POLITICS IN BRITAIN

Politics in Britain

Politics in Britain

Introduction

The subject of this paper is 'Public Opinion and Local Government'. I am going to assume this means that we should examine what the public thinks of local government and why their views matter. Indeed there is little point in examining what the public thinks of local government without having some idea of how and why their views matter. It may, for example, be the case that people think that local government should not be responsible for the maintenance of the flowerbeds in the municipal parks of Lisbon. But we may doubt whether such an opinion was central to the success or otherwise of local government in Portugal. So I propose to begin by asking why public opinion about local government matters. My starting point is that local government is intended to be a democratic institution that is able to exercise a degree of relative autonomy in exercising its functions. Those functions include the provision and delivery of state services to local populations, but also, and perhaps increasingly, acting as a leader or catalyst in securing the delivery of publicly desired goods by private and voluntary organisations. Local government is given autonomy because it is believed that the needs and wants of local populations vary from one locality to another. By allowing the activity of the state to vary from area to area the state is thus better able to meet the varied needs and wants of its citizens. And to ensure that those needs and wants are adequately expressed and influence what it does, local government has to be democratic. One of the keys to ensuring that local government is democratic is holding local elections. There are of course disagreements about what elections should achieve in a democracy. For example, some believe that they are about holding politicians to account for their past actions. Others prefer to emphasise their role as an opportunity for citizens to express their views about what they want their politicians to do in future. But both conceptions rest on a key assumption - that citizens actually go to the polls. For if only a minority turn out to vote, we cannot be sure that their collective decision reflects the views of the local community. Participation is thus central to the success of elections. Of course local elections are not the only key to a successful local democracy. Regular and continuous consultation with pressure groups and with individual citizens also has a vital role to play. Moreover, in recent years turnout has fallen to an even lower level, with only around 30% of voters turning out to vote in local elections held in 1998 and 1999. In short it does not seem to be an exaggeration to talk of a crisis of local democracy in Britain. Britain is thus an important case study if we wish to understand the role and influence of public opinion in local government.

Discussion

However, if we are to make sense of the crisis of local ...