Renewing Local Representative Democracy: Councillors, Communities, Communication

Keith Taylor

Centre for the Study of Democracy
University of Westminster

March, 1996 Research Papers, Number 8

1. INTRODUCTION

The democratic legitimacy of local government in Western societies rests on the principle of representation. Local councils - unlike appointed quangos - consist of elected representatives of the people, and the men and women who are elected as councillors have the responsibility of serving their local communities to the best of their abilities. This key function cannot be performed if councillors remain distant from those communities or if they sacrifice their representative role to other, more managerial tasks, or if, indeed, they seek to represent their political parties rather than their constituents. Accordingly it is the central argument of this research paper that the link between councillors and local communities needs to be strengthened as a key element in any strategy to enhance democracy at the local level. ₁

In the specific case of British local government - which is the focus of this paper, although cross-European comparisons are also highlighted - such a strategy might also be seen as one of democratic renewal in the sense that it would restore a democratic character to local government after many years of democratic decline. This is not to evoke a spirit of a former 'golden age' of local democracy to which we must return, but merely to make the point that the original nineteenth- and even early twentieth-century credentials of local government in Britain were much more firmly rooted in the recognition of local government as an expression of local community needs and aspirations, often expressed in both the theory and practice of municipal self-government. The increasing centralisation of political power in Britain during the last half-century has tended to remove more and more degrees of genuinely local choice from the political agenda. This paper argues that the time has come to reverse this trend, and that such a reversal must focus to a large extent on the renewal of a sense of local councillors as community representatives. Such a view has profound implications for the future recruitment, training and evaluation of councillors as guardians of local democracy. Furthermore, the shifting role of local government within new contexts of local power configurations and systems of pluralistic public--private governance has made the tasks facing local councillors even more complex. Today local councillors need to be well informed not only about purely local issues and the dynamics of their local communities, but about national, European and even global developments. In the twenty-first century local government is bound to become increasingly multi-dimensional and international in focus, and the calibre and skills of local councillors will have to match these developments if both local dynamism and local democracy are to be preserved in an age of 'global-localisation'.

Any positive approach to the renewal of local representative democracy must involve a positive appreciation of how such a strengthening might be achieved, and also an understanding of the factors which tend to distort and perhaps even undermine the relationship between councillors and communities. Several key aspects of that relationship are highlighted in this paper as having a particular importance for the practice of local democracy:

* The fundamental political significance of the local elected council as a defender of local interests, concerns and aspirations in the face of the power of central government and the state, and of the growing non-elected quango sector. This matter is not only of local significance: the fact that there are only 651 Members of Parliament but as many as 26,000 local councillors in England, Wales and Scotland (although this number will be reduced following local government restructuring in 1996-97) means that the extent of local representative democracy is a decisive factor in determining the overall success or failure of democratic politics in Britain. Indeed, outside the House of Commons local government offers the only form of representative democracy in Britain.

* The role played by structures and processes which can promote genuine participation by citizens at the community level, and which (conversely) do not erect barriers to participation. The guiding principle here is the need for democratic inclusion in local society through the enhanced accessibility of channels of political participation: 'inclusion, not exclusion'. For councillors the challenge is to know how to integrate their representative role with processes of citizen participation. For citizens the challenge is to avail themselves of opportunities for involvement in local decision-making, perhaps even to the extent of seeking to become councillors themselves.

* The need for greater democratic awareness and responsibility amongst councillors, and indeed within the local council more generally, if a culture of 'good democratic practice' is to be fostered. Such a qualitative aim should be as central to local government practice as is a concern with the quality of service delivery.

* A parallel need to open up local council decision-making beyond the confines of the majority party leadership, and to promote greater opportunities for all local councillors to make significant contributions to processes of community governance. Consideration must be given to the negative, as well as the positive, impact of party politicisation on the local democratic process. In this respect it needs to be appreciated that there is now a growing public disillusionment with political parties - at local and national levels - and that this is reflected in declining party memberships, increasing electoral volatility (with significantly less voter attachment to the 'traditional' parties), and widespread anti-political cynicism.

