The Character of Local Political Innovation

Abstract

In this book we seek to outline a vision of a responsive, flexible and above all democratic approach to organising public, and specifically local government, services. As we explained in Chapter 1, decentralisation may assume a variety of forms, but in the context of local government the dominant form will tend to be one which gives emphasis to spatially-based forms of decentralisation — ones built upon the catchment areas of particular facilities such as schools and leisure centres, or upon the spatial distribution of subjectively defined neighbourhoods, or upon political boundaries such as electoral wards.