Suchergebnisse

A review essay on books by (1) J. Stewart, The Nature of British Local Government; (2) G. Stoker (Ed), The New Management of British Local Governance; & (3) G. Stoker (Ed) The New Politics of British Local Governance (all, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000, 1999, & 2000, respectively). Although New Labour has sought to encourage participation in local government, low voter turnouts demonstrate that this goal has not been accomplished. These three volumes explore the workings of politics on the local level. In both volumes edited by Stoker, the results of research conducted through the ESRC Local Governance Programme (LGP) concerning management & politics are discussed. Stewart's book recounts the development of local government & its adaptations over a 200-year period, pointing out its continuities as well as its changes, & the presence of both uniformity & diversity in the operation of local governments. Networking on the local level is not prevalent since local government is strongly influenced by central government, & paternalism & professionalism in local government as well as socioeconomic conditions undermine this process. It is concluded that all three volumes build a foundation for analyzing the present conditions of local governance & for predicting its future trends, but they leave the analysis for others. 26 References. L. A. Hoffman

Research on local government in the UK during the era of austerity has shown that the decisions taken by local councils to cope with financial stresses were often narrated through the discourse of 'resilience', referencing their capacity to innovate and transform services, while protecting service provision in core areas. This emphasis on 'resilience' focused on the deployment of strategies to overcome funding challenges. However, this earlier research did not question the longer-term risks, trade-offs and negative social implications associated with such decisions, and how, even in circumstances where these practices provided some 'breathing space', in the longer-term they risked adding even more strain to the system as a whole.
This article fills an important research gap by considering four resilience strategies of two local authorities in England: Leicester and Nottingham. These four strategies are: savings, reserves, collaboration and investment. Applying a meso-level perspective and exploring resilience through the lens of crisis management, it asks in what ways and for whom resilience generates positive, zero and negative-sum outcomes.
This research enhances our understanding of the resilience concept by reflecting on its limitations and the risks it poses for local government. It also reveals that, while the concept of 'resilience' has been much criticised for normalising crises and generally operating as part of a de-politicising vocabulary, research is lacking on how the practices of resilience produce positive, zero or negative-sum outcomes.

The British university system is in a deep crisis, born of a two-pronged assault. The crisis is born firstly from decades of neoliberal marketisation and the rise of a remote and authoritarian executive elite presiding over a downwardly mobile and culturally deprivileged academic profession.
We call this process neoliberal managerialism. It is born secondly from the ideological and political assault on universities, currently led by the Tories, reflecting the resurgence of anti-intellectualism since the millennium. The paper argues that although these currents embody ostensibly
conflicting values, they combine and reinforce each other. We illustrate this argument by discussing lacunae in the decolonisation of British universities, notably the colonial ideologies and practices inscribed in neoliberal university governance and management. The final section reflects
on how to resist and overcome the crises engulfing UK higher education. Framed by reflections on the positionalities of the authors, it argues that no consolations can be found in old-style academic professionalism, which historically was no less regressive than neoliberal managerialism and
often complicit in its rollout. We conclude that academics could instead embrace the ineluctable dynamics of de-professionalisation and work towards an authentic and solidaristic public intellectuality.