Path Dependency and the Reform of English Local Government
| Author | Gerry Stoker,Peter C. John,Francesca Gains |
| Date | 01 March 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.0033-3298.2005.00436.x |
| Published date | 01 March 2005 |
Public Administration Vol. 83 No. 1, 200 5 (25–45)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsi ngton Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
PATH DEPENDENCY AND THE REFORM OF
ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT
FRANCESCA GAINS, PETER C. JOHN AND GERRY STOKER
This paper uses the concept of path dependency to examine the changes to the polit-
ical management structures of English local government. We note how the possible
experience of decreasing returns among some local authority actors combined with
the powerful intervention of politicians within New Labour at the national level led
to a significant break from past policy and the imposition of measures to establish a
separate executive that was claimed as a radical step forward for local democracy.
Using survey data from the Evaluating Local Governance research team (http://
www.elgnce.org.uk), we explore the establishment of a separate political executive
in all major local authorities and map out the style of decision-making that is emerg-
ing. We find that some established institutional patterns reasserted themselves in the
process of implementation, but that increasing returns are not as great as some theor-
ists of path dependency would suggest and they may be a force for system change as
well as for stability.
INTRODUCTION
This article uses the case of a reform of England’s local government intro-
duced by the New Labour government elected in the UK in 1997 to explore
the phenomenon of path dependency both as a policy development and in
terms of implementation at an institutional level. The concept of path
dependency has been present in the social science literature for at least two
decades (Krasner 1994). The essential point has been understood for much
longer than that, namely that ‘choices made when an institution is being
formed, or when a policy is being initiated, will have a continuing and
largely determining influence . .. far into the future’ (Peters 1999, p. 63). The
most theoretically developed explanation of the mechanisms underlying
path dependency are to be found in Pierson’s (2000a, b) writings on the
impact of increasing returns for policy and institutional players that keep
them bound to an initial path. Our research has led us to be critical of some
of Pierson’s arguments and in this paper we suggest some developments to
the increasing returns thesis. We argue that factors other than increasing
returns are often at play in policy and institutional processes. These factors
explain how policies and institutions change in a way that the path depend-
ency argument tends to overlook. Moreover, we think that increasing
returns do not always have the inertial impact implied in Pierson’s work.
Francesca Gains, Peter C. J ohn and Gerry Stoker are in the School of Soci al Sciences, Government,
International Politics and Philosophy, University of Manchester.
26 FRANCESCA GAINS, PETER C. JOHN AND GERRY STOKER
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
They can provide the dynamic for substantial change once a tipping point
has been reached.
The Labour government elected in the UK in 1997 chose to introduce a
major change in the way that English local authorities carried out their
decision-making, establishing a formal separate executive and giving it
limited authority. A system in which formal decision-making power rested
with the whole council gave way to one where, within a broad policy and
budget framework agreed by all councillors, the executive of the council
may make decisions, although these are subject to challenge and scrutiny by
non-executive councillors. In western democracies, systems that allow for a
separate executive are commonplace in local government systems (Norton
1994). The policy of establishing a separate formal executive was long
resisted by the local government policy community in the UK and rejected
by previous governments as recently as a decade before New Labour’s
advocacy of the option. So the legislation, the Local Government Act 2000,
marks a radical break from previous policy.
This rather obvious empirical challenge to the path dependency argument
provides an opportunity to explore what it is that allows the binding factors
of increasing returns to be broken. So we offer explanations of how, over
time, path dependency in respect of nationally driven policies can unravel
or, at a particular time, be broken. The argument about a move from a
steady state is particularly important at the sub-national level because the
literature suggests that the factors inducing path dependency will come into
play during the implementation of the political management reforms (Leach
1999; Copus 1999). Indeed, some evidence and research (House of Com-
mons 2002; Snape et al. 2002) shows there has been a reversion to traditional
ways of operating at the implementation stage. Our comprehensive survey
of the processes involved in implementing the new structures indicates that
many of the institutional attributes of the past system have been replicated
in most but not all of the new political management structures. The evidence
suggests that change is underway in some places and we argue that as new
models become established the forces of increasing returns will encourage a
more rapid adoption of new institutional practices and forms once a tipping
point has been reached.
We begin the paper by looking at the concept of path dependency. We
examine the phenomenon of increasing returns and recognize its force in
explaining the development of policy down an established path but note
some the difficulties of the argument. We offer a critique and an elaboration
to provide scope for explaining change as well as stability at the policy and
institutional levels. We go on to examine the policy shift that led to the legis-
lation and identify it as a break from past prescriptions; we also establish the
operation of forces beyond increasing returns to explain policy change. The
section that follows shows how considerable elements of path dependency
in terms of implementation of the reforms can be observed, with less than
one in five councils adopting the form of political management most
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