Devolution

How constrained is UK local government? International evidence on spending, taxation and autonomy

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Paul Joyce, Jason Lowther, Philip Whiteman

What place does local government occupy within the UK system of public governance? International evidence suggests that UK local government combines three characteristics: comparatively low expenditure, small locally attributed tax revenue and medium-low institutional autonomy.

We now explore the evidence, draw conclusions, and clarify some of the assumptions and limitations of our conclusions.

Recently published OECD data indicate that United Kingdom local authorities account for expenditure equivalent to 9.3 per cent of GDP in 2023. This was below the EU27 average of 11.1 per cent of local government expenditure. Locally attributed tax revenue for the UK amounted to 1.7 per cent of GDP compared with an  EU27 average of 3.7 per cent. 

In this blog, “local government” refers to the OECD’s S.1313 local-government subsector. Depending on national institutional arrangements, this may include regional and other intermediate authorities as well as municipalities. See the note at the end of the blog for more on the OECD reporting of data.

The UK differs considerably in its expenditure and fiscal arrangements from some northern European countries, particularly Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, which have long been rated as having high scores on the published estimates of “Government Effectiveness” (see the World Bank published Worldwide Governance Indicators database). For the countries included in our analysis, local government tax revenue and expenditure are each moderately and positively associated with national government effectiveness (r=0.43 and r=0.44, respectively).

Three points should be kept in mind. First, these correlations establish association, not causation.

Second, “Government Effectiveness” is a national governance indicator that is based on perceptions of public services, the civil service, policy formulation and implementation, and government credibility. It is not a direct measure of local-government effectiveness. Its use in this analysis is on the grounds that local government is part of a multi-level governance system, interacts administratively and financially with central government, and may affect the effectiveness of the national governance system.

Third, the tax revenue data reported by the OECD do not measure only taxes over which subnational and local authorities have unilateral control and therefore are not appropriate for measuring tax autonomy. According to the OECD (2025), the reported tax revenue figure is partly own-source taxes and partly taxes shared with central government.  We cannot immediately infer from these data how much discretion subnational and local governments possess over rates, tax bases, reliefs or use of revenue.

The results suggest that a relatively large and fiscally significant local-government sector is compatible with effective government, but they do not demonstrate that a large local fiscal role causes government effectiveness. Two findings stand out:

1. Countries with comparatively high local government expenditure or tax revenue generally have medium-high or high Government Effectiveness scores (see the World Bank’s databank).

2. Countries with low local government expenditure or tax revenue display a much wider range of government effectiveness scores. Türkiye, Mexico, and Colombia are at the lower end and Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland are at the upper end.

The relationship involving tax revenue data is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Scatterplot of government effectiveness and local government tax revenue, 2023

Note on tax data in Figure 1: For unitary countries we use the OECD’s main subnational figure, which corresponds to the S.1313 local-government subsector. For federal and quasi-federal countries, we use the separate “Local government alone” figures.

Using OECD data for 2023, we found a strong positive correlation (r=0.79) between local government expenditure and local government tax revenue. We hypothesise that countries with larger local government sectors provide the required finance partly through transfers of money from central government and partly through local taxes, fees and charges.  Figure 2 illustrates the existence of a strong correlation between local government expenditure and tax revenue.

Figure 2. Scatterplot of local government expenditure and local government tax revenue, 2023

Note on tax and expenditure data in Figure 2: For unitary countries we use the OECD’s main subnational figure, which corresponds to the S.1313 local-government subsector. For federal and quasi-federal countries, we use the separate “Local government alone” figures.

Figure 2 also reveals the presence of a small group of countries in which locally attributed tax revenue is lower than would be expected based on the scale of their expenditure. This is evident visually: the countries lie noticeably below the general expenditure-taxation relationship implicit in the figure. As can be seen, this group includes Austria, Czechia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom.

Table 1 presents two measures of the relationship between tax revenue and expenditure for these countries: the tax coverage ratio and the local government tax-expenditure gap. The tax coverage ratio is calculated here by dividing tax revenue by expenditure and multiplying by 100. The tax-expenditure gap is calculated by subtracting tax revenue from expenditure, with both expressed as percentages of GDP. It represents the scale of local government expenditure not matched by locally attributed tax revenue. It is not a measure of a budget deficit and should not be understood as consisting entirely of central government transfers.

