobility mattered. Recent arrivals in a region identified far more strongly with Britain than with the region. But by the time they had spent over 20 years in the region they identified with region and state about equally. And by the time they had spent over 30 years in the region they identified more strongly with the region than with Britain. Identification with the local council district was generally weaker than with the region or with Britain, but by the time people had spent 30 years in a district, their identification with the district was almost as strong as with Britain. Rather less than half the public (41 per cent) had spent 30 years living in their district, though rather more than half (62 per cent) had spent 30 years living in their region. Conversely about half the public had spent less than this length of time living in their localities and were, in consequence, relatively weakly committed to them. If the fracturing of personal relationships and increasing job mobility leads to increasing geographic mobility we can expect the strength of local


identifications to decline as people cross boundaries. But only in so far as they cross boundaries: if they move across district boundaries more frequently but remain within regional boundaries we can expect a further strengthening of regional identifications relative to district or neighbourhood identifications. Those theories of local governance which stress the importance of very local communities were based upon the visions of an age that has passed, if it ever existed, and which is unlikely to return. The impact of mobility suggests that the future of local identification might be increasingly regional.

4 The Role of Local Governance

Different aims and objectives have been proposed for local governance, objectives that range all the way from developing the personality of the individual and mobilizing the apathetic through to the cheap or efficient provision of services to those that want to buy them. ‘New Right’ theorists see local governance primarily as a provider of those few services that cannot be provided, or at least that cannot be provided more efficiently, by private companies operating in the market. Theorists on the left take a more positive and expansive view of public services. To them, public services are not a necessary evil, to be only grudgingly accepted, but an opportunity to provide a wide range of high quality services that will enhance the lives of citizens. But even those who look favourably upon public services may disagree about whether they should be national or local. And they may disagree on whether public services should apply national standards even if delivered by local agencies, or whether they should vary from place to place according to the wishes of local people and the willingness of local people to pay for them. Ultimately these three viewpoints encapsulate different notions of citizenship – local citizenship, national citizenship or very little citizenship of any kind at all. Different theorists therefore emphasize different objectives for local governance. Some of these differences are no more than a difference of emphasis. But others are differences between incompatible objectives. What do the public think about such abstract matters? Are there clear majorities in favour of some objectives and against others? And, if there are clear majorities, are they logically coherent or self-contradictory? Are there public majorities for incompatible objectives? In this chapter we ask what the public think the role of local government should be. What level of services should be provided? What is their 71


attitude to national standards? Does the public think that local government has a role beyond service delivery? And do these questions matter enough for people make a tax–service calculation when choosing where to live?

Minimalism We asked four questions to gauge the extent of local public services supported by the public. There was 90 per cent support for the proposition that ‘local services which are only used by those in special need, like the sick or the poor, should be provided by local councils, and at least partly paid for by taxes’. And 82 per cent of the public agreed that ‘local services that everyone needs, such as refuse collection and basic police services, should be provided without charge by local councils, and paid for by taxes’. But only 71 per cent agreed that ‘local councils should provide special services for those who are willing to pay extra for them – like special security patrols for shops and businesses’. And only 67 per cent agreed that ‘local councils should provide special grants and subsidies for things that councillors feel make the area a better place even if only a few people actually use them – things like theatres, concert halls or sports centres’. Although these are fairly general, abstract propositions we attempted to make them more concrete and intelligible by giving examples of the kinds of services involved. And on the question of subsidies for facilities that would only be used by a minority we took care to specify examples that might appeal to both young and old, to intellectuals and non-intellectuals. Our figures show that people took a generally expansive view of the proper objectives of local government, since support ranged upwards from a minimum of 67 per cent. Nonetheless people drew some distinction between services for the needy minority, those for everyone and those for non-needy minorities.

