Introduction

There has been long-standing concern amongst academics and practitioners for the future of

local government in the UK. This has usually been placed within the context of increasing

centralisation of powers, accompanied by worries over declining democratic legitimacy, and

underpinned by what Chandler (2008) has labelled an ‘expediential’ approach to local

government. Underlying these concerns has been a recognition of local government’s

particularly fragile foundations in the UK, summed up by Mackenzie’s much-quoted

statement that ‘There is no theory of local government. There is no normative general

theory from which we can deduce what local government ought to be’ (1961, 5).

Stoker (1996) noted that what normative thinking about local government there was, was

rooted in the nineteenth century, and that this ‘traditional orthodoxy’ stemmed from liberal

democratic theory. He found that the complex local governance arrangements found in

1996, along with the associated fragmentation and managerialism, had left the terms of the

orthodox debate outdated and local government on very shaky foundations, calling for an

imaginative consideration of neglected perspectives, in order to examine the possibilities for

firmer normative ground. Local government studies has since, in some respects, moved on,

and conversations with a range of disciplines have become louder and louder (Ward, 2016,

Cochrane, 2016). However, in turn, normative theorising appears to have waned (Newman,

2016), and traditional, embedded justifications continue to be relied upon.

Nearly twenty years on, a firm foundation for local government remains elusive whilst

appearing to be needed more than ever. Years of austerity and cuts have led to predictions

of a doomsday scenario and questions as to whether it local government can survive at all

(Latham, 2016). In some cases Councils are even proposing their own demise by seeking

mergers with others in search of efficiencies, in moves which will create even larger unitary

Councils. Added to this has been an acceleration of longer term trends. Falling turnouts for

local elections have undermined the legitimacy of local government and alternative sources

of participation and resistance have been foregrounded; interest has turned to new forms

and foci of local politics as the gap between local government and local politics, traditionally

hard to align, appears to widen. Attention has turned away from elected local government

to the ‘extra governmental’ networks, partnerships and systems of local governance

(Pemberton and Goodwin, 2010), and towards the experimental ‘softer spaces’ (Haughton

et. al, 2013), including neighbourhoods, created in and around local government. The

doomsday scenario view has been contested as under-playing continuities and local

government’s proven capacity to survive, with the focus on pragmatism being a strength

rather than a weakness (John, 2014), or as down-playing resistance in practice (Lowndes and

McCaughie 2013). Perhaps now more than ever it is time for pragmatism rather than

theorising, and academic musing on normative defences is not likely to effect central

government’s further encroachment on local government power. However, the question of

what kind of local government will survive is pertinent, and the broader question as to why

local government should persist is thrown into further relief; if councils are so tightly

constrained, then what is the point? (Sweeting and Copus 2013).

Relatively speaking, though, it is the case that academic interest in local government itself

has gone out of fashion. To some extent this is/ was inevitable; as a field of study, Local

Government Studies, born as a sub-division of Public Administration, reached its high-point

at the height of local government powers- perhaps the mid to late 1970’s. By its very nature

it was quite eclectic, but for a relatively short period of time could be viewed as consisting of

a coherent group of academics and related interests. The fact that it this has dissipated can

in a sense be viewed as a success, as the field of study has widened exponentially since that

time. Janet Newman (2016,p.439) recalls her time at INLOGOV in the 1980’s and the ‘tedious

accounts of changes in the structure and function of local government which dominated the

subject’ and it is certainly the case that it was no longer possible nor indeed interesting to

continue to plough these particular academic furrows, and very few now identify themselves

as purely ‘local government’ scholars. This opening out perhaps pre-dates Newman’s

discontent a little, as, whilst Deerlove (1979) was able to comment that much study of local

government had seemed to consider that it existed in a vacuum, by the late 1970’s marxist

interpretations and wider urban processes were brought to bear and were part of the field,

with Cockburn’s The Local State and the dual state theory of Peter Saunders being

particularly influential. Thus by the mid-1980’s local government studies was drawing on a

wider range of theoretical sources, but, as noted, this necessity in turn opened the doors to

both wider structural/ contextual and also practice -based approaches, as the boundary of

the field became harder to define, which, whilst adding understanding, diluted the focus on

local government per se. For example, the trajectory of local state theory was moved on in

the 1980’s by more nuanced study of uneven development and locality effects (Duncan and

Goodwin; Cooke, 1989), and later the effects of neo-liberal state restructuring on local state

agencies came to the fore, beginning with applications of Regulation Theory to local

government before, in turn (as indicated later in the paper) giving way to less deterministic

insights into ‘actually existing’ neoliberalism.