* The need to recognise that local councillors need more effective democratic support services in terms of information provision, technical assistance, effective training, and induction into awareness of community problems and issues. At a time when there seems to be a proliferation of bureaucracy-led schemes of 'community consultation' and assessments of 'community needs' in many areas of public policy (many of them stemming from central government initiatives), it is more necessary than ever to ask questions about how far, and in what ways, local councillors are able to perform a representative role in defence of community interests and concerns.

* The growing importance of information technology and the media of communication in contemporary life, and the consequent priority which must be given to the communicative dimension of local democracy if councillors are effectively to perform their representative role. This communicative dimension is a two-way process, and democracy can be positively enhanced if the principle of 'open access' to information (for citizens and their elected representatives) is accepted and implemented. Modern information technology opens up a tremendous potential for enhanced communication between citizens and government, including local government, and for citizen involvement in community projects of all kinds. At the same time the dangers of media distortion in the communication of information and ideas are considerable. It is also a cause of some concern that hitherto most local authority interest in information technology has been for the purpose of enhancing managerial control rather than for enhancing processes of democratic decision-making.

Although the focus of this paper is on the relationship between councillors and communities in Britain, some comparisons are offered (where appropriate) with the experience of local authorities in continental Western Europe, and particularly in Denmark, France and Germany. Fieldwork in these three countries formed an important part of the research programme for the Local Government Management Board project, 'Enhancing Local Democracy', and it is undoubtedly the case that in any discussion of the future of local government there is much to be gained by comparative, cross-national analysis. This is not to suggest that innovations can simply be transplanted from one national context to another. It does imply, however, that it can be useful to examine the problem of local democracy - and responses to that problem - in different countries in order to broaden our awareness of the likely strengths and weaknesses of strategies for change. It is also the case that since Britain is a member of the developing European Union, and has endorsed the Maastricht Treaty's principle of subsidiarity (which stresses the importance of decentralising power to levels close to the people), then a broadening of the debate on local democracy to encompass the experience of other European countries is now highly desirable so as to enhance mutual understanding. ₂

As a framework for analysis it is useful to think of processes of local democracy in terms of four major junctures:

* the electoral process

* the representation process

* the decision-making process

* the accountability process

These junctures relate to what might be seen as four stages of the local political 'cycle'. Local elections take place and the local council is constituted (stage 1). Then elected councillors begin to perform functions of local representation (stage 2), participate in decision-making (stage 3), and (after decisions have been taken) remain accountable for their decisions to the local population (stage 4). Of course, in practice these stages are not entirely distinct and do not follow one another in neat chronological order. Nevertheless, such a four-stage model can be helpful in enabling us to disaggregate important elements of local democracy. ₃ At the same time, while the representation process is the key concern of this paper, it is impossible to deal with this in complete isolation from the other three junctures, and therefore an effort is made in many stages of this analysis to consider linkages and inter-relationships between the representative role of councillors and the other dimensions of the broader representative system of local government.

In the context of all four junctures of local democracy fundamental questions about the relationship between councillors and local communities - all too often overlooked in current debates - need to be confronted. This paper seeks to redress the balance by drawing attention to a range of concrete reforms, innovations and interventions in the local government system - all of them within the existing discretionary powers of local authorities in Britain - which can make a positive contribution to the restoration of a healthy democratic relationship between councillors and the communities they are elected to represent.

Politically, this is a highly charged subject. The word 'community' means different things to different people, and often perceptions are related to distinct party political and ideological positions. In recent years there has indeed been a resurgence of 'communitarian' theories - many of them imported from the United States - which range across a broad doctrinal spectrum from the libertarian to the authoritarian. To some people individuals are much more important than communities, and an emphasis on the communitarian dimension of democracy might seem to threaten cherished principles of individual autonomy. Amongst councillors themselves there are bound to be different views on the whole question of their representative function. Such fundamental disagreements will inevitably arise and in the end must be accommodated. Nevertheless, no discussion of local democracy will get very far without some notion of the local councillor as a community representative, and of the local council as both a representative body for the whole community and as the key structure in any system of community governance. This paper seeks to stimulate debate about these important questions, and, without suggesting that there are easy solutions, or indeed solutions which will apply uniformly to all local authorities, offers a range of suggestions for moving forward and enhancing local representative democracy.

