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The Effects of Central Finance on the British Local Government System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Douglas E. Ashford
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Extract

The introduction of more rigorous policy analysis into comparative politics reveals an important discontinuity in empirical democratic theory. The problem is not an entirely new one, but the dilemmas presented in looking more carefully at sub-national political systems, and in trying to compare sub-national systems cross-nationally, lend new urgency to this issue. On the one hand, policy studies of budgetary change and resource allocation over time in industrial democracies show that change occurs very slowly; indeed, the budgetary performance of most such governments can be predicted with very small errors given modest longitudinal information. On the other hand, the institutional infrastructure of the industrial democracies is geared to making major shifts in political control, presumably in response to popular preferences and with some notion of desired adjustments in governmental performance: yet the choices actually confronted by governments almost never take such simple politically determined forms; policy choices instead take the form of relative gains and benefits, trade-offs in expected impact of marginal resource changes, and gradual increases as new expenditures and investments can be absorbed in the public sector.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , July 1974 , pp. 305 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 Wildavsky, Aaron, Davis, Otto A. and Dempster, M. A. H., ‘A Theory of the Budgetary Process’, American Political Science Review, LX (1966), 529–47.Google Scholar There have been several analyses of local budgets in cross-sectional form, whose implications are consistent with the findings presented below. See Moser, C. A. and Scott, W., British Towns (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1961);Google ScholarOliver, F. R. and Stanyer, J., ‘Some Aspects of the Financial Behaviour of County Boroughs’, Public Administration, XLVII (1969), 169–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boaden, Noel T. and Alford, Robert R., ‘Sources of Diversity in English County Boroughs’, Public Administration, XLVII (1969), 203–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Boaden, Noel T., Urban Policy Making, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

2 Nearly all community level research tends to assume that national and regional forces are constant. Like micro-level economics, micro-level sociology also treats external forces as negligible. See the model developed by Clark, Terry N., Community Structure and Decision-Making, (San Francisco: Chandler, 1968), pp. 91–126.Google Scholar

3 There have been several important efforts to use political variables in relation to local government outputs. See Boaden, Noel T., ‘Central Departments and Local Authorities: The Relationship Examined’, Political Studies, XVIII (1970), 175–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Stanyer, J., ‘Electoral Behaviour in Local Government: A Model of the Two-Party System’, Political Studies, XVIII (1970), 187–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 For a short account of the grant system as it has evolved, see Hart, W. O., Introduction to the Law of Government and Administration, 8th edn. (London: Butterworth, 1968,), pp. 33–49 and 177–196.Google Scholar

5 National Income and Expenditure (London: HMSO, 1971).Google Scholar See also Peacock, Alan T. and Jack, , The Growth of Public Expenditure in the United Kingdom, 2nd edn. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967), pp. 97–21.Google Scholar

6 For an exhaustive account covering each policy area, see Griffith, J. A. G., Central Departments and Local Authorities (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966).Google Scholar

7 The Management of the Public Sector of the National Economy (London: HMSO, 1964).Google Scholar

8 The thrust of these studies is found in Dye, Thomas R., Politics, Economics and the Public: Policy Outcomes in the American States (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966).Google Scholar This position has now been considerably modified. For example, see Sharkansky, Ira, ed., Policy Analysis in Political Science (Chicago: Markham, 1970).Google Scholar

9 See Hart, , Law of Government and Administration, pp. 177–96Google Scholar, and Griffith, , Central Departments, pp. 18–33.Google Scholar

10 A thorough effort to assess institutional linkage is Scarrow's, Howard A. ‘Policy Pressure by British Local Government: The Case of Regulation in the “Public Interest” ‘, Comparative Politics, IV (1971), pp. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Though policy studies deal with quantities of money, there is very little about policy analysis that is wholly quantitative. Methodologically a quantity means little without reasoning about its relation to other quantities. Theoretically policy analysis requires some reasoning about a problem that inescapably transcends the available statistical materials.

12 Until recently most participation studies of local politics were confined to single units or wholly to the input dimensions of politics. Some interesting departures are Berry, D., The Sociology of Grass Roots Politics: A Study of Party Membership (London: Macmillan, 1970)Google Scholar; and Hill, D., Participating in Local Affairs (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin Books, 1970).Google Scholar

13 This argument departs from Sharpe's, L. J. view in ‘Theories and Values of Local Government’, Political Studies, XVIII (1970), 153–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which tends to treat equality as intrinsically desirable.

14 The necessity of an empirically grounded theory to lend intelligibility to structured political behavior is well illustrated (for inputs only) in Campbell, et al. , The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960).Google Scholar Comparable analytical skill has not been exercised on the performance side of local government.