Table 4.1

Minimalism %

Provide services for special needs Provide universal services Provide extra services for cash Grants and subsidies for theatres, concert halls, sports centres

90 82 71 67

The Role of Local Governance 73

National or local standards? The public clearly supported national standards as a minimum but not as a maximum, as a floor but not as a ceiling. An overwhelming majority (92 per cent) of the public agreed that ‘local councils should be free to provide whatever standard of services their local community wants and is willing to pay for’. And when faced with a straight choice between alternatives, a similar majority (91 per cent) of the public took the view that local government should provide ‘as few or as many services as the local community decide’, rejecting the alternative that it should provide ‘only those services that central government decides’. These responses indicate overwhelming rejection of the idea that central government should place limits on local services. The phrasing of both these questions seems to imply local autonomy irrespective of whether that autonomy led to a broad or a narrow range of local services. But we also found a large majority (74 per cent) for the proposition that ‘Parliament should decide national standards for public services and require local councils to meet those standards everywhere.’ Moreover, 78 per cent agreed that local councils should ‘stay out of national politics’ which, in combination with the support for Parliament to set mandatory standards for local government, implies a clear hierarchy of authority. Attitudes towards local autonomy and national standards were thus either incoherent or complex. A look at the combinations of answers to questions about national standards and local autonomy may help resolve the mystery. A large majority (66 per cent) of the public seemed to support centrally imposed minimum national standards combined with local autonomy

Table 4.2

National standards? %

Local govt should provide ‘as few or as many services as the local community decide’ (not ‘only those services that central government decides’) *Local councils should be free to provide whatever standard of services their local community wants and is willing to pay for *Parliament should decide national standards for public services and require local councils to meet those standards everywhere Local councils should stay out of national politics Note: * These two questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples.

91 92

74 78


Combining attitudes to local autonomy and national standards Should Parliament set national standards? No Yes Total % % %

Local govt should provide: ‘as few or as many services as the local community decide’ ‘only those services that central government decides’ Total

25

66

91

1 26

8 74

9 100

to push standards up beyond the minimum – a floor without a ceiling. Only a minority (25 per cent) supported complete local autonomy without a floor level of national standards. Only 8 per cent wanted central government to set both minimum and maximum standards for local services, supporting both floor level ‘national standards’ and a ceiling limiting local services to ‘only those that central government decides’. And a negligible number of respondents opted for a centrally imposed ceiling without a centrally imposed floor on local services.

The Tiebout thesis In a celebrated article, Charles Tiebout suggested that personal and collective autonomy could be reconciled by making local districts so small that people who disliked the mix of services and taxes provided in one locality could easily migrate to another which offered a different mix.1 Some researchers have reported that ‘households in London claim to take into account tax–service factors when deciding to relocate’. 2 In our survey we asked not just about whether the tax–services mix might affect the choice of location when people were in the process of moving, but whether it might itself prompt their decision to relocate. And we asked the question throughout Britain, not just in the rather special housing environment of London. We asked: ‘Have you ever considered moving house to another local council because local [services were better / council tax was lower] there? And have you actually moved for that reason?’ Overall we found that most had not even considered relocating for these reasons, though rather more had considered relocating to get

The Role of Local Governance 75 Table 4.4

The Tiebout relocation thesis Considered relocation to council with better services or lower taxes? Not even considered Considered but not Actually relocated actually relocated

All respondents * ‘for better service’ * ‘for lower taxes’ London only * ‘for better service’ * ‘for lower taxes’

93 97

6 3

1 1

83 95

14 3

3 2

Note: * Questions about ‘better services’ and ‘lower taxes’ were put to randomly selected split-half samples.

better services (7 per cent) than to get lower taxes (3 per cent). Only one per cent had actually relocated for these reasons. However, our survey did confirm, as Dowding and others have suggested, that such behaviour was more frequent in London. In our survey, 17 per cent in London said they had considered relocating to get better services and 5 per cent to get lower taxes, though less than 3 per cent said they had actually relocated for either reason.

