Democracy representation and participation

Cyclopean ‘local’ government and the end of local democracy?

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Chris Game

As with another quite recent blog of mine, it’s important to start with the alert that most of its style, structure and content stem directly from its having been written in the first instance not for an academic readership, but as a column for probably this week’s Birmingham Post. There are a few additions and subtractions, plus, barring a dramatically uncharacteristic Lowtherian intervention, one guaranteeable difference: the title.

At the time of writing this intro I don’t know for certain what the Post editor’s choice of words and punctuation will be – except that it won’t comprise nine words, including three longish ones. Space and layout, you understand. It will, however – because regular authors do have at least some bargaining ‘say’ – open with that key word that many/most Post readers will barely recognise.

To summarise the whole thing: here in Britain we already have, and in England, following last December’s devolution White Paper, are about to develop still further, a scale of ‘local’ government that makes a complete mockery of the term ‘local’; and the present Government, with no noticeable public consultation, is embarked on increasing that non-local size still further – to truly Cyclopean dimensions.

And, as I sought to explain to the Post editor, by introducing this concept, rarely if ever used in modern political debate, both the Post and I will become – well, you never know – possibly a little bit famous. Here’s the reasoning.

First, ‘Cyclopean’, used in the context of local government.  Ancient Greek, pretty obviously, it originally described an architectural style in which the walls, towers and other fortifications of ancient cities like Mycenae (a 70-odd mile day trip SW of Athens) were constructed from massive limestone boulders – of the scale shown in the accompanying illustration – fitted extremely closely together without apparently having been substantially reshaped and without use of mortar or cement. 

So preternaturally impressive were these city constructions – the hilltop Mycenae was perhaps the most famous, but there were numerous others – that the myth developed that they must have been built by the Cyclopes, a race of superhuman giants in Greek mythology, and the only humans physically capable of creating such constructions. Hence ‘Cyclopean’ – to describe the assumed method and scale of a city’s governmental architecture, not the size of its residential population.

Somehow, though, towards the latter end of the 3,500 intervening years, the UK has developed, to an almost unique degree, its own interpretation of ‘Cyclopean local government’. Yes, there are loads of large buildings – Birmingham’s Council House and Central Library for starters, the Octagon, etc. – but there’s no Cyclopean mystery about what holds them together. Put crudely, it’s the concrete and steel, not some mystical manpower.

The UK’s, and particularly England’s, modern-day local government and its latest structural ‘reform’ have become almost entirely about scale. Instead of referring to the governance of, or provision of services for, a particular local community and its unique character, England’s ‘Cyclopean local government’ currently comprises just over 300 ‘local’ authorities, with populations averaging 180,000 – which is hardly our (or anyone’s) ‘everyday’ usage and understanding of that term ‘local’.

And yes, averaging. Which, of course, would make Birmingham’s 1.2 million population ‘super-Cyclopean’ – and the West Midlands Combined Authority’s 4 million ‘Mega-Cyclopean’. Or ‘hyper-Cyclopean’, which I personally slightly prefer, suggesting something beyond the bounds of reason, or control. We’ll return to that.

Some quick comparisons or contrasts: average size of German and Italian municipalities is around 7,500, Spain’s 5,700, and France, albeit as exceptional in its way as the UK, 1,900. Yes, slightly under one-hundredth the size of our average, and, by chance, roughly the same as our smallest, the Isles of Scilly, arguably our one ‘municipality’ that wouldn’t make a mockery of the term ‘autorité locale’.

The rest of the world, or first-time observers, find our scale figures as extraordinary as the Ancient Greeks found Mycenae. They are naturally curious as to how we do anything purporting to be genuinely ‘local’ government on such a manifestly non-local scale, and, above all, why.  Good questions, but not for a local newspaper column. Indeed, not for the likes of us mere citizens and voters either, because no one’s bothering to ask us.

The major redesign of England’s local government is currently in the hands of Angela Rayner – Deputy Prime Minister + (in any spare time) Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.  An early action was to cancel – arguably “legally risky”, if not unconstitutionally (see Google– ‘Cancellation of 2025 English local elections’) – nine May 2025 county and unitary council elections, she/someone in the Government having decided that these bodies had had their day and there would be no room for them in her new, but still undefined, single-tier England.

