REVIEWS
| Date | 01 September 1990 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1990.tb00769.x |
| Published date | 01 September 1990 |
REVIEWS
THE
FUTURE
OF
LOCAL
GOVERNMENT
John Stewart
and
Gerry Stoker
(eds.)
Macmillan,
1989. 259pp.
230.00
(cloth),
B.95 (paper)
This collection of essays, edited by one present and one former member
of
staff of the
Institute of Local Government Studies at the University
of
Birmingham, is an attempt to
set
in
context the rapid and extensive changes to which local government has
been
subjected
since
1979
and, with greater intensity, since the election
of
Mrs Thatcher's government
for its third term in
1987.
The book is in two parts. The first describes and analyses the changes as they have
affected particular service and policy areas, with chapters on local government finance,
competition, education, housing, the Widdicombe reforms and, in a chapter that hangs
uneasily together, economic development, inner cities and social services.
As
with any
collection of essays
or
papers, the quality varies, but the reader who is looking for a quick
introduction to the scope
of
changes in these fields, together with an indication
of
where
to
go
for
further information could do worse than refer to these chapters and their extensive
references.
As
with almost all writing on local government these days some
of
the analysis
is out-of-date either before publication or before review and Tony Travers, who has
contributed the chapter on the community charge has,
of
course, been particularly unlucky
as ministers have tried, stage by stage, to undo the worst of the political damage that
the government has sustained.
It is fair to say, too, that some of the material in this section is not new: this reviewer
found Kieron Walsh on competition, Steve Leach on Widdicombe and Stewart Ranson
and Hywel Thomas on education stimulating but familiar. However,
it
is
good
to have
the overview that a collection provides.
The second part
of
the book is much more speculative and, on that account, rather
fresher than the first. Particularly impressive is Gerry Stoker's properly sceptical and
slightly tentative attempt to apply the notion
of
Post-Fordism to the current and future
state
of
British local government. Stoker makes no overblown claims about the
explanatory value of regulationist theory but he does try to set the separate and cumulative
changes in a broad historical and societal context. The reader is led to wonder whether
the book is not, in a sense, the wrong way round, for this chapter would have
made a stronger introduction to
it
than does the rather weak 'here-is-why-we're-
doing-it-and-this-is-how-we'lldo-it'
piece with which the editors introduce their
collection.
The latter part
of
the collection is also enlivened by a view
from
the Right contributed
by Graham Mather
of
the Institute of Economic
Affairs
which comes to the slightly chilling
conclusion, for those who believe
in
the fundamental values
of
representative democracy,
that
'in
the
199Os,
the onus will be on the elected politicians to show that they are necessary
to.
.
.service provision, rather than upon business to show that it has a r6le'. There are
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