Local interests At the time of our survey, twenty years had passed since the British had last elected a government that extolled the virtues of economic intervention. On the other hand, the Conservative government had tried to foster positive attitudes towards the role of business in local politics. We asked whether ‘local government should actively encourage local business in order to create jobs and improve the local economy’ or ‘leave economic development to [central government/ market forces]?’ It made no difference at all whether we balanced local government economic initiatives against central government or against the market: 88 per cent said local government should take economic initiatives. The public remained instinctively interventionist in local terms. At the same time this high level of support for local economic initiatives implied a majority neither for a ‘zero-sum’ competition with other areas for economic development, nor for ‘feather-bedding’ local business. We asked whether ‘when a local council buys in services from


Local interests and development %

Local government should encourage economic development, not leave it to [central govt/market] *not leave to central govt *not leave to market Exercise local preference in purchasing

88 88 88 52

Note: * Questions about whether to leave local economic development to ‘central govt’ or ‘the market’ were put to randomly selected split-half samples.

a private company, should it give a preference to local businesses even if they charge a little more than others because that will boost local employment; or should it always choose the company that offers best value for money because that will keep local taxes down’? That question split public opinion down the middle: 52 per cent backed discriminatory local preference, 48 per cent opposed it. Certainly, it is true that our question reminded people of the inevitable costs of exercising discriminatory local preferences. Nonetheless it is striking that support for discriminatory local preference was so much less than for the general principle of encouraging local business. The public was evenly divided about disregarding the market when focused on purchasing, despite its overwhelming refusal to leave local economic development to market forces.

A mission to mobilize? Both liberals and left-wing radicals have argued that local government should develop more than the local economy, certainly more than local businesses. Following J. S. Mill, philosophical liberals have argued that an important function of local government is to develop individual capabilities and personalities through active participation in government ‘on a human scale’. So we asked whether ‘local government should help people to develop their capabilities and personalities by encouraging them to participate [in elections and political campaigns/ directly in the management of the services they themselves use]; or leave individuals to develop their own capabilities and personalities?’ Despite this hint at a ‘big brother’ state interfering with people’s ‘own’ development there was substantial, even though minority,


Develop personality? %

Local government should help develop people’s capabilities and personalities by participation *in elections and political campaigns *in the self-management of services

42 52

Note: * Questions about whether to develop capabilities through participation in elections or in self-management were put to randomly selected split-half samples.

support for local government acting to help develop individuals’ capabilities and personalities. Significantly, however, there was more support for personal development through direct participation in selfmanagement schemes than through elections and political campaigns: 52 per cent compared to 42 per cent. In similar vein, we asked whether ‘local government should set up special committees to provide moral [but not/and] financial support to [women’s groups/racial and ethnic groups/gays and lesbians]’? About half the public, on average, said local government should set up such committees. It made no difference at all whether we specifically included or excluded ‘financial’ as well as moral support. However, the target group did make a difference. There was 62 per cent support for ethnic committees, and 55 per cent for women’s committees, but only 35 per cent for gay and lesbian committees. Overall, however, the level

Table 4.7

Set up support committees for ‘minorities’? %

Local government should set up support committees… *to give moral but not financial support *to give moral and financial support *for racial and ethnic groups *for women’s groups *for gays and lesbians

51 51 62 55 35

Note: * Questions about whether or not to offer financial support were put to randomly selected split-half samples, and questions about committees for ethnic groups, women or gays were put to randomly selected split-third samples. The two random selections were independent: so, for example, approximately half the interviews about committees for ethnic minorities specifically included financial support and half specifically excluded it.


Encourage demands for services? %

Local government should… * ‘provide as few services as possible, allowing people to provide for themselves’ * ‘encourage those in need to demand more services’

16 78

Note: * These two questions were put to randomly selected split-half samples.

of public support for these committees designed to encourage ‘minorities’ of various kinds ran at much the same level as support for developing individual capabilities and personalities. By contrast there was much greater support for empowering those who specifically required local government services – indeed, a surprisingly high level of support. When asked whether local government should ‘provide as few services as possible, allowing people to provide for themselves’ 84 per cent of the public rejected the proposition. More radically, 78 per cent agreed with the proposition that ‘local government should encourage those in need to demand more services’. Elsewhere we asked whether, ‘when making their decisions, local councils should pay most attention to the views and interests of those who [pay most council tax / have expert knowledge / need council jobs / rely most on council services]’? Only 22 per cent agreed that councils should pay most attention to those who ‘pay most council tax’. But 52 per cent agreed they should pay most attention to those who ‘need council jobs’, 84 per cent to ‘experts’ and 90 per cent to those who ‘rely most on council services’. (Since each respondent was asked only one variant of this question, it really measures the numbers who thought it important – rather than literally ‘most’ important – to pay

Table 4.9

Pay most attention to whom? %

Councils should pay most attention to those who… *rely most on council services *have expert knowledge *need council jobs *pay most council tax Note: * These four questions were put to randomly selected split-quarter samples.

