Fiscally pressured local governments face the same basic choices in both the United States and the United Kingdom: whether to increase locally raised revenues in order to maintain existing services or to reduce local services. The article first posits a model of local government decision-making in response to fiscal pressure drawn primarily from organizational and systems theory. Local governments are viewed as organizations concerned with maintaining their equilibrium relationships with their external environment (public employees and their unions). The model suggests a series of hypotheses about how local government will respond to fiscal pressure. Case studies of fiscally pressured local governments in both the United States and the United Kingdom are then utilized to describe actual local responses and to assess the usefulness of the model. The article concludes by setting forth a rough hierarchy of preferred local responses.

This paper explores the complexities and ambiguities of the relationship between the state and business associations by examining the case of West Germany. While business associations continue to lobby the state on behalf of their members, they perform a number of other roles. Association staff often provide information and expert advice to the state. The state can lend associations organisational support by setting rules of political influence that are favourable to them. Business associations become involved in the formulation and even implementation of what are effectively public policy functions, though associations have a ambivalent attitude, preferring both autonomy from the state and influence. Business associations may fend off attempts by the state to subject their members' behaviour to legal regulation by offering self-regulation with state approval; however, this can critically affect relations between associations and their members. Devolution of public authority to business associations is resorted to pragmatically, or opportunistically, by both associations and the state as an expedient solution to individual problems. This arises because associations lack a consistent theory defining their status in relation to the state.

This paper explores the tension between social and commercial criteria and the importance of the nature of available information in influencing policymaking towards commercial or quasi-commercial activities such as transport undertakings. The importance of financial criteria as key indicators which influence railway policy is established by reference to significant landmarks in the corporate existence of British Rail. An underlying conflict between this information and the declared policies of successive governments is exposed. This reveals that, not only are policy-makers constrained by the difficulties of providing more appropriate information, but they are also the victims of their own reluctance to implement effectively policies which would actually improve existing sources of information.

This article examines the patterns of policy change in the field of direct responses to unemployment in the UK. After discussing the nature of the policy area, the article proceeds to identify instances of policy innovation, persistence, succession and termination under the headings of Job Creation, Employment Subsidy, Training, and Youth. As this is a relatively new problem for British government there are several cases of policy innovation, but the most striking finding is of a high number of policy successions. Discussion is then focused upon the relevance of a range of factors which might explain the patterns of policy change deduced, suggesting that the most important of these have been (i) ‘symbolic pay offs’ of policy change; (ii) the in-built terminators in most special employment measures; (iii) the nature and strategic position of the unemployment policy community; (iv) changing cabinet objectives. It is concluded, despite the several problems of this form of analysis pin-pointed, that in this study programme changes were generally good indicators of policy change, providing a useful over-view of this important sphere of government policy.