ABSTRACT
At a time when supranational institutions and international economic trends are having an ever-greater influence on our lives, and when local government is often thought of as more centralized than ever, it may seem pointless to write a book on the experience of seven localities. Our justification is not that we believe localities can be studied in isolation, but that broader processes do not fully explain what happens in particular places. Every locality bears the mark of the past and this produces distinctive effects on current processes. In addition, the current processes themselves interact in novel ways in particular localities. More generally, there is both academic and impressionistic evidence of local diversity: voting patterns continue to show indelible local effects, the competition for jobs between localities has led to the stressing (and creation) of local distinctiveness, and local councils pursue very different policies in many spheres. The chapters of this book are therefore committed to exploring local particularity as well as general processes.
