The Liberal Justification for Local Government: Values and Administrative Expediency
| Date | 01 December 1989 |
| Published date | 01 December 1989 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1989.tb00291.x |
| Author | J. A. Chandler |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political
Studies
(1989),
XXXVII,
604-61
1
The Liberal Justification for Local
Government: Values and Administrative
Expediency
J.
A.
CHANDLER
Shefield
City
Polytechnic
There are several important justifications for autonomous units of local government,
derived from
the
writings of
J.
S.
Mill and later theories concerning the value of
pluralism. These arguments fail
to
show that local government is a morally necessary,
as opposed
to
expedient, adjunct to liberal-democratic government. The paper
develops from
J.
S.
Mill’s ideas on liberty a more substantive justification for local
government based on
the
principle that local government can
be
a means for ensuring
that the determination of collective decisions are made solely by those people affected
by the decision.
What chances of survival has British local government given conventional
wisdom concerning its
raison
d’ztre?
The Widdicombe Report maintained that:
It
would
.
.
.
be wrong to assume that
. . .
constitutional convention amounts
to
or
derives from any natural right
for
local government to exist. It is a
convention based on, and subject to, the contribution that local government
can bring to good government. It follows from this that there is no validityin
the assertion that local authorities have a ‘local mandate’ by which they
derive authority from their electorate placing them above the law.’
If, as is widely accepted in Britain, local government is subordinate at all times to
Parliament, its defence rests
on
three pillars: efficiency, democracy and
education. The most long-established
of
these elements, much emphasized by
J.
S.
Mill in his seminal
work
on local government, concerns the efficiency with
which
local
authorities can relate and coordinate services
to
fit local need and
circumstance.* Mill also valued local government as a means
of
educating
political activists and the general public through greater opportunities to
’
D.
Widdicombe (chairman),
The Conduct of Local Aurhority Business
(London, HMSO, Cmnd
9797, 1986), para. 3.6, p.
46.
J.
S.
Mill,
Considerations
on
Representative Government,
in
J.
S.
Mill,
Three Essays
(Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 376.
Also
advanced in
L.
J.
Sharpe, ‘Theories and values of local
government’,
Polilical Studies,
XVIII:
2
(1970), p. 165; Lord Redcliffe-Maud (chairman),
Royal
Commission
on
Local Government in
England(London, HMSO, Cmnd
4040,
1969),
Vol.
1,
para. 36,
p.
13.;
G.
Jones and
J.
Stewart,
The Case for Local Government
(London, George Allen
&
Unwin,
1983), p.
10.
0032-321
7/89/04/0604-08/$04.00
0
1989
Political
Studies
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