ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the problems of local government in the countries that national-local relationships vary considerably. The leaders of all the countries indicate that unemployment and the cost of local government are among several problems in their communities. A quite different question than perception is the sense of responsibility a leader feels for the resolution of a problem by local government. The initial point is that the Dutch study used different language—asking whether local government "has" responsibility, while in the United States and Sweden the language was "should have" responsibility. A careful comparison of power and responsibility responses, keeping in mind language variations in the questions, leads to some clear conclusions. The hypothesis is that the elite which constitute the majority in a community will influence other elites to support the dominant elite position. Nation-to-nation variance in local elite perspectives if at all true certainly needs to be qualified by community-to-community variance, which is equally.
