ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews shifting academic perspectives on the politics of local government institutional accountability. It considers how the new left municipal socialism, influential in Haringey and a number of other urban boroughs, engaged with shifting political and policy debates about accountability in land use planning and regeneration. The chapter examines the key shifts within related academic debates across the same timeframe. It maps the trajectory of academic debates and analysis from an early emphasis on the crisis of planning legitimacy to the emergence of urban social movement theory under the influence of Manuel Castells. The chapter reviews how the issue of institutional accountability to communities has been addressed over the course of three distinct eras of post-war urban policy. New Labour expanded upon existing commitments to community participation within the SRB programme that it inherited from the outgoing Conservative Government in 1997.