Rightly describing the UK as the “most centralised” country in Europe (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0xz4938z9o), Rayner’s apparent plan is to end central government’s micro-management by making ours, by a distance, the least localised – most Cyclopean – ‘local government’ certainly in Europe, if not the world (500,000 minimum), and, it would appear, without a great deal of consultation.

The ’plan’, in summary, represents the biggest and most transformative upheaval of English local government in my adult lifetime (sorry, you’ll have to work it out!), rushed/bullied through Parliament and local government itself with absolutely minimal consultation and consequential analysis. In short, modern-day Cyclopean local government.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Picture credit: https://stock.adobe.com/uk/images/odysseus-und-seine-gefahrten-fluchten-vor-dem-zyklopen-polyphem/608942497

Unsuccessful Political Parties. Exploring and Combining Party Death and Party Failure

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Julien van Ostaaijen and Sander Jennissen

‘I am fed up. It was interesting, fascinating, and frustrating. As a small faction it is difficult to be on top of everything and I noticed that I became less focused’. This is how one of many Dutch councillors explains why his party will stop having representatives after the election.

Participating in elections and having representatives elected is one of the main characteristics of political parties. However, political parties can be unsuccessful. They can stop having representatives elected. In the Netherlands, every four years, at least 15% of all Dutch local political parties lose all their representatives. What can happen to parties losing all representatives and what happened to the Dutch parties?

Figure 1: An oversight of unsuccessful parties: party death and party failure

In our article, we separate five possible reasons for political parties losing all representatives (Figure 1). In our framework, the first category is that of party death. In this category, the political party ceases to function as an independent, autonomous organisation. This category encompasses dissolution death (the party organisation no longer exists), merger death (the party has merged with another party), and absorption death (the party has been taken over by another party). The second category is that of party failure. In this category, the political party still functions as an independent, autonomous party organisation and is thus not ‘dead’. However, for other reasons, it no longer has elected representatives. This can be because of a mobilization failure (the party has ‘failed’ to present candidates for (re-)election and thus temporarily withdrawn from the election process) or electoral failure (the party participated in the election but failed to have any representatives elected).

In the Netherlands, we found 129 local political parties that had representative elected in the local elections of 2014, but no longer in 2018 (and most also not in the elections of 2022). Using several data sources, including election results, party websites and media reports, we analysed what had happened to these parties (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Results for local parties with no elected representatives in 2018

Our data show that about three-quarters of all the parties that ceased to have elected representatives after the 2018 local elections had effectively ‘died’, meaning that they ceased to exist as an autonomous organisation. However, most of the parties placed in this category had merged with other parties and therefore continued as part of a new party organisation. This pattern is closely connected to a trend in Dutch local political practice: between 2014 and 2022 the number of Dutch municipalities decreased by about 15% and many local party mergers took place in municipalities that were amalgamating around the same time. The remaining quarter of local parties with no representatives experienced party failure, meaning that they either did not gain sufficient votes to elect a representative, or decided to temporarily not participate in elections. It is noteworthy that the vast majority of these parties can be considered effectively dissolved four years later, in 2022, supporting the view that party failures, consisting of electoral and mobilization failures, are a prelude to party death. Nevertheless, the posited causal relationship should be further investigated.

Regarding our theoretical framework, we would urge to keep separating party death from party failure. In the literature, there are many different definitions and overlaps between concepts. Party death refers to the end of the party organisation. Party failure relates to not participating in the elections or not winning enough votes to elect a representative.

Looking forward, we believe that our framework provides greater clarity for analysing the final stages of political parties at both local and national levels. The five subcategories encompass the different ways in which parties are unsuccessful, i.e. have no elected representatives from one election to the next. The model can identify the circumstances that explain why this is the case. In the Dutch case this was largely due to municipal mergers and therefore party mergers. Applying the model in different countries with different systems will most likely lead to different results. Applying the model to national politics will also be a further test of its relevance.

Find our full article here: https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/reasons-political-parties-lose-their-representatives-combining-pa

Julien van Ostaaijen is a professor of Law & Safety at Avans University of Applied Sciences and an assistant professor in Public Administration at Tilburg University. His research interests include local institutions and parties, the relationship between society and politics, local safety, and good governance and countervailing power.

Rewiring Local Government for Citizen Engagement

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Jason Lowther

The Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) has published a new report, Rewiring Local Government for Citizen Engagement, which sets out a compelling case for reimagining the relationship between local authorities and the communities they serve. At a time of structural reform, fiscal constraint and lower public trust, the report argues that citizen engagement must become fully embedded local governance, rather than a peripheral activity.

