ABSTRACT
The 'local state' has been a useful term in local public policy, yet the future of local government within it is in doubt within ‘wicked contexts’ which may yet render local government itself obsolete. Traditional notions of the construction of the local state evolved from the influence of radical social theory. Local state terminology can be traced back particularly to the late 1970s and the aspirations of local government supporters to pioneer new forms of interaction between the local state, local government and the local community. The extension of corporatism and corporate management into local state language was associated with the era of fiscal reform. Community management stands in contrast to corporate management, which as Cockburn contends, is 'a marriage of management and science’. European local state political archetypes are consistent with the decline in Western local states' sphere of power.
