Local government in historical perspective

Abstract

Local government has rarely if ever been more controversial, and local politics has never aroused so much interest. For years local government has been regarded as essentially worthy, but dull. Its role was largely taken for granted, for although little systematic thought was given to the range of functions which should be given to democratic local government, there was a broad consensus that elected local authorities were very largely doing the right kind of things. Party manifestoes issued at general elections made brief ritual tributes to the value of local government, but it was not regarded as the stuff of political conflict, even when apparently far-reaching changes to its structure or management were on the agenda. The media paid scant attention to local politics, and few if any local politicians rose to national prominence in the post-Second World War era, at least until the late 1970s.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 11 citations exist upstream.