The report identifies three interrelated conditions that are essential for effective engagement. First, local authorities must convene inclusive democratic spaces that enable deliberation, dialogue and collective decision-making. These spaces, whether in the form of citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting or neighbourhood forums, can help to rebuild trust and foster more responsive policymaking.

Second, councils must invest in building community capacity. This involves supporting citizens, particularly those from groups whose views are often neglected, to participate meaningfully in public life. It also requires sustained investment in community infrastructure, such as local venues, networks and organisations, which provide the foundations for civic engagement.  The report recognises that 15 years of austerity since 2010 has significantly reduced the availability of community meeting places such as libraries, neighbourhood offices, youth and community centres, and cultural and leisure services.

Third, the report highlights the importance of co-producing public services. By involving service users in the design and delivery of services, councils can ensure that provision is more closely aligned with the lived experiences and priorities of local people. Co-production also fosters innovation and strengthens the legitimacy of public institutions.

The report draws on a wide body of academic research and practical experience, both in the UK and internationally. It shows that democratic innovations are already taking root in many councils, despite the challenges posed by austerity and institutional inertia. Examples include digital engagement platforms, youth-led initiatives, and the devolution of powers to neighbourhood and parish levels.

However, the report also acknowledges the barriers that councils need to address. Organisational cultures, limited resources, the need to develop new skills in officers and members, and legitimate concerns among elected members about the implications of participatory approaches can all inhibit progress. The report calls for leadership, reform and investment to embed engagement in the everyday practices of governance.

We pay particular attention on the vital role of councillors, who are well placed to act as facilitators and mediators between communities and institutions. Supporting councillors to develop these roles is essential if engagement is to be sustained and meaningful. The report also emphasises the need to engage young people and to make appropriate use of digital tools.

In conclusion, Rewiring Local Government for Citizen Engagement offers a clear and evidence-based framework for strengthening local democracy. It argues that by embedding citizen engagement in governance structures and practices, councils can foster trust, improve outcomes and build more inclusive and resilient communities.

We will be discussing our findings with councils, central government and related think tanks and sector organisations over coming months.

The full report is available here:

Rewiring local government for citizen engagement_WEBDownload

Win an election and implement your manifesto – that’s novel!

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Image: Emily Sinclair/BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c367lry5ypxo

Chris Game

First, a reader alert. What follows is in essence an only marginally revised column written for and hopefully published in this week’s Birmingham Post, to which for many years now I’ve been a regular contributor. Thanks, at least in part, to the “many years”, I’m permitted a wide scope of subject matter, but for obvious reasons local government in some form or other is what I tend to resort to most frequently – not least around local election season.

With the Post’s Thursday publication date, this is a mixed blessing, knowing that most readers interested in these matters would very likely have learned the results of the elections before they read one’s prognostications and predictions. What follows here, then, is my third column focused on this year’s local (County/Unitary Council) elections, which were, of course, limited to just 24 of England’s 317 local authorities (plus the Isles of Scilly) and precisely none in, never mind Birmingham, the whole metropolitan West Midlands.

Faced with the alternative option of ignoring the topic altogether, I decided to focus on the four West Midlands County Councils: three with biggish, if declining, Conservative majorities – Shropshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire – plus STAFFORDSHIRE: Labour for decades, but Conservative since 2009, and, until the May council elections, with 55 Conservative councillors out of 62, almost as Tory as they come.

However … since last July, when the county’s parliamentary constituencies all went Labour, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party had been energetically hoping to build in Staffordshire on what statistically had been among its most promising performances. And indeed it did: Reform UK: 49 of the 62 County Council seats, leaving the previously controlling Conservatives with 10, and Labour, Greens and Independents 1 each. The Lib Dems, along with UKIP, the Workers Party of Britain and others, failed to score.

It typified results across the country. On what nationally was an exceptionally quiet election day, Reform UK increased its nation-wide base of just two councillors (both on Hampshire’s Havant Borough Council), to a relatively massive 677 (39% of the total seats contested) and gained majority control of no fewer than 10 of the 23 councils.

One can only speculate at some of the results that a fuller involvement of, say, the 130 unitary authorities, metropolitan districts and London boroughs might have produced. I concluded that Election Day column, though, not with any numerical predictions, but with Farage’s most publicised campaign observation/pledge: “We probably need a DOGE for every single county council in England”.

