The centralism of the Thatcher years, and of her third term in particular, received much of the blame for the loss of faith in local government and the decline in trust granted to local councillors. In fairness, the tide of centralism had been rising for many years before Thatcher. The standing of local government in the 1960s and 1970s fell in proportion to the attrition of its effective power and governments of both Conservative and Labour parties were to blame. Arguably, this erosion brought in its wake a withdrawal of public interest, expressed in absenteeism at the polls. Boredom with the ballot box seemed a reasonable response, for if local authorities did not matter, why bother voting in local elections?

The argument is too easily overstated. Many factors bear on people's willingness of vote, as many of them cultural as institutional. And while the trend of falling electoral turnout is apparent across the world and at all levels of election, it is not evident that turnout in British local elections has fallen in the way suggested, or during the period suggested, by the centralisation thesis. This chapter assesses the problem of low electoral turnout, reviews the combination of factors that bear on the decision to vote, and examines what light recent evidence can throw on people's attitudes to the electoral process and their local voting behaviour. Understanding the dynamics of local elections is a vital preliminary to considering the electoral reform proposals of the Blair government.

Low turnout as a problem

The problem of poor turnout in Britain is not new, and has long been recognised and deplored. Although voting offers the only universally available opportunity for citizens to participate in politics in a uniform and equal manner, poor participation rates have prompted the central question of why the act of voting is not itself universal: why do some vote and others not? It is useful to start by placing the problem of low turnout in its international context before looking more closely at the British experience. We can then pose the question of how that experience is to be interpreted: that is, in what ways does Britain's low turnout matter?