Table 1 Local government expenditure and tax revenue in selected countries, 2023

CountryLocal-government expenditure (% GDP)Local-government tax revenue (% GDP)Tax coverage ratio (%)Local-government tax–expenditure gap (% of GDP)
Estonia10.50.21.910.3
Czechia12.20.43.311.8
Lithuania9.20.33.38.9
Slovenia8.90.55.68.4
Slovak Republic8.50.55.98.0
Netherlands12.71.29.411.5
Austria9.21.314.17.9
United Kingdom9.31.718.37.6

Source: calculated from OECD (2025) data. For Austria, the “local government alone” figure is used.

The fiscal picture shown in Table 1 raises a broad institutional question: does it reflect a conception of local government as a distinct sphere of democratic governance, or primarily as an administrative means of delivering responsibilities determined nationally? The existence of low tax coverage (e.g., less than 20%) and a relatively large tax-expenditure gap (e.g., over 7 % of GDP) do not imply a fiscal imbalance because local government receives funding through a variety of mechanisms. Nevertheless, low tax coverage and a large gap is consistent with a system in which local authorities have significant service responsibilities but comparatively small locally attributed tax revenue.

We stress that expenditure and tax data do not by themselves establish the extent of local government autonomy.  For autonomy has constitutional, political, and administrative dimensions as well as fiscal dimensions.

Therefore, we need to examine autonomy more comprehensively. We turn to the Local Autonomy Index (LAI 2.0) (see Ladner, Keuffer and Bastianen, 2025). According to this index, UK local government belonged to the medium-low autonomy group during the period 2015 to 2020. Its LAI score was below both the EU and OECD mean scores. It was not the lowest on local autonomy: some countries, including Ireland, Russia and Belarus, recorded lower levels of local autonomy than the United Kingdom.

The UK received a comparatively low score on the LAI’s “non-interference” dimension. This suggests that UK local government is subject to significant forms of financial and administrative supervision.

In summary, we conclude that the expenditure, revenue and autonomy evidence suggests that UK local government occupies a comparatively constrained position within the wider system of public governance. Local authorities perform important public functions, but the locally attributed tax revenue is small, and their institutional autonomy is only medium-low by international standards. In England, statutory intervention in authorities judged by national government to be failing provides a particularly visible example of the vertical powers of supervision and control retained by central government.

These findings do not demonstrate that greater fiscal decentralisation would automatically improve public services or government effectiveness. They do, however, provide grounds for carefully designed and evaluated pilot reforms intended to strengthen local fiscal and strategic autonomy. Such experiments would need to assess not only their effects on local choice and accountability, but also their implications for service performance, fiscal sustainability and territorial equality.

Note

The OECD uses “subnational government” to encompass state, regional and local government. In unitary countries without a regional tier, this may consist primarily of local government, which is municipal councils and higher levels of local government. In the case of the OECD data on the UK, the devolved administrations of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are included in central government. Most of the countries in the OECD data are unitary countries, and so mostly we are talking about local government when looking at subnational data. The federal and quasi-federal countries included in this analysis are Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Spain, and Switzerland, for which local government data alone is also reported.

References

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2025) Subnational governments: Structure and finance. 2025 edition. Paris: OECD. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-issues/subnational-finance-and-investment/subnational-governments-infrastructure-finance-2025.pdf (Accessed: 21 July 2026).

Ladner, A., Keuffer, N. and Bastianen, A. (2025) ‘Local autonomy around the world: the updated and extended Local Autonomy Index (LAI 2.0)’, Regional & Federal Studies, 35(2), pp. 163–185. doi: 10.1080/13597566.2023.2267990.

World Bank (2026) Worldwide Governance Indicators. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators (Accessed: 29 July 2026).

New Inlogov Policy Papers

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Jason Lowther

I am delighted to let you know about four new policy papers published today by Inlogov. 

Challenger Parties in Power Locally

https://epapers.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4446

This report examines the experience of ‘challenger parties’, political parties without previous experience of government, on entering power in local government. It examines the experiences of challenger parties in English local government following electoral gains in May 2025, focusing on how Reform UK and the Green Party of England and Wales have adapted to executive roles. Evidence from multiple case studies shows that, rather than transforming local governance, these parties have generally worked within existing institutional frameworks, with some early disruption typically giving way to learning and stabilisation as members adjust to formal procedures and constraints.  The research was developed with colleagues in Inlogov’s monthly Local Government Network webinar. 

