ABSTRACT
Of more concern to this chapter are the various analyses advanced to explain administrators' wilful or uninformed transgression of the lawful limits of such discretion. The chapter focuses on the rather more modest attempts by one new urban left authority to manipulate the provisions of the housing benefit scheme, with the intention of producing concrete social relations between the citizen and the state which are entirely inconsistent with the Thatcher government's political philosophy. It aims to trace the fate of the new urban left political will as it descends from the council chamber to senior and then junior officers, before finally emerging in the outside world as the 'benefit' which claimants actually receive. Recently, following increased political polarisation within local government in particular the emergence of the new urban left and the new radical right the 'ideological politics' model has assumed growing prominence.
