Influences of the Hung Situation

Abstract

Despite the widely-acknowledged ‘tidal force’ of increasing party politicisation in local government (Widdicombe Report, 1986 pp. 58–60), the diversity of British local government remains. The process of party politicisation has not occurred with uniform speed in all parts of the country or all types of authority. Nor has it resulted in anything like a complete homogeneity of local politics. To quote Gyford et al.:

there is, above all, variation — between majority administrations of the different parties, across types of authority, and even within the same authority as its party arithmetic changes. ... (even) if our local councils seem on the surface statistically and formally more homogeneous, beneath that surface there is still a wealth of diversity to be discovered. (Gyford, Leach and Game, 1989, p. 38)