To some extent, then, to talk of ‘traditional’ approaches in local government studies in order

to set them against ‘new’ approaches is to set up an academic straw man/woman/ person?

However, (in a point I am aware I repeat below- this is in need of editing!) what actual

defences of local government we have still tend to draw on very long- established principles/

theories- the material we can clearly identify as ‘traditional’ defences. These draw broadly

on the democratic value of local government, or its ability to best fit governmental

arrangements to local or community interests, or on grounds of efficiency and effective

delivery of services. All of these defences have been undermined both in practice and in

theory, leaving us with outmoded sense of local government. What Stoker referred to as

‘alternative’ perspectives are clearly now more mainstream, and much water has passed

under the academic bridge; a range of perspectives have enlightened research in and around

local government- from practice theory, political anthropology, social and political

geography, urban studies and critical policy analysis, amongst others, and these critical

insights have buffeted concepts that have traditionally inhabited the toolbox of local

government studies. New understandings of political practice and agency, scale and spatial

dynamics, contingency and contestation, have come to the fore and have increasingly

overlapped with developments in democratic theory (Barnett and Low 2004), rekindling

discussions and taking on particular salience under conditions of austerity and shifts in

centre-local relations. These have not always been directed at local government per se, but

have undoubtedly served to critique long-standing defences of, and justifications, for local

government. For example, one of the tenants of elected local government- representative

democracy, has been challenged by deliberative and communicative democratic theory, talk

of ‘anti-politics’ and ‘post-representative’ democracy, and also post-structural approaches

which bring into question the meaning of ‘representation’ and question whether it is

necessarily related to election at all (Barnett 2013).

And yet, in order to defend local government we need to have an idea of how we would

wish it to be. The aim of this paper is to consider the extent to which a range of critical

perspectives have served to undermine or enhance traditional defences. To what extent can

we accommodate these new insights, how do we address the questions posed by them, and

what would a defence of local government look like if we took them into account?

Here, I will refer to a broad range of perspectives in this paper as ‘critical’, (whilst

recognising the broad sweep of the label and that it may have been subject to over-use, and

without suggesting that they provide a unified ‘take’ on the issues at hand), to indicate their

‘non-traditional’ nature with respect to local government literature. These have served to

infuse local government studies with a much richer, thick description, of practice and

agency. In the process, some of the cherished concepts from the local government lexicon,

(including, local, centre, state, politics, democracy, government, place and scale) have been

re-imagined and are now more than ever ‘up for grabs’. These perspectives are themselves

contestable, and many would disagree with the alternative narrative they present (Davies

2013; Jones, 2009). What they have in common is an emphasis on practice and the

contingent interplay of structure, institutions and agency to create distinctive assemblages,

allowing room for both the ‘local’ and political agency at a local level. However, whilst this

may seem favourable for local government, as Barnett (2004) notes, their understandings of

locality, space and scale do not necessarily fit easily with those stemming from democratic

theory and they tend to make problematic boundaries and institutions which act as

administrative ‘containers’ of local political engagement. They foreground a more

‘transversal’ local politics which is played out in ways which are highly contingent, contested,

transient, with no necessary connection with local government. A firm defence of local

government thus requires us to proceed with more caution as firm normative ground is

shaken by contingency, paradox and contestation, but also to do more and move a step

beyond recognition of the continuing salience of ‘local politics’ as a meaningful activity; the

normative bar, always pitched on shaky ground, is now set even higher.

A difficulty is that critical approaches seem to provide have much more ammunition to pull

down or ‘unsettle’ traditional defences than to establish any new ones or to offer positive

ways forward (Purcell 2013); as Barnett (2014, 5) notes, there is an ‘imbalance between

diagnostic critique and normative reconstruction’, and we now need to consider the extent

to which the fragments can be pieced together to provide a necessary ‘fixity’ and durability

(MacKinnon 2011). In turn, whilst critical approaches are suspicious of normative grounding

(Barnett, 2014), at times they have been developed, if tentatively, to provide new defences

for local politics, and, potentially, for local government, often stressing the emergent,

contingent, or ‘wordly’ qualities of normative values. Thus terms which have been the staple

diet of local government scholars have been deconstructed and sometimes the fragments

put back together in new ways.

