England plus? Territory, identity and fiscal devolution in the UK

Sandford, Mark; Mor, Federico

doi:10.1057/s41293-018-00100-5

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…This scheme was designed to incentivize local authorities to focus on economic growth (Sandford, 2020a, p.4). Other policies such as the New Homes Bonus, tax increment financing and the introduction of Local Enterprise Partnerships were designed for the same purpose (Sandford & Mor, 2019).…”

Section: Findings: Place‐based Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditing governable space—A study of place‐based accountability in England

et al. 2022

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The governance of territories has become increasingly fragmented and complex, challenging the accountability arrangements for “governable spaces.” Tension between central and local governments is a perennial feature of their relationship, but few analyses have explored the implications of this tension for accountability relationships. This article assesses policy initiatives within England aimed at increasing accountability in localities, by establishing governable spaces that include territorializing, mediating, adjudicating, and subjectivizing. During the 2010s, the UK government sought to introduce a form of place‐based accountability within the context of reduced central government funding to English local authorities. This meant that local government faced new forms of accountability while adapting to considerable financial shocks. Accounting methods—assessing what phenomena can and should be governed—underpin audit and orthodox concepts of accountability in the United Kingdom. These have driven a narrow finance‐focused narrative of local audit and local accountability. However, we also argue that developments in England in the 2010s have undermined political accountability in the localities, because they have worked against critical components within it for making governable space auditable: interpretation of data, judgments on service quality and the impact of cross‐public sector relationships on local authorities’ “decision space.”

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Section: Findings: Place‐based Accountabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditing governable space—A study of place‐based accountability in England

et al. 2022

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“…Beyond critical accounting studies, broader political economy work has presented parallel interrogations of the mechanisms through which accounting practices constitute intersubjective understanding of an aspect of the social world. In relation to the UK, we see that accounting practices and conventions have influenced approaches to pension reform (Berry 2016), fiscal devolution (Sandford and Mor 2019), and Bank of England's operational focus (Evemy 2019). Broome and Quirk (2015) provide an exploration of the pathways through which the proliferation of accounting practices through 'global benchmarking' has served to 'neutralise' and 'universalise' suites of policy practices.…”

Section: Accounting Practices the Constitution Of Materials Incentive...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Privileging privatisation: accounting practices and state transformation in the UK

Clegg

Rogers

2021

Br Polit

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How do accounting practices interact with processes of state transformation? Focusing on the privatisation of social housing in the UK, we clarify an important mechanism through which accounting practices served to constitute material incentives in favour of privatisation. Our archival research demonstrates that the UK government's atypical practice of including public corporations' liabilities in its own debt calculations shaped discussions and decisions over the transfer of public housing stock to non-state Housing Associations in the 1980s. By unpacking the constitutive relationship between accounting practices and material incentives, we advance and bring together scholarship on state transformation and the politics of accounting.

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