90 84 52 22

The Role of Local Governance 79

attention to each of these groups.) The relative enthusiasm for paying attention to the needy rather than to taxpayers is consistent with our finding that a large majority of the public wanted councils to ‘encourage those in need to demand more services’. So while people were divided on the paternalistic mission of local government to develop individual personalities or encourage so-called social ‘minorities’, a very large majority felt that local government had a mission to pay attention to those who relied most on council services and to encourage them to demand even more services.

What influenced ideas about the proper objectives of local governance? Social background Attitudes towards minimalism were hardly affected by social background. Working-class identifiers, for example, were very slightly more favourable than middle-class identifiers towards universal services and services for the needy but, at the same time, very slightly less favourable than middle-class identifiers towards ‘quality of life’ subsidies for theatres, concert halls or sports centres. The surprise is not that we found such plausible patterns but that they were so weak. Education made somewhat more of a difference. Compared to those with only school-level qualifications, university graduates hardly differed in their support for universal services or services for the needy. But graduates were relatively antagonistic towards the provision of special chargeable services for shops and businesses and relatively favourable towards ‘quality of life’ subsidies for sports and the arts. Working-class identification correlated most strongly with support for paying attention to those who needed local government jobs (r = 0.21) or services (r = 0.12), and with encouraging those in need to demand more services (r = 0.18). Older respondents were somewhat more inclined to agree that councils should pay most attention to local taxpayers, provide as few services as possible and stay out of national politics. Women hardly differed from men. The highly educated were less inclined than others to agree that councils should pay most attention to any particular reference group though their reluctance was most evident with respect to those who needed council jobs and least evident with respect to ‘experts’. Across the regions, the most striking pattern was a tendency for people in Scotland, Wales and all the northern regions of England to


be a few per cent less inclined than those in the south of England to say that their local councils should stay out of national politics. But this question of council involvement in national politics apart, social patterns of opinion do not seem very distinctively ‘local’. In character, they are the kinds of pattern we might expect with any questions about public services and taxation, national or local, though they are perhaps rather weaker than we might expect if asked in the context of national politics. Local identity and ideology This conclusion that attitudes towards the objectives of local governance were not greatly influenced by purely ‘local’ considerations is confirmed by a comparison between the influence of local identity and left–right ideology. Attitudes towards the objectives of local governance hardly correlated at all with the length of time people had lived in a district, or with the strength of their identification with the local district. They correlated more strongly and more extensively with measures of left–right ideology or political partisanship. Dividing our sample of the public roughly into quintiles on the basis of their strength of identification with their local district shows very little systematic variation in attitudes towards the objectives of local government between those who identified strongly and weakly with the locality – with two partial exceptions. Strong local identifiers stressed the need for local councils to pay attention both to local council-tax payers and to those who needed council jobs – which is a truly local, non-ideological tendency. But the strongest local identifiers were only 6 per cent more favourable to local autonomy and 5 per cent less favourable to national standards than the weakest local identifiers. That does not mean that support for local autonomy was weak: quite the contrary. The correlation with local identity was weak because even those who had recently arrived in the district, or only weakly identified with it, expressed very strong support for local autonomy in setting local council services. It was not the case that local identity failed to generate support for local autonomy and local council services. Rather, a strong local identity was not a necessary precondition for such support – a fact that is obscured by correlation analysis but emerges clearly when we look at the absolute levels of support for local autonomy and local services. By contrast ideology or partisanship affected attitudes to many objectives of local governance, often quite strongly. Comparing Tables 4.10 and 4.11 shows that the extremes of local identification only produced a


Objectives of local governance by identification with district Strength of identification with district:

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