2. LOCAL COMMUNITY AS THE DEMOCRATIC BASIS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

In many of the countries of continental Western Europe the lowest tier of local government, and the level closest to the people, is given the name 'commune' (for example: the actual word commune in France, Kommune in Denmark, Gemeinde in Germany). This term has many connotations, and to some extent these vary from country to country. But a clear image conveyed by 'commune' is that local government essentially expresses a distinctly local-communitarian voice in public affairs. Local government is the local community in its form as a political organisation. It is essentially to be seen as 'communal or community self-government': which is not an idea conveyed by the stark English term 'local government' with its connotations of government of (and perhaps for), but not necessarily by the community. 'Local government' seems to convey the idea of authority from above (as in the very dull and legalistic term 'local authority'). In many European countries this specific usage seems to have no direct linguistic equivalent, since the whole emphasis is on a concept of political legitimacy at local level emerging from below. ₄

This is not just a matter of semantics. There is generally much stronger legal protection of the autonomous status of local government in the countries of continental Western Europe than in Britain, reflecting a basic difference in thinking about local democracy. This is why the British Government has steadfastly refused to sign the European Charter of Local Self-Government, drawn up in 1985 by the Council of Europe's Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities. The Charter articulates a clear concept of 'the right and ability of local authorities, within the limits of the law, to regulate and manage a substantial share of public affairs under their own responsibility and in the interests of the local population'. ₅ This principle amounts to a defence of the right of local government to retain powers of general competence within the limits of a country's national legal framework. However, the British constitution - rooted in a traditional (and unwritten) defence of the unitary state and the sovereignty of (the national) parliament - has never granted such powers to local authorities, and has insisted on the application of the ultra vires rule, which means that local authorities must seek positive, express consent within the provisions of a relevant Act of Parliament for their decision-making competence.

This is not to suggest that West European local government is in every respect more democratic than its British counterpart. Democratic practice obviously varies from one country to another in terms of a whole range of dimensions of politics and government, and indeed within individual countries. There is undoubtedly as much anxiety about the future of local democracy in West European countries as there is in Britain. Nevertheless, British attempts to democratise local government are severely hindered by the absence of a constitutional recognition that a local authority exists as an expression of the desire for community self-government. Even if this principle is accepted as a basis for discussions of local democracy, it is important to distinguish between two separate elements within it:

* First, the principle of community self-government denotes a right of local authorities to resist undue interference in local affairs by central (national) government and external bureaucratic agencies. This right is embodied most clearly in federal constitutions, as in the cases of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and (quasi-federal) Spain. But generally in continental Western Europe - in both unitary as well as federal systems of government - such a view of local government seems to be more firmly established than in Britain.

* Secondly, the principle of community self-government implies the need for local councils to govern democratically as bodies which effectively represent the needs, aspirations and concerns of local populations. The generally smaller scale of the lowest tier of local government in Western Europe compared with the lowest tier in Britain (excluding parish councils, which have few significant powers) is one clear and very significant manifestation of this belief. But it is also a matter of how local governments are organised and controlled, and how - in many European countries - institutions of direct democracy (from local referendums to citizens' panels and even the direct election of the local mayor) are often used to give local citizens and local associations of all kinds a direct voice in local affairs.

Recent British experience shows that there is now widespread interest at local level in the possibilities for enhancing democracy through the introduction of decentralised decision-making and the establishment of new mechanisms for public consultation. Many individual local authorities have taken highly significant initiatives, and it now seems to be possible to begin to judge the relative strengths and weaknesses of proposals for democratic reform. Indeed, many of the Commission for Local Democracy's recent research reports as well as the policy proposals of political parties and other public bodies focus on particular aspects of such democratic innovation, and there seems to be strong evidence that a majority of councillors actually favour this kind of approach. ₆ However, there remains much uncertainty about the impact of different strategies for democratisation on the role of local councillors and on councillors' responsibilities for giving political direction to local decision-making. It is by no means clear, for example, whether greater opportunities for direct citizen participation or neighbourhood decentralisation can be linked effectively to the democratic, representative role of the local council as a whole. And, at a time when the position of the council is also being threatened by the growth of a whole network of other agencies of local governance - in particular unelected quangos of various kinds - it is understandable that many local councillors are very worried about what appears to be an increasing fragmentation of local political responsibility.