Which could have sounded a touch presumptuous from the Leader of a party who had approached that Election Day holding just two of the 1,700+ seats ‘up for grabs’ – but not from Farage.

I did wonder, though, what onlookers would make of that DOGE acronym (or, in some versions, D.O.G.E. – that’s how novel it is). Indeed, even Reform candidates, who probably knew at least that it stood for the love child of President Trump and the recently very departed Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency, trod carefully.

Created, they could possibly parrot, to “modernise information technology, maximise productivity and efficiency, and cut wasteful spending”, but did they have any real idea of how the function and office might work in a UK political context? Or did they possibly assume that, like so many campaign pledges, even if, rather incredibly, a DOGE majority did emerge, it would find itself, at least for the present, on the ‘too hard just now …. we’ve only just elected our Leader’ pile?

Certainly I, while having at least some idea of what county councils having an English DOGE might entail, would definitely NOT have predicted that, within just one month of those county elections, one of England’s biggest and traditionally most Conservative counties, KENT, would be preparing to face an ‘Elon Musk-style’ DOGE audit by a team of technical experts assembled specifically to analyse its £2.5 billion-plus budget spending and assess its financial efficiency.

Since the past weekend, the ‘Elon Musk-style’ bit will possibly have been played down, but not, seemingly, the ongoing implementation. With LANCASHIRE – £1.2 billion budget – already announced as next on the list, this just could prove insightful and potentially serious stuff.

Until May 1st, Kent County Council comprised 62 Conservatives, 12 Lib Dems, 4 Greens, 0 Reform UK.  Since then, it’s been 10 Conservatives, 6 Lib Dems, 5 Greens, and 49 Reform UK. If dramatic change is to be the agenda, Kent seemed an apt and attention-guaranteeing choice. 

By any measure, and almost whatever happens next, that – in my book, anyway – is an impressive achievement. There’s been, predictably enough, ‘Establishment’ outrage – “a superficial response to the deep problems of local government” … “initiating a review of local authority spending misunderstands the circumstances facing local authorities … All councils have been caught in an iron triangle of falling funding, rising demand, and legal obligations to deliver services. In that context every local authority has had to make difficult choices to cut services …” (Institute for Government).

On the other hand, win an election and implement your party manifesto! – a demonstration that turning out and voting in local elections, even in our exceedingly non-proportional electoral system – can produce policy action.

Or, rather, especially in our exceedingly non-proportional electoral system. Two of the new Combined Authority mayors (outside the West Midlands) were elected on under 30% of the votes cast, and obviously a much smaller percentage still of the registered electorate.

This follows the recent ditching of the Supplementary Vote in favour of ‘First-Past-The-Post’, where voters pick just one candidate, and the one with the most votes wins – even if, as this time in the West of England, that percentage was under a quarter of an already very modest turnout.

To me, anyway, it’s arguably even more important in these local/Mayoral elections than in parliamentary ones – for us, the elected Mayors, and democracy generally – that voters can indicate their first AND SECOND Mayoral preferences, thereby ensuring that, however low the turnout, the finally elected winner can claim the support of at least a genuine majority of voters.  Which means electoral reform – but that’s another column/blog.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Transport issues are the most common concern raised in residents’ petitions in London local government

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Richard Berry

The e-petitions system introduced by the UK Parliament has gained considerable attention in recent years. This is often when a noisy cause claims hundreds of thousands of signatures and forces its way onto the parliamentary agenda. At the time of writing, for instance, there are live petitions for suspending all immigration, rejoining the European Union, reducing the state pension age and changing the parliamentary electoral system.

One might question the feasibility of these suggestions. They may indicate high levels of popular support for an idea, however they call for major shifts in government policy, significant investment of public funds or far-reaching legislative change. Governments would ordinarily have determined their stance on such ideas without any further prompting from petitioners, even significant numbers of them.

In contrast, local government should be fertile ground for petitioners. The subjects of petitions submitted to councils are often hyper-local issues and, in theory at least, much more realistic in their ambitions.

Catherine Bochel and Hugh Bochel have studied the use of petitions in English local government and described the benefits to both local authorities and their residents. In summary, they have found petitions can provide access to politics for citizens without requiring a significant amount of resource. A well-run petitions system can come to decisions that are seen as fair by the petitioners, even if they do not get their desired outcomes, and can provide an educative function. For councils, a petitions system can be a means of receiving ideas and information, which may inform future policy development and service provision.