The Participatory Council

http://epapers.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4443/

Councils need to develop participatory governance arrangements to address the declined levels of public trust in government, by giving residents a meaningful voice in decision making, improving transparency, and ensuring policies better reflect community needs and priorities. This report examines how councils can support institutional culture change towards participatory policymaking, drawing lessons from UK and international experiences. Too often, great work by individual officers, members or specific projects is lost because the council as an institution is ill prepared for public participation. The report argues that participatory policymaking must be deeply embedded within governance structures to enable meaningful engagement, mobilise diverse communities, and support mutual learning and transformative change. Achieving this requires facilitative leadership and the cultivation of boundary-spanning roles that bridge divides between government, civil society, and local communities. Advancing inclusive participation also demands an intersectional approach that centres marginalised voices to address systemic inequalities. This paper was written by Dr Sonia Bussu.

Paying For Democracy

https://epapers.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4445

Councillor remuneration plays a critical role in shaping participation in local democracy and the effectiveness of council governance, yet the current system in England remains inconsistent and increasingly misaligned with modern expectations. The total annual cost is around £230 million. Allowances vary widely between councils, reflecting a structure that has not kept pace with inflation or the growing demands of the role. This misalignment contributes to persistent barriers to participation, particularly for working-age individuals, those without independent financial means, and carers, with evidence indicating that remuneration levels directly affect both the diversity of candidates and their retention in office. Addressing these challenges requires setting more accessible allowance levels to broaden participation, enhancing consistency and transparency, expanding and normalising support mechanisms, and improving the evidence base to support informed and equitable remuneration decisions. Thanks to Emeritus Professor Colin Copus and Mr Ray Tomkinson for co-authoring this paper.

Constitutionalising English Local Government?

http://epapers.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4444

Government discourse increasingly accentuates devolution and local autonomy, using constitutional language. This paper aims to take the debate forward by examining the prospects for constitutional entrenchment of English local government within the existing uncodified constitutional framework. Encompassing both strategic and principal authorities within the term “local government”, it assesses what entrenchment could mean in the absence of a codified constitution, what obstacles stand in its way, and how constitutional weight could accumulate over time. The paper was written by Inlogov associate Prof Jonathan Davies. 

From top-down diagnosis to co-design: what youth‑led evidence adds to the Government’s review of Young people and Work

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Sonia Bussu

The government’s Young People and Work interim report presents a stark diagnosis. Nearly one million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training (NEET), and the problem is structural, longstanding and getting worse. The report describes a system failure spanning education, labour markets, health and welfare, and it concludes that the UK lacks a coherent “participation system” to support transitions into work. It is a powerful diagnosis of a system that no longer supports young people. But it is also striking that much of what the report “discovers” has already been articulated vividly by young people themselves, many times over!

The INSPIRE programme in the West Midlands offers exactly this missing perspective: lived experience. Through participatory research and legislative theatre, a diverse group of young people aged 14–17 from across the region identified specific barriers, staged a play to reflect on these barriers with the community and policymakers, and co‑designed policy proposals to address them. Set alongside the government’s diagnosis, this youth‑led evidence helps move from description of problems to concrete and youth-led solutions.

Structural barriers are visible in lived experience

The government review highlights three major structural issues: reduced entry‑level jobs, fragmented systems and unequal access to support. The INSPIRE young co-creators showed us how they encounter these issues day to day. Their play, You’re Fried! The realities of youth employment, depicts a system where career guidance is rushed and superficial, where broken weblinks and empty words replace meaningful support, where opportunities are inaccessible, in a cycle of “entry‑level” roles that always require prior experience.

You’re Fried! The Realities of Youth Employment
Scene One: “What Should I Do With My Life?” revealed how love, when bound by fear, could become a cage. A young apprentice’s dream was crushed beneath the weight of parental expectations, where university was seen as the only safe route to independence.
Scene Two: “It’s All on You” exposed the hollow machinery of career guidance – rushed advisors offering broken links and empty words, leaving hope behind in the rush to tick boxes.
Scene Three: “Link Not Found” brought a computer to life, its customer-service smile masking the cold indifference of digital systems that fail those who need them most.
Scene Four: “This Isn’t What I Signed Up For” pulled back the curtain on the myth of ‘real-world experience’ – a McDonald’s shift where understaffing and blame replaced training and support.
Scene Five: “It’s Your Fault” returned to the family living room, where systemic failure was rewritten as personal shame, completing a devastating circle.