These dilemmas and uncertainties call for a reassessment of the basic notion of local government as a mechanism for serving the local community. The word 'community' is often used in the official statements of local councils and by local government officers, and indeed in all kinds of policy documents and official reports. Lip-service is usually paid to the notion of local government existing to promote the 'interests' of the local community. Sometimes this image is conveyed essentially in terms of service delivery functions. But increasingly, in the last decade or so, public policy-making in a range of specific functional areas has sought to achieve legitimation by using the rhetoric of 'community needs' and (in many cases) this approach has been linked to experiments in 'community consultation'. Such initiatives have often come directly from central government ministries, as was the case with Community Care, City Challenge, Neighbourhood Renewal and Estate Action. But local authorities have not been idle and, 'faced with a rising tide of poverty, disadvantage and inequality in their areas together with diminishing resources with which to address such problems', they 'have used social audits or community profiles to inform decision-making about the allocation of resources'. ₇

There is therefore hardly any doubt that 'community' has become one of the key rhetorical terms of both local and central government debate in Britain during the 1980s and 1990s. The term is indeed now used so widely that it is easy to overlook the very real problems involved in giving precision to any definition of community which might inform public decision-making. Political parties - across the ideological spectrum - have also tended to articulate notions of 'community politics' without making explicit their assumptions about the proper relationship between citizens, local councillors, party political elites and local government officials. Thus, one advocate's view of community politics might seem to undermine the legitimate democratic role of elected councillors. But another view of community politics might itself emphasise the importance of elected councillors as a mediating force between citizens, local pressure groups and the local Town Hall (and indeed Westminster, Whitehall and Brussels). What is clear is that the rhetorical use of the word 'community' in official policy-making documents does not necessarily guarantee an enhancement of local democracy. The real test is whether the local community itself and its elected representatives in the local council are given adequate opportunity to be involved in processes of decision-making. And perhaps the key question here - in the context of this present paper - concerns the changing role of local councillors in the face of the recent growth of interest in community consultation, public participation, and decentralised decision-making and service delivery in the local authority area.

The real challenge for local government in the 1990s and beyond is to put both the 'local' and 'government' back into the work of local councils. For too long local councils have been viewed primarily as managers of processes of service delivery. Such a role was indeed crucial to the general operation of Western governmental systems in the age of large, centralised welfare states. But now that things are changing, and given that many council services are actually being privatised and contracted out, it is an opportune time to reassess the role of local government. Increasingly, responsibilities for strategic economic change, social development and cultural innovation are having to be assumed by local authorities, albeit in 'partnership' with other public agencies and private enterprises. This is for the simple reason that central government is no longer able to deal effectively with the enormous range of local and regional problems. Increasingly, too, global and international developments are having a profound impact at local and regional levels. Local authorities are indeed competing with each other in an increasingly global economy, and, without strong community responsiveness led by elected representatives, it is doubtful whether most localities will be able to cope with the pressures of social and economic dislocation which are already in evidence. Some commentators have urged us to see these changing times as 'post-industrial', 'post-Keynesian', 'post-Fordist' or even 'post-modern'. In simpler and less dramatic language it can be said that major shifts are occurring in the role of local government in all Western societies, and that the structure and operation of local representative democracy need to be re-defined in accordance with these new conditions. Perhaps most significantly, local societies are becoming increasingly pluralistic, diverse and, in many cases, polarised. Equally, the responsibilities of local government are becoming more and more fragmented. It is now more necessary than ever to appreciate the profound social changes occurring at the community level and in the systems of community politics which have to deal with those changes.