The London Assembly Research Unit has recently conducted research into how petitions are used in local government in London. We found that 28 of the 32 London boroughs (87.5%) offer an e-petitions platform on their websites. In a couple of boroughs these are only accessible to registered users of the site – that is, local residents with an online account with the council – but in most cases they were accessible to any visitor to the site.

Looking at the calendar year 2023, we were able to obtain data on the number of submitted petitions for 26 boroughs. There was significant variation, with Barnet Council receiving 45 petitions and some not receiving any. The average per borough across the year was 11 petitions.

Chart 1 below presents information on the number of signatures received per petition. Most received relatively few signatures, with 26 being the median number of signatures. However, a few received very high numbers – 11 petitions across all boroughs received more than 1,000 signatures – bring the mean number of signatures per petition up to 187.

Chart 1: Number of signatures on e-petitions to London boroughs, 2023

Source: London Assembly Research Unit. Based on petitions data for 26 out of 32 boroughs

We also considered the topics of petitions submitted to boroughs. We found, somewhat surprisingly, that there was one dominant theme, transport, as shown in Chart 2.

In London, responsibility for most public transport and control of major roads is held by a city-wide strategic authority, Transport for London, overseen by the Mayor of London. Yet boroughs still control the majority of London’s roads, and we found this is where many petitions focused, as people sought changes to the streets where they live.

We see, for instance, that 71 residents of the London Borough of Ealing have called for the enforcement of the speed limit on one local road. 157 residents of the City of Westminster supported moving the location of an e-bike parking bay that had been blocking the pavement in one area. In the London Borough of Sutton, 52 residents signed a petition for the resurfacing one road in a state of disrepair.

Chart 2: Topic areas of e-petitions submitted to London boroughs, 2023

Source: London Assembly Research Unit. Based on petitions data for 26 out of 32 boroughs

The growth of online petitions systems has been the perhaps the most important development of recent times in this field. Another change that has coincided with the rise of e-petitions is that, from being the passive recipient of petitions generated externally, local authorities are now playing an active role in hosting the online platforms on which petitions are managed.

This was encouraged by the 2009 Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act, which places a requirement on English local authorities to operate schemes for the handling of petitions from local residents. Although this requirement was repealed just two years later in the Localism Act 2011, systems had been introduced and in many cases have remained. In a very real sense, they are helping to facilitate campaigns focused on challenging councils’ own policies, which itself is a sign of a healthy democracy.

Richard Berry is the manager of the Research Unit at the London Assembly, which provides an impartial research and analysis service designed to inform Assembly scrutiny. The author would like to thank Kate First and William Weihermüller for conducting research cited in this article. All publications from the London Assembly Research Unit are available here.

Dusting down the cautious welcome: Initial reflections on the devolution white paper

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Phil Swann

When I was director of strategy and communications at the LGA I was frequently criticised, by the late professor John Stewart among others, for issuing press releases “cautiously welcoming” one Blairite initiative or another.

The criticism was probably justified, but I would definitely have deployed that phrase in response to the government’s recently published devolution white paper.

There is undoubtedly a lot to welcome, not least the stated commitment to devolution, the additional powers for metro mayors, the revival of strategic planning, its reference to struggling small unitary councils and the focus on audit and standards.

There are, however, at least four reasons to be cautious.

First, every serious reformer of local government since George Goschen in the 1860s has argued that local government finance and structures should be reformed together. No government has ever had the political will or energy to do so. This government has also ducked the opportunity. As a result, this white paper will not fulfil its potential.

Second, the current mess and confusion in the structure of English local government is the result of incremental change. Just think of Peter Shore’s “organic change” and Michael Heseltine’s ill-fated Banham Commission. There is a real danger that this government will run out of restructuring energy or time. The contrast with Scotland and Wales, where local government was reorganised in one go, could not be starker.

Third, the effectiveness of the structures being proposed will depend on the quality of the relationships between mayors and councils, between councils and parishes and between ministers and mayors, councils and parishes. In England we are not good at relationships like these and there is precious little in the white paper to signal the trust, effort and imagination that will be needed to make these relationships work better than the previous ones did.

Finally, key to the revival of local government and effective devolution is a revival of citizen engagement in local politics and local governance. Word has it this will be addressed in a forthcoming white paper, but it should be central to this one.

So, a very cautious welcome it is.

Phil Swann is studying for a PhD on central-local government relations at INLOGOV.