The government review links NEET risk to socioeconomic background, race, disability and geography. The INSPIRE young people described the same dynamics of discrimination and constrained expectations. Systemic failures are often reframed as individual shortcomings, reflecting a system that assesses young people but does not adequately support them, placing the burden of navigating complexity on individuals.

While employers face uncertainty and capacity constraints, young people also reported the limited support on accessing valuable work placements or apprenticeships, as they suffer from limited training, little supervision and weak protections. In these situations, responsibility again falls on the young person to adapt. The issue is not a lack of motivation from young people, but a lack of fit between systems and the realities young people face. Young people want to work but are navigating fragmented and often inaccessible pathways.

Youth‑led proposals provide concrete solutions

One of the most innovative aspects of the INSPIRE project is its methodology. Legislative theatre allowed young people not just to describe problems, but to stage them, rehearse alternatives, and co-create policy responses. We co‑designed  proposals to improve access to work experience and employment through creative and structured dialogues between young people, policymakers, employers and communities.

Several of these proposals directly address the issues identified in the government review.

1. Earlier and family‑centred career support
The review highlights the importance of early intervention, noting that disadvantage accumulates over time. The INSPIRE young people proposed starting career conversations at primary school level and involving families, recognising that aspirations and knowledge about career pathways are shaped early and collectively.

2. Accessible and community‑based careers guidance
To address fragmentation and inequality in provision, participants proposed delivering career support also through community organisations and the voluntary sector.

3. Reform of work experience and employer engagement
In response to declining entry points into the labour market, young people proposed structured work experience, mentoring and exposure to workplaces through site visits and flexible placement formats. They also highlighted the need to prepare employers to support young people effectively. Working with local schools, we are now co-creating standards for youth‑friendly employers.

4. Cross‑sector coordination
The government review identifies fragmentation across institutions as a core problem.
INSPIRE proposals include the creation of a cross‑sector alliance on youth employment in Birmingham bringing together young people, education, employers, public bodies and community organisations to coordinate action.

5. Youth‑led evaluation and accountability
Young people know best what they need. They proposed mechanisms for evaluating careers services and employer practices, embedding youth perspectives into ongoing policy development. A youth-led evaluation of career and employment support is now being implemented, co-led by Birmingham City Council and the University of Birmingham.

Rethinking policy: from programmes to relationships

A recurring criticism in participation is the lack of follow-through from policymakers. Young participants expressed frustration with commitments that are vague or delayed, or carelessly forgotten, which deeply undermines their trust in institutions.

INSPIRE suggests that the answer is not simply better engagement programmes, but different relationships between institutions and young people, where trust depends on feedback loops, transparent commitments, and long-term engagement rather than one-off consultations. It’s not simply about redesigning systems but redistributing power.

Young people do not need to be fixed or made “work-ready”. They need systems that recognise their knowledge, respond to their realities, and involve them as partners in shaping policy that affects them.

Sonia researches and teaches public policy. Her main research interests are participatory governance and democratic innovations, and creative and arts-based methods for research and public engagement.

Now is the time to refresh local politics

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Photo by Michael D Beckwith on Pexels.com

Phil Swann

The sad state of many neighbourhoods and communities, with their desolated high streets, has been identified as a significant driver of the rejection of politicians and political parties which lay behind the May 2026 local election results

As the shallowness of programmes such as Pride in Place demonstrates, this is not an issue that central government can tackle alone. It requires local action reflecting local circumstances. Yet local councils lack the resources and levers to secure lasting improvements. Meeting this challenge requires deep collaboration between central and local government at a time when changes in political control locally will make that more difficult to achieve than ever.

Is it too naïve to hope that engagement between local political actors, local people and local organisations and groups could inform new approaches to revitalise struggling local communities? Could the involvement of national politicians in the process secure the reform of local government finance and the provision of new powers necessary to enable localities to act?