3. THE LINKS BETWEEN COUNCILLORS AND COMMUNITIES: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

The relationship between councillors and communities begins with the electoral process, which - as has been suggested above - can be seen as the first of four major junctures or components of the local democratic system. ₈ The territorial system of electoral districts ('divisions' or 'wards') means that, in effect, a fairly small number of citizens in each area are directly represented in the local council by their own councillor (or councillors: some districts and boroughs have multi-member wards). Arguments for and against a uniform system of single-member wards and perhaps even a uniform system of 'whole council' elections continue to be debated. But whatever the strengths and weaknesses of each case, the basic proposition of local democratic representation is surely that a relatively small number of people should have at least one democratically elected representative on the local council.

It has been estimated that in Britain each local councillor represents (on average) about 1800 citizens, whereas in Western Europe the ratio is between 1:250 and 1:450 - a distinction which is due almost entirely to the smaller population levels at the lowest tiers of European local government. ₉ The contrast is surely of considerable significance in terms of the workload local councillors face if they want to represent their electorates effectively. Moreover, the total number of local councillors in Britain is now (1996-7) being further reduced as a result of the current restructuring of local authority areas, which involves the creation of more unitary authorities. Accordingly, each local councillor will, on average, serve even more constituents than before. The size of electoral divisions and wards also seems to have implications in terms of whether elections are effectively contested by two or more candidates (small is not necessarily beautiful) and of whether the electorate actually bothers to vote (if areas are too big, elections may seem to lack a genuine community focus and turnout may be low). ₁₀ Turnout in local elections is indeed significantly higher in continental West European countries than in Britain, and the combination of smaller lowest tiers of local government ('communes') and the widespread use of proportional representation in voting systems is undoubtedly one of the factors which explains these higher rates. ₁₁

If electoral turnout is low and if, in addition, electoral registration is incomplete (up to 3 million eligible voters were not included on the 1991 electoral register) ₁₂ , the local councillor's democratic credentials are weakened. There are still many uncontested seats in local government elections, and most councillors are elected on low turnout levels (of about 40 per cent). ₁₃ The first-past-the-post system of election (used everywhere in the United Kingdom except Northern Ireland) also exacerbates the unrepresentative character of local elections. Given that the outcome of local elections is now greatly influenced by national political developments and by the public's perception of the success or failure of the national government, there are strong arguments for doubting whether any local election really expresses an informed judgement of the local council's performance.

Comments such as this have led to vigorous debate about the possibilities for electoral reform at local level, and about ways in which local interest in the electoral process might be promoted. The question of electoral enfranchisement has also begun to attract serious concern in the last few years. ₁₄ These are undoubtedly important issues, but it has to be stated that increasing voter registration and electoral turnout are not ends in themselves: they are - surely - means of positively enhancing the local democratic process by overcoming social exclusion and fostering effective political participation. In the end all voters have the right not to vote and deliberately to declare their lack of interest in local politics. Even failure to get on to the electoral register may, in some circumstances, be the result of a deliberate decision on the part of the individual citizen. What is surely unacceptable is a situation in which significant numbers of people, perhaps representative of marginalised groups in the community, find themselves facing barriers to political involvement which are imposed rather than the result of their own free choice.

It is in this respect that the recruitment of councillor candidates is a vital issue for local democracy. If councillors are 'unrepresentative' of the communities they are supposed to serve (e.g. if the vast majority of councillors are male, or if there are no black councillors despite a large black population), then a potentially important dimension of the link between citizens and councillors is missing. And all councillors - whatever their own gender, colour, age or personal background - face the challenge of listening to all shades of opinion in their communities, even to the extent of seeking to determine the opinions and concerns of groups of people who are so marginalised that they often lack the skills of self-advocacy. This may be described as the problem of 'representing those who cannot represent themselves', and amongst the groups who are typically in this position must be counted the poor, the unemployed, the geographically peripheral, the ill and disabled, the elderly, some ethnic minorities, the homeless, the housebound, and persons with language and communication difficulties. ₁₅ In some communities such groups constitute a very large proportion of the population. They may be non-voters, but they are more often disempowered, rather than unwilling, voters. In many cases the apparently simple task of 'going to vote' may seem daunting if polling stations are inaccessible, if transport is unavailable, or if information about alternative voting procedures (such as the postal vote) has not been seen or heard. In specific peripheral communities within, say, a larger urban area, electoral turnout may be low because there is a general perception that it will have a minimal effect on the party composition of the whole town or city council.