It would be impossible here to cover the full range of traditional defences and critical

perspectives, but looking at changing interpretations of ‘the local’ provides a good means for

examining this possible reconstruction. Firstly, debate about what is the ‘local’ in local

government have been central to the literature traditionally and at the core of what

normative defences there have been. ‘The local’ (the use of inverted commas serves as an

indication of our lack of confidence in assigning definitive meaning) along with the concept

of community, has underpinned at times defences based on democratic values and also (if

less so) efficiency and effectiveness. It brings together both geographical and political theory

and allows us to investigate the impact of the ‘geographical turn’ in democratic thought

(Barnett, 2014, p.6). It thus allows a good insight into the interpenetration and convergence

of approaches from differing disciplines, including critical human geography and policy

studies (Papanastasiou, 2017).

The Traditional view

Traditionally local government studies has drawn on meanings of the local in several ways. It

has at times been associated with an historical constitutional settlement in which parishes

and other ‘organic’ local bodies were largely left unhindered by central authority, only to be

subsumed into a centralising state in the nineteenth century and beyond. The local is here

normatively defended as the natural order of things, and the source of emotional and

administrative attachment, autonomy self organisation and practical knowledge ,

exemplified in the work of Toulmin Smith (Chandler, 2008). This narrative has been

marginalised but has persisted in that the ‘romance’ of the local has continued to be

present. It is, however, liberal democratic theory which has provided the main theoretical

underpinnings. Here, the local has been valued for its contribution to liberty in various ways-

as a stage for participation, allowing for the protection of individual interests whilst also

providing civic education; as a counterweight to a potentially autocratic centre, ensuring a

plural dispersal of power; and allowing an accessible platform for group participation and

resolution of conflict (Sharpe, 1970; Wolman, 1996). Liberal democratic thought is itself

diverse concerning the value and purpose of local government. Chandler (2008) draws out JS

Mill’s normative defence of local government on broadly libertarian grounds- with the

freedom of individuals extending to the freedom to make decisions collectively with those

who have shared interests. A contrasting place for the local, however, was to be found in the

liberalism of Chadwick and Bentham, which stressed the potential local subversion of the

popular will, relegating ‘the local’ to a place in securing its efficient delivery. Thus we have

liberal defences of local government which are based on Mill (Chandler), or more on

grounds of the effective and efficient matching of service delivery with local needs (Sharpe,

1970), with traces of both being found in later twentieth- century liberal defences provide

by TH Green and the Fabians (Chandler, 2008). Beetham (1996) revisited liberal democratic

values to provide a strong normative defence based on the dual principles of political

equality and popular control, seeing the local arena as the best for securing the associated

principles of accountability, responsiveness and representativeness.

‘Spatial liberalism’ (Clarke and Cochrane, 2103) has thus been at the centre of theorising

about local government. As Wills (2016) notes, ‘local’ government has played a part

resolving a conflict at the heart of liberal theory, produced by the need to both promote and

constrain individual freedom. Of course, debates about at what scale or geographical unit

this can best be realised have raged over time- regions, neighbourhoods etc, but in the

traditional literature the local has served a purpose, generally as being something worth

defending for some intrinsic value, and the elusive search for it is not considered to be any

detriment to its worth. Little time, though, has been devoted to considering the meaning of

the local beyond arguments over scale or how it may be territorially defined, with the local

being seen in a dichotomous relationship with the centre. In contrast, far more attention has

been paid in the literature to the changing practices of the ‘government’ in local

government, and the move towards local governance/ network forms (Cochrane, 2016). For

example Copus (2006), in calling for a new constitutional settlement, states that ‘local

government should be shaped and constructed to coincide with identifiable and definable

communities’, such that it can cover ‘a community which has a cohesive and clear view of its

identity in a geographical sense’ (p.18); Sweeting and Copus (2012)- talk about the ‘spatial

aspect of local democracy’ (p.22) but leave open the question of what this may mean.

