ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the development and state of local government in the UK, or more precisely in England, and in Germany. The development of modern local self-government in England in the course of the 19th century was shaped by somewhat paradoxical constitutional parameters. In the 1880s and 1890s, central government entirely reorganised the local government system and created a two-tier local government structure that was to remain until the 1970s. The fundamental territorial, organisational and political transformation of the sub-national structures in the 1880s and 1890s reveals the very paradox on which English local government has rested and thrived. In Germany, local government has been traditionally characterised by the parallel structures of local government structures on the one hand, and a State administration with comparatively few areas of activity on the other. Particularly the latter may be seen as a case in point in Germany’s recent moves to strengthen local democracy.