Writing in 1939, when he was leader of the Labour Group on Oxford City Council, Richard Crossman, argued that one of the strongest arguments for local party politics “is that they do provide a method of creating interest and focussing attention upon the enormously important issues as stake.” Crossman, who went to serve as Harold Wilson’s Minister for Housing and Local Government, added that “the real basis of successful political democracy is not to be found in politics at all, but below the surface in the organisation of a whole network of popular interests into pressure groups.”

Writing just over 40 years later, when he was leader of Sheffield Council, David Blunkett also called for collective local action. He argued that politicians and communities should “do things together rather than having them done for us, to remove the conditions of poverty and dependence rather than trap people in them, and thus to develop a sense of supporting and being supported.” He made a similar point in 2004, when he was Home Secretary, recognising the importance of a partnership between local politicians and citizens “to revitalise democracy and strengthen citizenship and civil society, so that people are part of the process of reform and modernisation.”

Now more than ever it is important to follow the advice of Crossman and Blunkett and refresh local politics through collaboration with local groups and communities to deliver improvements locally and secure reforms nationally to enable that local action. Succeeding in doing this could also begin to restore trust in politics and politicians.

Phil Swann is studying for a PhD at INLOGOV in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Birmingham, on the contribution of politicians to central-local government relations.

What works in local growth and skills? Learning from recent evaluations

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Jason Lowther

Following the previous blog on homelessness and rough sleeping, this piece turns to another major area of local government activity: local growth and skills programmes. Here too, evaluation activity has expanded rapidly, with a mix of national frameworks, programme‑level syntheses and place‑based studies. Taken together, these evaluations offer a valuable, and still evolving, picture of what is working, what is proving harder, and what local systems actually need to deliver economic outcomes.

Four strands of evidence stand out.

MHCLG local growth evaluation

The MHCLG local growth evaluation programme is significant not just for its findings, but for its approach to evaluation itself. Rather than focusing on single programmes, it introduces a portfolio‑level strategy covering multiple funds aimed at improving sub‑national economic performance.

Recent work, including the process evaluation of the Local Growth Fund and Getting Building Fund, highlight both strengths and tensions in the model. Decentralised decision‑making and the “single pot” approach enabled locally tailored investment and stronger alignment with local strategies. Private sector involvement and local prioritisation were widely valued.  However, delivery was shaped by pressures to deliver “shovel‑ready” projects quickly, particularly in the Getting Building Fund, which sometimes limited strategic coherence and innovation. Governance arrangements, while locally responsive, were often complex, and approaches to monitoring and evaluation were variable. More broadly, the evaluation underlines the difficulty of measuring long‑term economic impact, particularly where interventions are diverse and outcomes unfold over many years.

Multiply deep dives (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)

The Multiply deep dives bring a skills and employability perspective, focusing on adult numeracy provision across the devolved nations. Multiply was a £559 million UK‑wide programme designed to improve functional numeracy, with flexible, locally designed delivery models.

The deep dives use qualitative case studies, interviews with delivery partners and analysis of monitoring data, focusing on one area in each nation and drawing on wider place‑level evidence. A central finding is that local flexibility enabled innovation, particularly in embedding numeracy in real‑world contexts such as employment, parenting or financial capability.

At the same time, the evaluations highlight familiar delivery challenges. Short delivery timescales, in some cases just a year, created pressure to scale quickly, often leading to adaptation of existing provision rather than genuinely new approaches. Partnership working across councils, colleges and the voluntary sector was essential but time‑consuming to establish. Engagement with target groups remained difficult, particularly where low confidence rather than low skill was the primary barrier.

Overall, the evidence suggests that contextualised, learner‑centred approaches are promising, but require time, trust and sustained funding to embed.

UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) interim evaluation synthesis

The UKSPF interim synthesis report provides perhaps the most comprehensive current view, drawing together 34 place‑based evaluations across the UK. It focuses on process learning rather than impact, reflecting the relatively early stage of delivery.

A clear headline is the importance of local autonomy. Across almost all areas, the ability for Lead Local Authorities to design interventions around local needs was strongly valued, particularly compared to the perceived rigidity of previous EU funds. This flexibility supported alignment with local strategies, more responsive delivery, and better integration across policy areas.

Other success factors included strong local programme management teams, continuity of provision (using UKSPF to sustain previously funded services), and the ability to combine funding streams to create coherent local offers. However, challenges were equally consistent. Tight central government timelines constrained planning and procurement, limited consultation, and created recruitment difficulties. As with other programmes, evaluation and outcome measurement remained underdeveloped.

