Local governance and local business interests: a critical review

Abstract

Since 1980 the dominance of elected municipal government in Britain has given way to a broader local governance. While the precise configuration of this change has been debated in detail, approaches to the processes of restructuring and the operation and relative efficacy of new arrangements remain empirically limited and theoretically underdeveloped. We explore the usefulness of a range of contemporary theoretical accounts including regulationist approaches in responding to these lacunae. In developing our analysis we argue first that explaining the restructuring of local governance requires (amongst a range of developments) further theoretical and empirical work on local business interest representation; and, secondly, that attempts to move beyond partial evaluations of the new local governance must be predicated upon appropriate and rigorous theoretical foundations.