This book has been many years in the planning and writing. The original motivation for it developed during the period of research undertaken in connection with the ESRC-funded research project ‘New Patterns of Local Politics’ between 1993 and 1995. Although this research resulted in a range of conference papers and journal articles (plus, of course, the final report to the ESRC), the wealth of qualitative material that was generated by the interviews with over 60 local politicians and officers was felt by the research team – Steve Leach and Declan Hall – to provide the basis for a new research-based textbook of British local government politics.

The researchers were aware that the last such textbook, The changing politics of local government, had been published in 1989 jointly authored by John Gyford, Steve Leach and Chris Game. John Gyford was by 1997 a political leader in his own right in Braintree District Council and did not have the time for a new version of the 1989 textbook. Chris Game, however, agreed to join the team of authors. A book contract was agreed and a finished product promised by 1998.

The writing of the book then soon became beset by the problem of trying to cope with the speed and volume of change in the topic that was being studied. A succession of new publications, many of them co-authored by one or other of the new team of authors, appeared at regular intervals from 1996 onwards, requiring incorporation into the text. But an even greater challenge was the announcement in May 1997, following the election of the first Labour government since 1979, of a democratic renewal programme for local government. There followed a series of consultation papers, White Papers, draft Bills and select committee reports relating to this programme, culminating in July 2000 in the Local Government Act, which finally put on the statute book the new initiatives of elected mayors, local cabinet government, scrutiny committees and community strategies which had been taking shape (and changing shape) since 1997. In the same year Britain's first elected mayor of modern times – Ken Livingstone in the new Greater London Authority – took office.