The synthesis highlights a key tension: local freedom within central constraints. While devolution of decision‑making was real, the operating environment still imposed significant limits on what places could achieve.

UKSPF place‑based evaluations

The place‑based evaluations add depth to this picture by examining how UKSPF worked in specific localities. Using mixed‑methods approaches – including contribution analysis, surveys, interviews and case studies – across 34 areas, they explore how combinations of interventions interact within local systems.

These studies show that outcomes are highly context‑dependent. In some areas, UKSPF supported visible improvements in community facilities, local business support, and employability outcomes. In others, impacts were harder to detect, reflecting both the early stage of delivery and the complexity of local economies. What emerges clearly is that programme success depends less on individual projects than on how they are aligned and sequenced locally.

The evaluations also reinforce the importance of existing capacity and partnerships. Areas with mature governance arrangements, strong voluntary sector links, and prior experience of managing regeneration funding were better able to mobilise quickly and deliver coherent programmes.

What does this mean for local authorities?

Across these evaluations, several consistent lessons emerge.

First, local flexibility works, particularly when supported by capacity and stability. Both UKSPF and Multiply demonstrate the value of devolved decision‑making. However, the benefits are uneven, depending on local capability, existing partnerships, and the time available to plan and deliver.

Second, time is the missing ingredient in local growth policy. Tight delivery timescales appear across all programmes, driving a focus on “shovel‑ready” activity, limiting innovation, and constraining partnership development. Economic change, skills development and behaviour change all take longer than funding cycles typically allow.

Third, integration matters more than individual interventions. The strongest evidence, particularly from the place‑based evaluations, is that impact depends on how interventions fit together. Skills, business support and community investment are interdependent, yet funding streams and evaluation frameworks often treat them separately.

Fourth, measurement remains a weak spot. Across the local growth portfolio, there are persistent challenges in demonstrating impact and value for money. This is partly methodological, but also reflects the reality that many outcomes (productivity, employment, resilience) are long‑term and influenced by wider factors.

Finally, these evaluations underline a familiar but important point: local systems deliver national priorities. Where programmes align with local strategies, build on existing partnerships and allow room for adaptation, they show promise. Where they are constrained by short timescales, fragmented funding or complex governance, delivery becomes more transactional.

The conclusions from the local growth and skills evaluations strongly align with, and are reinforced by last month’s excellent report from the Institute for Government, Designing and delivering employment support.  The IfG goes further in diagnosing why these issues persist and what structural reform is needed. Both emphasise the value of local flexibility, integration and tailoring to place, with the IfG explicitly arguing that strategic authorities are best placed to design joined‑up employment support aligned to local labour markets and services. Likewise, both bodies of evidence highlight fragmentation and poor coordination across programmes as major barriers, with the IfG noting longstanding failures to “shift the dial” despite multiple national schemes, echoing local growth evaluations on disjointed funding and siloed interventions. The IfG report places significant emphasis on the limits of centralised systems and the need for multi‑year funding, capability and accountability frameworks.

In short, the local growth evaluations provide grounded evidence of what works in practice, while the IfG report offers a more explicit systems diagnosis: that without sustained devolution, integration and long‑term investment, the conditions needed for those “what works” approaches to succeed will remain constrained.

Understanding Mayoral Accountability: Insights from Japan and the UK

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Jason Lowther

What makes a directly elected mayor genuinely accountable to the public? How do contrasting political and administrative systems shape the conduct, choices, and leadership styles of those entrusted with substantial local authority? These questions were central to a recent Inlogov seminar led by Akinari Takehisa, former mayor of Setouchi City in Japan, and as part of his PhD studies at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, visiting researcher at Nottingham Business School. Drawing on a rare combination of long mayoral experience and rigorous academic research, Aki offered a compelling comparative exploration of how accountability is constructed and enacted within Japan and the United Kingdom.

Aki’s work centres on executive mayors, leaders who uniquely embody both political and managerial authority. Unlike council leaders or ministers, who operate within more layered decision-making structures, executive mayors face the dual responsibility of providing political direction and ensuring the effective, lawful, and ethical delivery of public services. This dual role offers the promise of coherence and visibility in leadership, while simultaneously demanding a careful balance between responsiveness, organisational discipline, professional values, and legal boundaries.