Chandler’s defence (2008) draws on the possibility for a range of sizes and tiers of local

government which can accommodate the differing and changing geographies of shared

interests. However, despite years of debates (and associated research into attachments and

affinities) around local government re-organisations in which it has proved largely elusive to

pin down the local, there seems to be a continued belief in its objective reality and the

ability to identify unified entities which are cohesive and distinctly ‘local’, and thus what

Cochrane calls the ‘strange dance of the local’ (2016 p.908) continues.

The local as process- as work in progress

In the meantime, a range of critical approaches have undermined both the territorial and

normative fixity of the local and left it painted as something which is highly contingent and

contestable. With respect to state-led theories, we have come a long way from the ‘local

state’ and the dual state thesis and dichotomous thinking. The ‘local’ arena has been key to

undermining apparent coherence as the impacts, contested meanings and trajectories of

‘actually existing’ neo-liberalism in practice were scrutinised. Foucauldian interpretations

recast local government and localism in general as a technology of spatial governmentality,

putting emphasis on the practices of local agents. In turn, attention turned to the

opportunities to ‘work the spaces of power’ and towards practice-based assemblages of

actors, values and beliefs- to focus on ‘actually existing’ local government as a place and site

where such contingencies are revealed. Newman (2013) points to the contingent and

diverse forms which localism can take; local government is one stage on which the

contradictions and ambiguities of neo-liberal technologies of government are contested and

mediated in the daily practices of councillors, officers and citizens. Here the local sits at an

institutional-representational- territorial nexus (Mandipour and Davoudi, 2015), with rules,

norms and processes constituting regimes of practice or a ‘logic of the local’ (Blanco, Griggs

and Sullivan, 2014). Other important insights focus on the ‘New State Spaces’ created by the

territorial reorganisation of boundaries and responsibilities of local agencies, and the

subsequent impacts on access to power (Pemberton and Goodwin, 2010). Here, the interest

turns to the meanings and purposes assigned, the way in which various actors use ‘local’

structures, the processes by which they are created, and how they become ‘spatial

imaginaries’ used for particular purposes by various actors. Interest is not on local

government per se, but on the processes by which geographies are mobilised and politically

contested, scales and boundaries are defined, and acts of inclusion/ exclusion in the

essentially political act of boundary making.

Moving on, in contrast to essentially Cartesian understandings, which rely on scalar

ontologies and binaries, a ‘deconstructed localism’ (Clarke, 2013) based on a flat ontology

(Griggs and Sullivan 2013; Marston et al, 2005) has been brought into view largely by post-

structural political/human geography. Here the local is seen in relational terms, based on

multiple experiences of space and place, and which foregrounds the role of discourse,

struggles and imagination in the creation of its meaning. This ‘relational turn’ in new and

emerging critical understandings of the ‘local’ has resulted in it and related concepts

including scale, space, and place being brought into question by stressing movement and

dynamism at the expense of fixity; continually subject to production and re-production, the

local becomes open porous, permeable (Clarke, 2013 p.499), with localities as ‘meeting

places’ or ‘nodes’ of interaction (Massey 1992). ‘Topological’ approaches here replace

‘topographical’ ones, leading to a rejection of a ‘cartographical anxiety’ (Painter 2008, 3) and

requiring a ‘more spatially curious account of the whereaboutness of government….’ (Allen

2004, 29). New forms of political alignment are envisaged which include both proximate and

distantiated relations and interactions. As Clarke and Cochrane (2013, p.20) note ‘little about

this new geography will be straightforwardly local’- meaning effective local politics must

operate in multiple spaces, including supra-local ones- a ‘politics of place beyond place’

(p.22). Thus, according to Amin, the local public realm is composed of ‘heterogeneity

juxtaposed with close proximity’ (2005, 38), containing varied and ‘porous’ geographies of

connectivity which are always ‘straining at the limits’ of local government (Cochrane, 2105 ).

In this case, in order to be effective, local institutions must operate in multiple spaces -this

serving to undermine Sharpe’s (1970) classical defence of local government based on

functional effectiveness along with those based on the ability to define and represent ‘local’

interests. This strikes at the heart not only of the ‘local’ of local government, but also

another core associated concept- democracy, as the democratic forms associated with a

hybridized and ‘flat’ mindset are post-representative, horizontality networked, immanent or

‘rhizomatic’ forms exemplified by the work of Hardt and Negri (2004, 2009) and Deleuze and

Guttarri (1987), or focussed on the more ‘mundane’ -‘the quiet politics of the everyday’

Hankins (2017).