Because local councillors are not full-time professionals, and face many different calls on their time, it is not surprising to find that 'dealing with constituents' comes third in their actual list of priorities after attending and preparing for full council meetings (according to the 1986 Widdicombe Committee report): an average of about thirteen hours being devoted to this task out of a total of a 'typical' councillor's workload of about seventy-four hours per month. ₁₆ It is also clearly the case that not all councillors place equal emphasis on their 'grassroots' constituency role. As Kenneth Newton put it in his study of local politics in Birmingham, 'parochial' councillors who see themselves as constituency-based 'social workers' or 'ombudsmen' usually avoid local party political battles and shy away from intense ideological conflict. They are more interested in their 'grassroots', community role than in a 'city-wide' (or county-wide) representative responsibility. ₁₇ There are, of course, many other distinctive attitudes to the representative function amongst local councillors. John Kingdom observes that there are, regrettably, a significant number of personal careerists, interest group representatives and even 'drones' ('with no particular interest other than the social life'). ₁₈ The important point is surely that anyone who is elected as a local councillor ought to take his or her democratic responsibilities more seriously than this, and that a key problem for most councillors is going to be that of integrating their 'grassroots' constituency role with their broader town-, city- or county-wide responsibilities.

Recent debates on the appropriate geographical and population sizes for democratic local government have reawakened concern over the dangers of local councils (and councillors) being too remote from the citizens and communities they are supposed to serve. There is clearly a tension here between the question of an appropriate scale for local democracy and an appropriate scale for efficient service delivery, and this tension has become central to arguments for and against the unitary authority model of local government (against the perceived merits of the county--district two-tier system). These debates are not peculiarly British, but are also common to the present concern with local democracy in the countries of continental Western Europe. What makes the situation in Western Europe somewhat different, however, is that the lowest tier of local government is generally much smaller than it is in Britain, and that in major cities and metropolitan areas some significant measure of territorial decentralisation operates in order to combine city-wide planning and political control with genuinely local representation by elected councillors. Interestingly enough, there is also a widespread tendency in such large cities to experiment with decentralised service delivery and decentralised management. In recent reforms of local government in Germany and Denmark, for example, there has been a highly creative interweaving of arguments for urban decentralisation stemming not only from a concern with local democracy, but from just as strong a concern with the need for greater efficiency in service delivery. The key proposition here is that efficient service delivery and high quality public administration need to be based both on higher levels of public responsiveness and an on orientation towards the specific needs of consumers in particular (often very small, e.g. neighbourhood) areas. ₁₉

This prompts a specific set of orientations towards enhanced local democracy which underpins the rest of this paper:

* In large local authority areas with populations of several hundred thousands or even a million or more, it is impossible to sustain a democratic representative relationship between elected councillors and local communities purely through the medium of the local council itself. The council is too remote from 'grassroots' social life to allow for either effectively democratic or efficient representation, and councillors lack the time and technical means to act as genuine community representatives. This problem is now being exacerbated with the creation of more (and larger) unitary authorities in England, Scotland and Wales to replace previously two-tier local authority structures.

* There is widespread evidence drawn from a vast range of innovations and experiments in Britain and throughout Western Europe that the traditional British system of council-centred representative democracy can be genuinely enhanced by the introduction of (a) some form of territorial political decentralisation within a local authority area, especially if related to an appropriate measure of service-delivery and managerial decentralisation; (b) greater opportunities for local citizens, voluntary associations and pressure groups to express their own political voices through structures of direct decision-making (whether binding or consultative); and (c) an expansion of mechanisms for 'backbench' councillors and perhaps even a wider public to scrutinise council proposals and decisions.