Why Compare Japan and the UK?

Although Japan and the UK represent different political traditions, their local government systems share notable similarities. Both countries are advanced democracies with historically strong central oversight of municipal administration. Both have grappled with questions of local leadership and experimented with models aimed at enhancing the authority and public visibility of mayors.  Japan has adopted the directly elected mayor model across all of its 1,718 municipalities, embedding it deeply into local governance. The UK, by contrast, has applied the model selectively, introducing executive mayors in just 13 principal local authorities since 2002. This contrast creates a rich basis for comparison: one system fully institutionalised, the other still evolving.

But the most significant insights emerge from how each country structures accountability. Japan’s governance arrangements involve vertically layered responsibilities shared between national, prefectural and municipal governments. This can foster helpful coordination, but it can also confuse responsibility when things go wrong. The UK, meanwhile, relies heavily on arm’s-length accountability mechanisms, with statutory roles such as Section 151 Officers and Monitoring Officers acting as key guardians of financial integrity and legal compliance. These institutional safeguards create clearer boundaries around mayoral authority.

Three Core Questions

Aki’s research explores three interrelated questions. The first concerns how institutional environments in Japan and the UK shape mayoral accountability. The second looks at how personal characteristics (leadership styles, professional backgrounds, and the use of performance information) influence accountable behaviour. The third examines the behavioural traits that support or undermine accountability, identified through interviews and narrative analysis.

To address these questions, Aki conducted extensive fieldwork: interviews with 15 mayors and six key stakeholders in Japan, and with six mayors and six stakeholders in the UK. This qualitative evidence was supplemented with a literature review and advanced comparative techniques, including fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), which allows researchers to understand complex relationships across multiple cases.

What the Early Findings Reveal

A first major insight concerns the impact of institutional contexts. In Japan, accountability reforms have unfolded gradually since the 1990s, driven by incremental devolution and efforts to improve transparency. The use of performance information has grown, though its uptake varies significantly between municipalities. In the UK, accountability has evolved in more dramatic cycles. Reforms associated with New Public Management in the 1980s, followed by the Best Value regime in the late 1990s and 2000s, significantly expanded performance oversight before many national requirements were rolled back during the austerity era after 2010.

A second key finding arises from the fsQCA analysis. Mayors who demonstrated consistently high levels of political, hierarchical, professional and legal accountability were far more likely to sustain long and stable careers. By contrast, those whose professional or legal accountability was weak were more likely to experience short or troubled terms, particularly in Japan where mayors enjoy substantial personal discretion. Interestingly, extensive use of performance information did not necessarily correlate with stronger accountability. Its effectiveness depended on how thoughtfully and transparently it was applied.

Aki also found that behavioural characteristics play a decisive role. Inclusive leadership, transparency, ethical judgement, and constructive collaboration with professional officers strengthened accountability in both countries. Conversely, secrecy, impulsive or populist decision‑making, and blurred boundaries between political campaigning and administrative neutrality frequently undermined it. Japan and the UK each demonstrated examples of positive “synergies” between political and managerial roles, such as the ability to commit to long‑term policies or communicate strategy clearly to the public. But both also exhibited negative synergies when these roles clashed or overlapped in unhelpful ways.

Conclusions

Aki’s emerging conclusions highlight the importance of recognising accountability as a multidimensional and dynamic practice. Japan continues to advance its approach through gradual decentralisation, while the UK contends with the legacies of shifting reform agendas. Yet in both countries, the success of directly elected mayors rests not only on the formal powers they hold, but on the quality of leadership they exercise and the institutional structures that guide and constrain them.

The research offers valuable lessons for policymakers, practitioners and scholars. It suggests that accountability must be intentionally designed and continuously reinforced. Clear institutional roles, better training and development for mayors, and stronger professional support structures can all contribute to more effective local leadership. As debates about mayoral systems continue in both countries, the insights from Aki’s work provide a timely and thoughtful contribution to understanding what truly makes local democratic leadership accountable.

You can view the whole (50 mins) seminar here:
https://bham.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=76530fc7-ce2a-4884-964a-b3fd00c80704&start=1315.148058

Jason Lowther is director of Inlogov, the Institute of Local Government Studies, at the University of Birmingham