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There has been a gradual decline in the status of local government within the English governance framework as a result of central unwillingness to see it as either local or government. The centre has been aided in the depoliticising of local government by literature which minimises, ignores or seeks to remove any element of the political from local government. The paper reviews the process by which local government has been delocalised and depoliticised in the English context. It goes on to suggest a new settlement between the localities and the centre and the way in which a 'localised polity' may emerge.

Councillors are the essence of local representative democracy, linking ordinary citizens and decision-makers in municipal arenas. In cross-national perspective, and taking in countries from across Europe, this book analyses the recruitment patterns, career, party associations, role perceptions, and attitudes to democracy, representation, and participation of local councillors. Matters such as gender, parties, institutions, municipal reform, functions in governance networks, and councillor influence are considered using data collected in an international survey, covering some 12,000 members of the local political elite. Drawing on diverse and eclectic literature, the contributions in this volume comprise a comprehensive and revealing analysis of modern councillors. ContentLocal Councillors in Comparative Perspective.- Political Recruitment and Career Development of Local Councillors in Europe.- Councillors and their Parties.- The Roles Councillors Play.- Councillors and Democracy.- Who do the Local Councillors of Europe Represent?- Councillors, Participation, and Local Democracy.- Municipal Councillors as Interest Mediators.- European Mayors and Councillors - The gender gap among local representatives - Local councillors in different governance network arrangements - Local councillors and administrative reforms - Municipal priorities in urban planning and local development Target Groups· Academics and practitioners in the fields of political sciences EditorsBjörn Egner is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Political Science at Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany. He is the head of the research group for Methodology in Political Science and Philosophy of Science. David Sweeting is Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies in the Centre for Urban and Public Policy Research at the University of Bristol, UK.Pieter-Jan Klok is Assistant Professor for Policy Science at the Department of Public Administration in the School of Management and Governance of the University of Twente, The Netherlands

This article aims to enhance understanding of the role of place in urban leadership by examining the way leadership changed significantly following the introduction of mayoral governance into a UK city. In 2012 ten cities in England held referendums to decide whether to introduce a directly elected mayor model of leadership. Bristol was the only city to vote in favour of this radical change and the Bristol Civic Leadership Project, set up before the first mayor was elected in November 2012, was designed to discover what differences the directly elected mayor model might make to the leadership and governance of a city. This article addresses two important questions: 1) Does the institutional design of local governance in a place influence leadership effectiveness? And 2) How, if at all, do the leadership styles of the individual elected as mayor affect the quality of place-based governance? The article identifies three main reasons why place is important in public policy – expression of identity, strengthening democracy and enhancing governmental effectiveness - and considers how the leadership innovations in Bristol engage with these three dimensions of place. As well as presenting evidence documenting how bold civic leadership has transformed the governance of a particular British city, the article contributes to leadership studies by exploring the relationships between place, power, and leadership.

Kolorob is a participatory platform connecting informal settlement communities with services and informal jobs in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Alongside technological systems, expertise from community, non-government, private-sector, volunteer and academic fields has been integral to the platform's development. These socio-technical connections and networks, manifest through participatory design, agile software development and collaborative knowledge practices, have become productively entangled in the labour of platform production. We introduce a framework, participatory platform analysis, through which distinct layers – in the form of audiences, intermediaries, interfaces and databases – of this labour can be distinguished and examined. Our analysis draws upon focus group discussions, conducted in Mirpur in 2016 with emergent experts: youth facilitators, field officers and developers. We argue that the interests and tensions of co-designing participatory platforms relating to matters of public concern in South Asian mega-cities are reflective of the rising hybridity of expertise, generated through both institutional training and grass-roots practice, in contemporary urban life. The 'narrative of expertise in the future' compels us to recode knowledge production in the here and now: how we are making participatory platforms, the role of socio-technical expertise and the labour of communicating publics.

Much of the smart cities literature urges greater citizen participation in smart city innovation. However, there is often little consideration given to how citizens might be more meaningfully involved in the processes of governance around smart cities, what enables their involvement, or what might need to change in order to facilitate their participation. Taking an institutional perspective, this paper seeks to move this aspect of the smart city debate forward. Using Mexico City as an exemplar, it examines the broader institutions of urban governance within which citizen-oriented smart city activities operate, identifying those which help and hinder citizen participation. It then considers the extent to which unhelpful institutions are embedded, and to what extent they are amenable to change to allow successful smart city participation initiatives to flourish. Our argument is that when considering citizen participation in smart city activities we need to attend more closely to the institutions which represent their context and the extent to which those institutions can be changed, where necessary, to create a more conducive environment. Many institutions will be beyond the reach of local actors to change or to deinstitutionalise; thus involving citizens in the smart city is 'easier said than done'.