U.S.‐Style Leadership for English Local Government?

• Author: Robin Hambleton,David Sweeting
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2004.00393.x
• Published date: 01 July 2004
• Date: 01 July 2004

474 Public Administration Review •July/August 2004, Vol. 64, No. 4

Robin Hambleton

University of Illinois–Chicago

David Sweeting

University of the West of England, Bristol

U.S.-Style Leadership for English

Local Government?

Significant changes in the political management of local authorities in the United Kingdom are

now taking place as a result of legislation passed by the Labour government since 1997. The new

political management models aim to modernize local governance by strengthening local leader-

ship, streamlining decision making, and enhancing local accountability. These changes owe much

to U.S. experience: They involve the introduction of a separation of powers between an executive

and an assembly, and they allow local authorities to introduce directly elected mayors for the first

time ever. Is U.K. local government beginning to adopt what might be described as U.S.-style

approaches to local governance? The evidence suggests the new institutional designs for U.K.

local authorities represent a radical shift toward U.S.-style local leadership and decision making.

However, the U.K. central state remains heavily involved in the details of local decision making, to

an extent that would be unthinkable in the United States.

Reforming the political management of local govern-

ment has been central to the U.K. Labour government’s

approach to local democracy. This drive to modernize lo-

cal government decision making has been spearheaded by

the prime minister. Within a year of being elected in 1997,

Tony Blair set out his own vision for the future of local

government in a booklet entitled Leading the Way: A New

Vision for Local Government (Blair 1998). In this docu-

ment, he argued that the way local government was oper-

ating was inefficient, opaque, and out of date. He suggested

that elected councilors spent many hours working hard on

civic business, but much of their energy and enthusiasm

was dissipated in unproductive committee meetings. The

prime minister argued that committees do have their place,

but, as a way of providing community leadership, they are

weak vessels: “The heart of the problem is that local gov-

ernment needs recognized leaders if it is to fulfill the com-

munity leadership role. People and outside organizations

need to know who is politically responsible for running

the council” (Blair 1998, 16).

It is no secret that the bold proposals for change in U.K.

local government, which have been set out by the prime

minister and introduced into law for England, have been

influenced by U.S. experience. In this article, we outline

the origins of the new approach to local political manage-

ment in the United Kingdom and describe the institutional

models that have been introduced to meet the requirements

of the new U.K. local government legislation.1 We exam-

ine the progress to date in implementing the changes, and,

by drawing on new research on local leadership, we offer

a preliminary assessment of the United Kingdom’s reforms

and discuss the extent to which leadership in local govern-

ment in England resembles that of the United States.

Robin Hambleton is dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Af-

fairs at the University of Illinois–Chicago, where he is a professor of public

administration and professor of urban planning and policy. He was an ad-

viser to ministers in the U.K. central government. His latest book, edited with

Hank Savitch and Murray Stewart, is

Globalism and Local Democracy: Chal-

lenge and Change in Europe and North America

(Palgrave, 2002). E-mail:

robinh@uic.edu.

David Sweeting is a research fellow in the Cities Research Center, Faculty of

the Built Environment, University of the West of England, Bristol, United King-

dom. He completed his doctorate on democracy in local governance at the

University of Portsmouth and has carried out research on public participa-

tion and local political leadership both in the United Kingdom and compara-

tively in Europe. E-mail: david.sweeting@uwe.ac.uk.