Guest editors’ introduction: the power of now. Reimagining the future of local government through studies of ‘actually existing’ practice

Abstract

This introduction contends that the study of UK local government, its institutions and actors is an increasingly 'niche' pursuit. We argue that the field is caught in a commonsense narrative that plays off local government institutional decline against a widespread belief in the future democratic and progressive value of the 'council-to-come'. Identifying persistent appeals to such deficiency narratives, we suggest that 'actually existing' local government is reduced to the site of critical shortcomings in the present, while its agency is deferred to a future when the council has become what it is not. Such logics, we conclude, reach their height in recent studies of local austerity governance. In response, we call for a change of direction towards an ethos of municipal pragmatism that grounds inquiry in 'real world' problems, while developing richer or thicker understandings of the agency of local government that can generate alternative visions grounded in its everyday work.

Path Clearing, Policy Acceleration or Trend Reinforcement: Potential Implications of Selected Local Government Responses to Covid-19 in the UK

“…Whether characterised as 'pragmatic municipalism' (Kim & Warner, 2016; or 'municipal pragmatism' (Barnett et al, 2020) the emphasis has been very much on what can be achieved. A prominent example has been a community-facing ethos where service provision is designed and delivered in conjunction with local populations (Penny, 2017), an approach which has received formal legislative backing in both Scotland and Wales (McMillan et al, 2020;Farrell et al, 2020).…”

“…These positive strands should not mask the resource crisis facing local government in the UK as the pandemic took hold (Harris et al, 2019;Murphie, 2023). Thus, practices such as deferred maintenance, restrictions on opening hours, tighter eligibility criteria, volunteer operation, or even complete closure have resulted in many areas in loss of community facilities and deterioration in the quality of the built environment (Barnett et al, 2020). At the same time, it is important to recognise the "substantial variations between authorities (that have)...actively reshaped the relationship between central and local government in Britain, shrinking the capacity of the local state, increasing inequality between local governments and exacerbating territorial injustice" (Gray & Barford, 2018, p. 541).…”

Strategies for a new municipalism: Public–common partnerships against the new enclosures

“…Such contributions are undoubtedly valuable in developing our understanding of new municipalist practice; however, they belie a tendency (even if unintended by individual authors) to misrepresent new municipalism as solely concerned with existing political institutions, the scope for transforming their internal processes (including attempts to ‘open them up’) and efforts to implement somewhat poorly defined ‘radical’ local government policy. Without being situated in a wider agenda, these interpretations arguably align with what Barnett et al (2020: 507) have called ‘municipal pragmatism’, an approach which ‘privileges the generation of alternative visions that are grounded in the everyday work of local government’.…”

Politicising proximity: Radical municipalism as a strategy in crisis

“…The same can be said whatever the thematic area or sector we focus on. Indeed, a useful distinction might be made between a ‘municipal pragmatism’ which ‘centres on a specific ethos of engagement with the policies and practices of local government’ (Barnett et al, 2020: 507), and a radical municipalist orientation where the policies and practices of local government are tangential to the central focus.…”