Local Government Strategies in an Age of Austerity
01 Apr 2011-pp 69-76
About: The article was published on 2011-04-01 and is currently open access. It has received 7 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Austerity & Local government.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that a third narrative, responsibilisation, captures more fully the trajectory of local government in England and provide examples of three strategic approaches to managing austerity: efficiency, retrenchment and investment.
Abstract: The scale of the cuts to local government finance, coupled with increasing demand for services, has led to unprecedented ‘budget gaps’ in council budgets. Arguably, two competing narratives of the trajectory of local government have emerged in which contrasting futures are imagined for the sector – a positive story of adaptation and survival and more negative one of residualisation and marginalisation. Drawing on case study evidence from three English local authorities, the paper distinguishes and provides examples of three strategic approaches to managing austerity – efficiency, retrenchment and investment. It demonstrates how and why the balance of these strategies has shifted between the early and later phases of austerity and considers the extent to which the evidence of the case studies provide support for either the survival or marginalisation narrative. The paper concludes by arguing that a third narrative – responsibilisation – captures more fully the trajectory of local government in England.
85 citations
Cites background from "Local Government Strategies in an A..."
...An evidence synthesis of how councils managed austerity in the late 1970s and early 1980s concluded that incremental rather than radical change was the result (Talbot and Talbot 2011, 69–70)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the potential utility of community resilience as a policy tool through case study analysis in the city of Sheffield is established. But, the application of resilience thinking is not without its challenges and the practical challenge of developing and targeting interventions to promote and protect resilience.
Abstract: In many countries, local government has been a prime target of austerity measures. In response, local authorities are exploring a new repertoire of policy approaches in a bid to provide more with less. In England, local authorities have been drawn to community resilience as a pragmatic response to the challenge of deploying shrinking resources to support communities exposed to social and economic disruption. This application of resilience thinking is not without its challenges. It demands a working definition of community resilience that recognises the potential for communities to prove resilient to shocks and disruptions, but avoids blaming them for their predicament. There is also the practical challenge of developing and targeting interventions to promote and protect resilience. This paper sets out to explore these issues and establish the potential utility of community resilience as a policy tool through case study analysis in the city of Sheffield.
34 citations
Cites background from "Local Government Strategies in an A..."
...In England, for example, the cuts to local government funding under the politics of austerity resulted in a 30% reduction in expenditure between 2010 and 2015 (HM Treasury 2010), a cutback estimated to be three times greater than during the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s (Talbot and Talbot 2011)....
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...In England, for example, the cuts to local government funding under the politics of austerity resulted in a 30 per cent reduction in expenditure between 2010 and 2015 (HM Treasury, 2010), a cutback estimated to be three times greater than during the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s (Talbot and Talbot, 2011)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide insights from a number of detailed studies of individual authorities, exploring the strategies adopted to manage in response to the cuts in local government and the wider consequences for local government itself.
Abstract: This introduction to the symposium sets out the context for local government in the United Kingdom at the current time. It outlines the scale of the reductions in funding since 2010, showing how uneven these cuts have been across the country and the reasons for this. It also describes the increased exposure to risk of both local government and of the citizens and communities it serves. The central question for the papers which follow is how local government is responding to these twin challenges. The papers provide insights from a number of detailed studies of individual authorities, exploring the strategies adopted to manage in response. The analyses focus on the distributive consequences for individuals and communities, but they also reflect on the wider consequences for local government itself. A particular concern is whether local responses are changing as austerity moves from its initial to its later phase.
30 citations
Cites background from "Local Government Strategies in an A..."
...The cuts are more severe in pace and depth than those experienced in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Talbot and Talbot 2011) – the Local Government Association has described them as the ‘worst in living in memory’ (quoted in Hastings et al. 2012)....
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Dissertation•
26 Oct 2018
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine structural factors affecting the work and employment conditions of young workers aged 16-24 through a local labour market study of Greater Manchester and find that these shifts have been exacerbated by neoliberal governance strategies which increase the structural power of capital relative to labour.
Abstract: Capital accumulation and young workers: a local labour market study of Greater Manchester This thesis examines structural factors affecting the work and employment conditions of young workers aged 16-24 through a local labour market study of Greater Manchester. It aims to understand worsening labour market circumstances of young workers, chiefly: limited employment opportunities, lowwages, job deskilling, workplace intensification, and punitive regulation of labour markets. The thesis draws on research from global political economy and industrial relations to connect the labour market outcomes of young workers with global processes of capital accumulation. A Marxist theoretical approach and accompanying methodology are used to articulate how abstract concepts including capital, labour, class and the state can be empirically grounded and analysed. This approach allows for a detailed understanding of how capitalist accumulation shapes working conditions. The thesis is guided by three research questions which examine: the position of young workers in relation to global labour markets, the relationship between the local state and young workers, and the relationship between local employers and young workers. Data were collected from several sources: semi-structured interviews with 33 labour market actors, policy documents, economic reports from local state institutions and local employers, and other secondary data sources such as survey data and government reports. The thesis makes several contributions to the knowledge base. It challenges essentialist and inter-generational explanations of young workers which explain poor working conditions flowing from youthfulness itself. Instead, the thesis historically situates young workers in industrial shifts which have taken place since the 1970s, notably the decline of manufacturing and the growth of the service sector. The employment conditions across the latter sector are found to be reliant on the generation of surplus value in absolute rather than relative terms, to the detriment of young workers. The research finds that these shifts have been exacerbated by neoliberal governance strategies which increase the structural power of capital relative to labour. The research finds there are limits to improving the conditions of young workers through social democratic strategies due to the fundamentally contradictory nature of capitalist accumulation and the inability to organise in and against the market.
27 citations
Cites background from "Local Government Strategies in an A..."
...However, subsequent research (Talbot and Talbot, 2011) has shown that since 2010 investment in the public sector by national government has been substantially reduced and there have been significant public sector job cuts from 2010 onwards across the UK which has cancelled out public sector job creation in Greater Manchester in the previous decade....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report case study research, the results of which are used to consider whether councils have recognised the potentially substantially increased social risks they may create as they seek to reduce their spending in line with the UK Government's programme of public sector austerity.
Abstract: This paper reports case study research, the results of which are used to consider whether councils have recognised the potentially substantially increased social risks they may create as they seek to reduce their spending in line with the UK Government’s programme of public sector austerity. It discusses the conceptual shift in the public sector risk management literature towards social risk management (SRM), presents empirical evidence of social risks and considers the approach to SRM developed by other organisations. It finds no evidence of SRM within the case study authorities and so advocates a shift in the public sector risk management culture from a preoccupation with defensive-institutional risk management practices to a more proactive social dimension. In so doing, it discusses the goals of SRM, the constraints limiting their achievement, metrics for measuring social risk, tools for mitigating social risk and the problems faced when operationalising SRM.
25 citations
Cites background from "Local Government Strategies in an A..."
...Officers and councils have no experience of such fiscal and welfare retrenchment, these being the biggest cuts since 1945 (Talbot and Talbot 2011)....
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