Clearly, then, critical approaches to the local pose questions concerning the ability to

‘capture [the local] in an administrative unit’ (Painter et al 2011, p.308), and whether a

defence for local government can be maintained given the fluidity portrayed. Physical and

organisational boundaries are the staple diet of administrative scholars, but ‘essentialising’

them causes problems for perspectives which stress contingency above fixity (Pietersie

2001). Local governments, as ‘container geographies’ (Amin 2005, 619) are territorially

bounded in ways which are often not congruent with much lived experience, unable to

capture the necessary activity other than fleetingly. To defend local government in this light

is difficult, requiring us to ‘see politics as essentially topographical, when, in fact, much of

what people practice as ‘the political’ or indeed as routine everyday habits and practices is

also topological, connecting to various individuals and communities elsewhere’ (Painter et al

2011, 38). As Cox (1998 20) states, ‘local interests and related spaces of dependence are a

necessary pre-condition for a local politics but the space of engagement for it is entirely

contingent’, potentially changing issue by issue as the scope of those affected is worked out

communicatively in situated contexts (Barnett, 2014). We have thus gained depth of insight,

but we are left to ponder an issue which has been long central within the local government

‘tradition’, concerning boundaries which capture the extent of ‘local’ shared interests, issues

and affinities, and how and to what extent local government relates to local politics. In

addition, we have recognition of the essentially contested nature of boundaries. Also, what

these critical approaches focus on are practices within and around local government- local

councils are sites in which agents act and on which they act; the interest is on these

practices, and on the processes by which local councils are formed and re-formed, along

with other state spaces, both hard and soft. This is local government in motion, in transit,

emergent, in flow and these are extremely vital and interesting insights but can only result in

temporary settlements which may or may not coalesce around local government. We are

left with a view of local government either as site for agency or part of a settlement, a

construction as a result of contestation and power. Either way, local government is an

important arena to continue studying. The local government we have will enlighten us as to

power, history and constitutional settlements, and ongoing struggles, and as such looking at

it will tell us an awful lot about a polity. However, this does not tell us anything about its

inherent qualities, nor provide us with a defence.

Reconstruction?

Despite this, it is clear that the local continues to have some hold, some traction….it ‘gets

under the skin’ and it remains hard to shake off appeals to it. It Is a focus of hopes and

aspiration, serving as a framing for sometimes diverging views around democratic values

(Blanco, Griggs, Sullivan, 2104) and as an articulation around which assemblages of actors

with an interest in local government can defend it.

How, then, can critical understandings of the ‘local’ help us with relation to the institution of

local government?. Can they help in weaving together the fragments and rescuing a defence

for local government from the wreckage? It should be no surprise to note that broadly anti-

foundational approaches, by their very nature, give rise to problems in establishing a

foundation for local government, or indeed anything. The problem reflects on what Bauman

(1995) called a desire to find ‘a centre that holds’ amidst contingency, uncertainty, and

fragmentation, However, for a defence for local government, we need more of a temporal

and spatial fix or grounding. and whilst ‘traditional’ defences of local government have

drawn heavily from normative theory drawn from political studies, the critical perspectives

outlined so far generally have naturally shared much more of a scepticism about the

promotion of explicitly normative values. As Barnett and Bridge (2013, 1036) note, however,

there is a gap in the potential overlap between political geography and democratic theory,

and a need for institutional designs which offer a way out of an impasse caused by being

caught between the binaries of fixed bounded institutions on the one hand, and a focus on

‘mundane’ practices on the other- broadly a critical realist position also re-iterated by

MacKinnon (2011). Post- representative and radical theories of democracy have found a

similar difficulty in moving from critique to models of governance, leaving an institutional

gap (Howarth, 2008) and a potential ‘tyranny of structurelessness’, meaning that

institutional designs remain to be ‘fleshed out’ Barnett and Bridge (2013, p, 1024).

Turning to this challenge, critical perspectives can serve to some extent to bridge the gap

between normative theorizing and practice, recognising the presence of fixity amidst flow

and the role of state institutions in attempting to balance the inherent contradictions

(Gough 2014). Institutions do of course, matter; practices and political histories do congeal

and amalgamate into something which has substance, permanence and meaning.

