ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the changing role of local government in urban policy. The major theme is the reduction in the powers and status of local authorities. This has occurred despite the case for a strategic elected body at local level. Local government has a unique role in making corporate policies which are affirmed by the local electorate and cut across the separate responsibilities of individual services, both those of local authorities and other organisations. This is discussed in the next section of the chapter, with a number of examples. Subsequent sections discuss the effects of competition and individualism on local government, and consider the new models to which 1990s local councils are expected to aspire: the ‘enabling council’ and the ‘competitive council’. The decline in local government bureaucracy which these terms signify is then examined in terms of the effects of underlying economic change on the public sector. The chapter concludes by relating the general decline of the welfare state to the emergence of a residualised public sector in a more unequal and unstable society.
