Most political participation is conducted on a local stage. Even in our mobile, modern society, relatively few people pursue their affairs, whether social or political, beyond the boundaries of a particular locality. One of the characteristic features of ‘political professionals’ is precisely that they escape the gravitational field of the locality.

However, to say that most social and political activities are carried on in one single place does not necessarily imply that these activities are themselves locally determined. Many will be local instantiations of nationally determined practices. People vote in local constituencies in national elections whose outcomes are largely settled on the basis of national or international issues. Equally, they may campaign in local sections of a national pressure group, or contact the local official of a central government department about a problem. Moreover, social structures which have so powerful an impact on patterns of participation are commonly produced by forces which regulate the whole nation, its culture and its economy. Few localities in modern life can remain isolated and idiosyncratic, as the film Heimat by Edgar Reitz vividly illustrated.

Indeed, there are many political scientists who would argue that local policies on major issues are for the most part the outcome of non-local forces which may include nationally based economic and professional sectional interests (Dunleavy 1980: 98–133) as well as, in Britain, the increasingly centralising pressures mounted by national government (Newton and Karran 1985; Goldsmith and Newton 1983).