Modernisation, Managerialism and the Culture Wars

Reshaping the Local Welfare State in England

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6302176
AutoresAllan Cochrane (0000-0003-0320-4642, The Open University, autor correspondente)
Ano2004
Volume30
Fascículo4
Páginas481-496
Data de publicação2004-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLocal Government Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0300-3930 • E-ISSN: 1743-9388
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0300393042000318950
OpenAlexW1990841611
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas35
Referências citadas5

The story of local government over the last few decades is often summarised in the assertion that there has been a move away from institutional authority embodied in the structures of councils towards more complex networks of local governance, incorporating a range of stakeholders and other agencies, alongside a shift of power from local to central government. But local government has been at the centre of wider processes of restructuring - of attempts to modernise the welfare state, and specifically the local welfare state. Underpinning the changes that have faced local government (and created new forms of governance) has been a series of assumptions about welfare and how it is best delivered. These combine notions of community, neighbourhood, personal responsibility, workfare and partnership with a distrust of 'bureaucracy' and professional power. It is in this context that the 'modernisation' agenda - promising cultural change - has been driven forward, paradoxically combining a rhetoric of decentralisation and empowerment with an increasingly direct involvement by the institutions of central government and a range of other state agencies in the practice of 'local' governance. The emergent arrangements are increasingly characterised by forms of self-regulation as well as more differentiated management from above

Centralisation · Corporate governance · Decentralization · Distrust · Economics · General partnership · Local government · Management · Managerialism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Restructuring · Sociology · Welfare · Welfare state · Workfare · Healthcare innovation and challenges · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Public Administration · Social Policy and Reform Studies