Politics is not just about party politics

This is a book about the role of politics in local government in England and Wales. As such, it is not surprising that it pays considerable attention to the part political parties play in local authorities. After all, in 2005 only 9% of all councillors in England and Wales were not overtly affiliated to a political party and only 12 local authorities (3% of the total) were led by ‘Independent’ administrations (although 30% of authorities were hung – that is, no one party was in overall control – see Table 1.1 on p 12). But the role of politics within local government should not be equated with party politics. There are several ways in which local authorities would be ‘political’, even if party politics was largely or wholly absent.

Pratchett (2004, p 216) argues that to understand how local politics works, as well as its limitations, it is necessary to adopt a perspective that is much broader than that which focuses on political parties and elected members. Within this broader perspective, four separate characteristics can be identified:

• • local politics as the distribution of limited resources across a community, and the exercise of influence in relation to it (or, in Harold Lasswell's (paraphrased) words, ‘who gets, what, when and how’);

• • local politics as the exercise of power within communities, reflecting the fact that conflict lies at the very heart of politics, particularly at the local level where the quality of people's lives is affected most directly by immediate changes in the environment;

• • local politics as the interplay of the political institutions that mediate, regulate and balance competing interests within a community (Crick, 1964);

• • local politics on the operation of local democracy – the extent to which the operation of local politics (whether or not party-based) meets a set of normative criteria for local democracy (for example, transparency, accountability, equality).

As Pratchett emphasises, from this perspective ‘local politics’ is more than simply the activities of political parties within local government. It is also about the distribution of scarce resources, a distribution that is characterised by conflict and the exercise of power between competing interests (Pratchett, 2004, p 219). Political parties play a key role in these processes, but less dominant a role than they did in the 1960s and 1970s, since when we have seen a shift from ‘local government’ to ‘local governance’ (see Stoker, 2004, pp 15-18).