Assemblages are historically patterned and structured (MacFarlane 2011). In this light,

Blanco, Griggs and Sullivan (2014) for example, argue that the ‘local is not local government,

but local government is the ‘institutional expression of it’. Local government can be

‘brought back in’, albeit in a revised fashion.

Can a defence be reconstructed?

Firstly, there is clearly a place amidst the critical thickets for local politics (differently

defined). A flat ontology is not necessarily a smooth one, as Amin (2005) points out, and

there is space and opportunity for contestation in the gaps in interpretations and practices,

creating what Allen calls a ‘honeycomb for politics’ (Allen 2004, 30). Light is thrown on a

distinctive local political contestation in both the practices and interpretations of agents and

over the extent and nature of services provided by local administrations. The local is where

issues of much broader scale ‘touch down’ and are experienced in lived space; this mediated

nature gives the possibility for political agency- openings ‘fall out’ (Allen 2004, 20). Here the

‘local’ does matter because it provides ‘situated places of transactional intensity’ (Barnett

and Bridge 2013, 1036), where challenges to meanings and contests are seen visibly and

flows are temporarily halt’. Local settings thus act as ‘generators of democratic energy’, and

serve as reminders of the stakes which are present in living and contesting amidst difference

(Amin 2004, 43). Problems are experienced and become visible at this scale and it is the site

of ‘practical-oppositional’ organisation; proximity and interaction can facilitate the building

of resistance, solidarity and connectivity. A local politics can clearly be reconceptualised, as

one which is never foreclosed but understood as being concerned with contests over

boundaries, not only physical and institutional, but also over the issues for public debate and

concern- what shape and form the public realm or the ‘local’ issues take; it is thus not

restricted to the formal but neither is it in a sense everywhere, in that its form will influence

and be influenced by material places (Leitner et. al 2008- ‘geography matters’). This gives us

a much wider conception of the local political arena. Within this, local government remains

a political entity in that it is where people still come into direct contact with public services

and collective provision. Also, it can be the focus of political activity and a stage on which it

takes place, serving to mobilise and integrate collective action amongst diverse groups.

However, this does still suggest that attempts to ‘displace’ political engagement into

bounded, containers (ie- local authorities) can at best only be a temporary settlement, with

attempts at fixity in turn generating their own response/contestation.

Secondly, Institutions with discrete, bounded scales are important as political ‘imaginaries’

and stages for the enactment of practical politics; here, narratives of scale should not be

downplayed (Moore 2008; Barnett and Bridge, 2013). Fuller (2012) notes how assemblages,

for example, are given some fixity and stability, reterritorialized by the construction of a

‘spatial imagination’; there has to be a scale/ platform on which politics can be performed

and on which change can be visualised. Social movements engaged in ‘contentious politics’,

for example, have a variety of spatialities available to operate on, including the scalar ones

demarcated by local governments, and local activism still finds solace in the ‘sureity’ of place

(Chatterton, 2010). It is important not to over focus on movement at the expense of

dwelling (Tomaney, 2013) nor to downplay the politics of affect, the emotional pull and

attachments of lived space. Local government may have what Connolly (in Tomaney) refers

to as resonance, shared memories and emotions which serve to again hold together

assemblages to form a source of political action, an expression of practical solidarities

emerging from shared ways of life (Escobar, in Tomaney).

Thirdly, taking a performative view of the political, formal institutions like local government

provide a ‘stage’ for the visible enactment of democracy and critical rethinking can in turn

be used to direct attention to the places where politics most obviously takes place- including

local councils. Thus, Wills (2013) has drawn on Massey’s distinction to argue that too much

attention has been paid recently to the politics of place, at the expense of the more

traditional and ‘obvious’ politics in place. In practical, concrete settings, local government

may generate objects of political contention, and provide common backgrounds for issues of

shared concern to emerge. Local Government provides services vital to the public realm and

can produce symbolic and cultural attachment (Long 2013), providing a focus for the

practical ‘doing’ of politics; Town Halls, for example, could act as symbols around which to

rally, figuratively and literally. Further, in terms of democratic legitimacy, representative

democracy may have been the subject of critique, but in the political ‘imaginary’ elected

Councillors have a ‘head start’ over others in terms of perceived legitimacy (Judge 2013).

