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Ideology, Democracy, and the Foundations of Local Self-Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Hugh Whalen
Hugh Whalen*
Affiliation:
University of New Brunswick
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Extract

At a congress of the International Political Science Association held at The Hague in 1952, Professor Georges Langrod delivered a paper entitled “Local Government and Democracy,” subsequently published in the British journal Public Administration. The incisive logic and unorthodox conclusions of that paper seemed at the time to demolish, once for all, the justification of local representative government commonly found in much traditional liberal political theory. Mr. Keith Panter-Brick, facing a skilled prosecutor, and doing the best he could with a difficult case, replied in a later issue of the same journal. Dr. Leo Moulin next entered the discussion in defence of Langrod, and Panter-Brick wrote a second rejoinder. I felt that the contest, although conducted with flair by all parties, left far too many important questions unsettled. The object of this paper, however, is not to reopen points raised in dispute by the recent combatants; it is rather to suggest that the problems connected with the theory of local self-government ought to be approached in different terms.

The question to be considered refers to the relation between local self-government and democracy. By local self-government is meant that system of subordinate local authorities which has developed in many modern states. Each unit of local government in any system is assumed to possess the following characteristics: a given territory and population; an institutional structure for legislative, executive, or administrative purposes; a separate legal identity; a range of power and functions authorized by delegation from the appropriate central or intermediate legislature; and lastly, within the ambit of such delegation, autonomy—including fiscal autonomy—subject always, at least in the Anglo-American tradition, to the limitations of common law such as the test of reasonableness.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , November 1960 , pp. 377 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1960

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References

1 For the four papers in the discussion see these three issues of Public Administration: XXXI, spring, 1953, 25–34; XXXI, winter, 1953, 344–8; XXXII, winter, 1954, 433–7 and 438–40.

2 Cranston, M., Freedom: A New Analysis (London, 1954), 15–22.Google Scholar

3 See Redlich, J. and Hirst, F. W., Local Government in England (London, 1903)Google Scholar, Book III, 375–418, for a critical view of Gneist's theory. All following translations from the German are taken from this source.

4 Laski, H. J. et al., eds., A Century of Municipal Progress (London, 1935), chap. I by Elie Hatévy.Google Scholar

5 This is a judgment of Chadwick's policies and their consequences, not an evaluation of the theories with which he justified his programmes. Theoretically, he was rigorously rationalistic on utilitarian grounds, and his famous controversy with Toulmin-Smith during the fifties is described by Redlich and Hirst (pp. 413–14) as “the only theoretical dispute upon the subject of public administration which has taken place since the era of reform.”

6 Finer, H., English Local Government (London, 1933), 9 Google Scholar, quoting from Toulmin-Smith's Local Self-Govemment and Centralization.

7 “Local Government and Democracy,” 28.

8 Ibid., 29.

9 Talmon, J. C., The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy (London, 1952).Google Scholar

10 SirBerlin, I., Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford, 1958), 47–8.Google Scholar

11 Liberty (Everyman's, ed., 1910), 157.Google Scholar

12 Minogue, K. R., “Power in Politics,” Political Studies, VII, no. 3, 269–89.Google Scholar

13 Democracy in America (World Classics, Oxford, 1946), 56.Google Scholar

14 Sly, J. F., Town Government in Massachusetts, 1620–1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), 63.Google Scholar

15 Bryce, J., Modern Democracies (New York, 1921), I, 131.Google Scholar

16 Finer, , English Local Government, 3.Google Scholar

17 Canadian Municipal Government (Toronto, 1954), 343.Google Scholar

18 Minogue, , “Power in Politics,” 272.Google Scholar For a good practical demonstration of this liberal dilemma, see Burnham, J., Congress and the American Tradition (Chicago, 1959).Google Scholar

19 Cranston isolates four distinct liberal streams—English, French, German, and American —in Freedom, Part II, 65–113; for an excellent treatment of liberalism in its broadest dimensions see Frankel, C., The Case for Modern Man (Boston, 1959).Google Scholar

20 Democracy in America, 57.

21 Cf. Warren, J. H., “Local Self-Government: The Basis of a Democratic State,” Public Administration, XXVIII, spring, 1950, 11 CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “But in a true conception of democracy the place and role of local representative institutions belongs to its essential theory, and is not merely an incidental feature of the doctrine of state power, or one of the many convenient devices for its exercise.”

22 In his Political Education (Cambridge, 1951), 14.Google Scholar For a more elaborate formulation of the thesis, see his two-part article “Rationalism in Politics,” Cambridge Journal, Nov. and Dec., 1947. For a critique of the thesis see Krook, D., “Rationalism in Politics: A Comment,” Cambridge Journal, 04, 1948.Google Scholar

23 Observe, in consequence, the traditional liberal attitude to the alleged “administrative tutelage” in French local government, and to offices such as that of burgomaster in the Netherlands. For an effective purge of liberal misconceptions on this subject see Chapman, B., Introduction to French Local Government (London, 1953)Google Scholar, and The Prefects of Provincial France (London, 1955).Google Scholar

24 The logic of the “federal principle” as expounded by Dicey, Wheare, and others is critically examined in two articles by Davis, R. in Australian Journal of Politics and History, I, nos. 1 and 2, 1955.Google Scholar

25 Data from Christian Science Monitor, May 3, 1959.

26 For a discussion of these and related municipal problems in a Canadian setting, see Canadian Public Administration, III, no. 1, 03, 1960.Google Scholar

27 Not even a general bibliography of this extensive subject can be presented here; but the rudiments of a theory of local government reform are outlined in H. J. Whalen in Ibid., 1–13.

28 For an application of these ideas to politics in general see Lipset, S. M., Political Man (New York, 1960), 76–96.Google Scholar

29 Many references can be cited here, but see esp. Eulau, H. et al., eds., Political Behavior (Glencoe, Ill., 1956)Google Scholar; and many post-war articles in Public Administration, British Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and American Sociological Review.

30 Bonnor, J., “Public Interest in Local Government,” Public Administration, XXXII, winter, 1954, 427.Google Scholar

31 Cf. R. E. Agger and V. Ostrom, “Political Participation in a Small Community” in Eulau et al., eds., Political Behavior. These conclusions would not be valid in all traditions, nor would they hold invariably within the same tradition.

32 Constitutional Government and Democracy (Boston, 1950), 240.Google Scholar

33 The work of Steffens is, of course, a classic; but for an introduction to the higher duplicity in more recent years, see Cook, F. J. and Gleason, G., “The Shame of New York,” published as a special issue of Nation, Oct. 31, 1959.Google Scholar For more general treatment of these aspects of American “grass-roots” democracy, see, among others: Hicks, G., Small Town (New York, 1946)Google Scholar; and R. S., and Lynd, H. M., Middletown (New York, 1929)Google Scholar, and Middletown in Transition (New York, 1937).Google Scholar