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Mergers and Acquisitions: Narratives, Rhetoric and Reality of Double Centralisation Through Structural Upheaval

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Local Government in England

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Abstract

The chapter examines how the dominant views about the purpose of local government are reflected, its shape, size and in the map of local government itself, as well as in debates about mergers and amalgamations and whether local government should be single or multi-tired. To understand those debates, the chapter examines the centralist and localist arguments and stories associated with particular structural preferences for local government and how those arguments are designed to convince that a particular organisational approach to local government is the best of all possible approaches. The chapter explores how the competing technocratic demands of efficiency and effectiveness and cost reduction are traded against the needs of local democracy, community engagement and involvement with local government in its very structure and size.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Colin Copus & Rachel Wall

  2. Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Mark Roberts

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  1. Colin Copus
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  2. Mark Roberts
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  3. Rachel Wall
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Copus, C., Roberts, M., Wall, R. (2017). Mergers and Acquisitions: Narratives, Rhetoric and Reality of Double Centralisation Through Structural Upheaval. In: Local Government in England . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-26418-3_4

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