New defences of local government could then, perhaps, be laid by the infusion of local

government studies with broadly critical approaches concerned with ‘redistricting’ the

demos- connecting political theory with respect to local government with the new ‘spatial

imaginaries’ emanating from critical geographers, for example (Magnussen, 2005). The

council as ‘community leader’ or ‘place shaper’ are models which have been part of the

managerial discourse for some time now, and perhaps foundations for them can also be

underpinned by critical perspectives- seeing councils as potential facilitators and

orchestrators of myriad discourses and struggles, responsible more broadly for the

democratic health of a locality, and the maintenance and protection of the public sphere.

There are hints of this in some visions of a future local government- for example, the

‘Relational Council’ (IPPR 2012) and the ‘Ensuring Council’ (APSE 2013). Newly formed

normative defences have been rarely made explicit as such, and whilst some have been

based on ‘traditional’ foundations (Whitfield, 2012), some have worked from these revised

understandings of locality as living and sharing together in proximity to offer a defence of

local government based on responsibility to care for others with whom we share space and

experiences (Frazer, 1996; Sullivan, 2011). Sullivan argues that local government ‘still

matters’ amidst austerity; it has to ‘govern the mix’ at local level, offering expertise in co-

ordination and decision-making underpinned normatively by a ’logic of care’, offering a

safety net to the vulnerable and acting as a springboard for innovative practice to meet

community needs. Newman (2014) similarly offers the concept of the concept of ‘inherent

need’, based on universal basic needs and social justice to produce an ethical framework

based on eight principles aimed at answering the question ‘what should an ethical local

government do’?. She bases a defence of local government on deliberative, communicative

and broadly Habermassian understandings of the public sphere. Broadly, these views follow

Escobar’s (2013) view that a relational understanding of place and locality calls for a politics

of responsibility.

However, in turn, these defences rest on the premise that local government can do good

things rather than providing reasons for it per se, and issues remain unresolved. Newman,

for example, feels that local government is the best way of achieving her ethical principles,

but in turn has to fall back on rather traditional arguments concerning the necessity for

over-arching ‘central’ intervention to secure equitable distribution of resources. Councils

may be able to play these ‘orchestrator’ roles but their position as fixed entity and as service

provider makes it difficult for them to be the agent in this respect for other than temporary,

perhaps fleeting periods. Also, the very contingency of the alignments required means that

they may not occur at all, or perhaps only partially, and when they do, they may not be the

ones we normatively desire- some assemblages may be more desirable than others. Such

settlements may align in particular places. Also, following the perspectives above,

institutions may be necessary, but their scale is never fixed nor clear- to meet the

requirements for contingency, what is required is ‘democratic experimentalism’ (Sabel 2001)

and ‘institutional imagination’ (Barnett and Bridge 2013, p.1024). For practical purposes, we

know that local government has some degree of permanence which is difficult to reconcile

with the more sensitive notion of emergence in any meaningful way. We could look to more

frequent changes to boundaries and configurations in response to local calls for change

(Copus et al 2013), or perhaps follow others who have argued for the benefits of a variety of

tiers to accommodate the changing geographies of interests (following Chandler, 2008,

2010, and others). However, given the perspectives we have looked at, it appears that these

responses are never going to be sensitive enough; the time periods over which it may be

possible to tie down the contingencies are much shorter. Sabel, for example, in outlining his

‘democratic experimentalism’ refers to the role of ‘local units’ – in potentially a myriad of

forms, rather than local government- and these ‘soft spaces’ are just as amenable to being

used as technologies of government. There remains the issue of the contingent spatialities

of local politics and the congruence with local government. Moreover, to what extent does

local government have what Barnett (2014) calls ‘agentive qualities’ in facilitating such

alignments rather than being merely the platform in/on which they may or may not happen?

