The Missing Ingredient: Inter-Municipal Cooperation and Central-Local Relations in the UK

Kelly, Josephine

doi:10.1007/1-4020-5379-7_9

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Therefore, in all countries where local governments bear responsibility for public health services, fire departments or waste processing, we found even the larger communities in a region to engage in co-operation. Typically, with some of the constraints on co-operation lifted, even the large councils in England have begun to co-operate to share services such as revenue collection and IT (Kelly, 2007a: 208). In contrast, in our sample of country studies, we did not find examples of co-operation with respect to capital or knowledge-extensive services such as the maintenance of public parks or the management of children's playgrounds.…”

Section: Service Delivery Organizations and Service Delivery Agreementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In England, single local governments have engaged in cooperative arrangements with specialized agencies and central government to provide for co-ordinated and improved service delivery at the local level. In line with the dominant approach, co-operation was organized through agreements (Local Public Service Agreements), not through the establishment of joint service organizations (Kelly, 2007a: 201-205). In Finland, NPM themes such as de-centralisation, lightening of bureaucracy, the introduction of market mechanisms and a stronger focus on results have become part and parcel of the administrative culture.…”

Section: Service Delivery Organizations and Service Delivery Agreementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Institutional features of inter-municipal cooperation: Cooperative arrangements and their national contexts

Hulst¹,

Montfort²

2011

Public Policy and Administration

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Inter-municipal co-operation is a widespread phenomenon throughout Europe. But in spite of its wide spread, inter-municipal co-operation has not been subject to systematic comparative research. This article presents some of the findings of a joint research project concerning inter-municipal co-operation in a series of European countries. A comparative analysis shows that inter-municipal co-operation comes in all shapes and sizes. Nevertheless it is possible to distinguish four basic types of co-operation: quasi-regional governments, planning forums, service delivery organizations and service delivery agreements. Research shows that the national institutional context to a large extent explains the presence or absence of the different types in a country.

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Section: Service Delivery Organizations and Service Delivery Agreementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Service Delivery Organizations and Service Delivery Agreementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Institutional features of inter-municipal cooperation: Cooperative arrangements and their national contexts

Hulst¹,

Montfort²

2011

Public Policy and Administration

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“…Josie Kelly (2007, 193) suggests that devolution shifted the locus of central–local relations away from Westminster and Whitehall. This is simply not true—the locus was never there in the first place.…”

Section: Assumption One: 1999 Was ‘Year Zero’ For Scottish Local Govementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Laffin (2009, 30) suggests that the Audit Commission's role extends ‘beyond that of simple “auditing” to play an enforcement role in ensuring that local authorities modernise in line with central government policy’. Similarly, Kelly (2007, 603) suggests that it acts ‘on the government's behalf to regulate elected local authorities and advances a particular view of what is good practice largely reflecting central government's priorities’.…”

Section: Assumption Three: Central–local Relations Are Nothing More Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expectations, Assumptions and Realities: Scottish Local Government Post-Devolution

McGarvey¹

2011

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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This article reviews developments in Scottish local government post-devolution. In doing so it outlines some expectations, assumptions and realities about local government in Scotland. Three assumptions are examined and rejected: 1999 was 'Year Zero' for Scottish local government; central-local relations are characterised by a cohesive centre versus a cohesive locality; central-local relations in Scotland are nothing more than a fuzzy microcosm of central-local relations in England. The article argues that Scotland increasingly offers a different 'story' of central-local government relations with pre-existing differences accentuating in the context of minority government, different processes of governance and attitudes to the welfare state.This article seeks to highlight inaccurate assumptions about Scottish local government post-devolution. It is suggested that these have arisen due to a combination of expectations, ignorance, misrepresentation and misunderstanding of pre-and postdevolution developments in Scotland. These assumptions lead to implications not only for political actors in Scotland and the UK but also for the wider research agenda. The analysis in this article highlights that Scottish local government was on a trajectory of difference and separation before 1999. Devolution has merely magnified preexisting differences (McGarvey and Cairney 2008, 8). The research for this article has been informed by a thorough review of key texts and journal articles in the field of both Scottish politics and local government in the UK over the past 30 years.A neglect of the prehistory of devolution tends to exaggerate its impact and a unitary conception of the UK state, whereas acknowledgement of the significant legacy of existing governance processes tempers such analysis. It is often neglected that part of the rationale of devolution in Scotland was based on a conservative impulse to protect welfare state institutions in Scotland from the reforming zeal of the UK government. In frustration at its exclusion from power (despite nine successive general election 'victories'-in terms of being the largest party-in Scotland) the Scottish Labour party post-1987 chose engagement with other parties, constitutional and electoral reform.Pre-devolution discussion of UK politics tended to characterise the UK as a unitary state-it tended to assume that Scotland was a micro version of wider UK politics. Ian McAllister and Richard Rose (1984), discussing electoral behaviour, refer to Scotland as 'British with a difference '. Arthur Midwinter et al. (1991) outline a

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Institutional Shifts In Inter-Municipal Service Delivery

Hulst¹,

Montfort²,

Haveri

et al. 2009

Public Organ Rev

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Comparative research on inter-municipal cooperation in eight European countries shows that there is a great variety of institutional arrangements for cooperation across the different countries. Also, these arrangements tend to change over time in terms of the scope of cooperation among partners, their composition and the degree of organizational integration. This article describes and analyzes the variety of and shifts in institutional arrangements for a specific class of inter-municipal cooperation arrangements: those that are set up to provide for the joint delivery of public services. It is argued that specific arrangements are typically the outcomes of interaction between national institutional contexts,environmental factors and local preferences.

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The Missing Ingredient: Inter-Municipal Cooperation and Central-Local Relations in the UK

Cited by 6 publications

References 7 publications

Institutional features of inter-municipal cooperation: Cooperative arrangements and their national contexts

Institutional features of inter-municipal cooperation: Cooperative arrangements and their national contexts

Expectations, Assumptions and Realities: Scottish Local Government Post-Devolution

Institutional Shifts In Inter-Municipal Service Delivery

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