In addition, whilst It is accepted that local councils can provide symbolic attachment, and

that ‘geography may be the glue that can hold us together’ (Wills, 2013 p.) this is perhaps

more likely to be found in cities and /or towns with identifiable histories, some sense of

boundary and sense of place. Indeed, critical approaches have tended to concentrate on

urban or city governance. Wills (2012) offers a compelling study of how disparate groups are

networked and connected by a shared sense of place; the particular connecting to wider and

shared concerns across a bounded local government territory. However, her study takes

place in London, clearly a place which can generate such an ‘imaginary’ of shared sense of

attachment. Urban, city and towns as centres of identity and symbol are clearly represented

in UK local government, but there are also many council areas in the UK which are made up

for administrative purposes (they have been the ‘imaginary’ of elites conducting local

government re-organisations), and yet rural areas have been relatively ignored as a site of

critical academic interest (Pemberton and Goodwin, 2010). Even key ‘traditional’ units of

local government- the shire counties, may or may not continue to hold a place in the

political imagination.

A local council is clearly a bounded entity and is a state institution itself. The contradictions

involved in this are political in themselves, as noted. However, this essentially limits local

government’s potential role in providing the ‘bridge’ or alignments referred to above, both

in scope and temporally. Could it play the ‘orchestrator’ role in which the local authority

takes the role of ‘facilitator’ of a range of discourses in a variety of public spheres, or is it

more likely to mitigate against the facilitation of broad linkages and aims in a complex local

polity? (Griggs and Howarth, 2008). Can local government maintain a normative position ‘at

the edge’ of state and civil society, a ‘dual intermediary’? This, in turn, is subject to practical

and conceptual difficulties (Barnett, 2011), particularly if any kind of oppositional or

radical/independent stance is attempted over time, as councils have a contradictory role

which involves both facilitation and foreclosure. Councils deal with contradiction and

ambiguity, and thus are inherently political. However, this is because they are there and

does not necessarily provide firm ground for why they should be. We are at best, it seems,

able to offer a defence of local government as potentially capturing a series of temporary

settlements, and potentially contributing to and being a resource for the possible myriad

forms of local political activity.

Conclusion

Cross-pollination of ideas from a range of disciplines has added great subtlety to our

understandings of local government. Often these may have been more directly focussed on

local governance, or more particularly urban governance than local councils per se, but

nevertheless they remain important for local government studies. They offer some enticing

potential foundations for local government as a site where people come into direct contact

with public services and collective provision, where political imaginaries focussed on local

councils may serve to mobilise and integrate collective action amongst diverse groups, to ‘fix

partial and temporary social, economic and political settlements from a range of pressures,

grievances and claims, and then seek to persuade the public of the merits of its case’ (Griggs

and Roberts 2012, p.206). Local government may, in certain places and circumstances, even

offer a ‘Plan B’, connect with wider struggles and play a part in a ‘progressive localism’

(Featherstone et al 2012).

Local government also provides a site on which practical politics is played out, tensions

surfaced, and we do not have to focus all of our attention on ‘eruptions’ of public resistance

to recognise the essentially political nature of this (Newman, 2013). Gaps and cracks can

always be exploited, for example, to protect vulnerable people as far as possible from the

effects of austerity. The ‘local’ may indeed be chaotic and overlapping, but legitimate

decisions need to be taken. Politics as practice requires us to begin with and work with what

we have and engage with the world as it is (and with things as they pass) (Massey, 2013;

Lowndes and McHaughie 2013; Clarke, 2013 p. 500), and we have local government, which

matters as a site of performativity, engagement and agency.

These attributes, however, stem from the fact that local government is there; it is a stage

and focus for such practice, and also a reflection of on-going processes and contestations

over spatial arrangements. These amount to justifications based on expediency, and

pragmatism. Critical perspectives have often emerged from positions which have great

sympathy with the notion of local democracy and the emancipatory potential of it, and to

some extent offer us useful ammunition to defend local government with; however, they do

serve, in turn, to highlight contradictions and fragility, and to focus on emergence and a

necessary immanence with respect to normative supports. They offer possible explanations

rather than defences. What we can do is see local government as a picture/ narrative of a

polity- and put forward our own contestations. This is not firm ground, but shifting; perhaps

local government is best seen/used as an articulation/ framing which serves to hold together

assemblages of interests who share a particular set of values and a belief that local

government is the best way of securing them. What is clear is that, for whatever reason,

local government does still seem to matter- it continues, in Connolly’s terms, to resonante,

and therefore can be used. In practical terms, this may or may not be enough, but essentially

local government in the UK remains on (perhaps necessarily?) shaky foundations.

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