* It has to be acknowledged that 'getting the balance right' between these various innovations and the existing structures of local representative democracy requires careful adaptation, and the process of change itself must be effectively managed and co-ordinated. In particular, the representative role of local councillors must be safeguarded and 'built in' to proposals for enhanced local democracy. It must not be compromised by any further weakening of councillors' political responsibility, or by further sacrifice of councillor autonomy to local party elites. It can, indeed, be argued that both the general public and councillors share a common interest in opening up the operation of local government in order to create more opportunities for citizen access and public scrutiny. Both citizens and their elected representatives frequently face bureaucratic obstructionism and 'red tape' in their efforts to find out what is happening in a particular local authority department. There is no reason why they cannot unite in supporting a common set of democratic aims.

* Comparative investigation of reforms in different countries can be helpful in underlining the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to these questions. At the same time there is clearly no universal panacea for local democracy: different solutions will suit different local authorities, and even the most promising of schemes for change might fail if not implemented properly. The task of managing organisational and cultural change is now a particularly difficult one for local authorities, and each individual authority will bring to that process its own resources, expertise and specific profile of political interests. ₂₀

* Structural change alone will not in itself enhance local democracy. Local councillors need more administrative and organisational support if they are to work effectively at the community level, and if they are to participate effectively in the decision-making process of the whole local council. And without a positive cultural commitment to the task of engendering good democratic practice, no innovative scheme for reform will be successful. Solid civic leadership in the direction of greater local democracy, particularly if it roots itself in a commitment to greater 'transparency' of local political processes and to more open channels of communication, is indispensable to this whole project of change and development.

4. USING NEW DEMOCRATIC STRUCTURES: OPENING UP THE LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE PROCESS

Once elected, local councillors have primary responsibilities in the representative process of local government. This can be seen (as indicated above) ₂₁ as the second of four key junctures in any system of local democracy. This representative role then has to be integrated in the multifarious channels of local authority decision-making (juncture three). In both cases there is a strong case for establishing a range of new democratic structures which can bring councillors and communities closer together. Many highly innovative reforms have now been established - with varying degrees of success - in Britain and the countries of Western Europe. There is no lack of evidence of positive ways in which the quality of local democracy can be enhanced. This is not to deny that there can be problems. What is attempted here is a brief review of possible innovations which need to be carefully considered in the light of the circumstances prevailing in each specific case. Both organisational skill and political vision are needed if innovation is to be successful, and the criteria of success need to be carefully delineated.

New democratic structures may conveniently be discussed under the three major headings indicated in the previous section:

* Area decentralisation within a local authority

* Direct democratic decision-making (whether binding or advisory/consultative) by citizens

* Mechanisms for scrutinising council decisions and proposals

In each case there is considerable potential for councillors to work in a close relationship with their constituents and local communities, and it is in this sense that the representative character of local government can be enhanced rather than diminished.

Area Decentralisation Although local authorities are heavily constrained by law in terms of their formal decision-making powers and their revenue-raising capacities, they can, nevertheless, exercise considerable discretion in terms of internal service-delivery organisation, managerial structure and political decision-making. There is no obstacle in law to any local authority introducing a system of area or neighbourhood decentralisation in an effort to improve levels of democratic participation and accountability. A range of schemes has been introduced in Britain in the last few years, with some of these schemes deliberately seeking to strengthen the role of elected councillors at the community level. The well- publicised system of neighbourhood committees in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets demonstrates very well both the strengths and weaknesses of such an experiment, since what seemed originally to be a very democratic devolution of decision-making (including budgetary) power to neighbourhoods led in practice to the growing influence of extreme right-wing political elements, most notably in the Isle of Dogs. This example shows quite clearly how dangerous it can be, in some circumstances, to take power away from the elected local council as a whole and transfer it to a neighbourhood level in which a strong anti-democratic, intolerant and racist culture is striving for power. Many commentators have noted the irony of a situation in which apparently liberal principles of 'community politics' were distorted into a range of illiberal practices.

An alternative model of decentralisation is exemplified in the experience of another London borough - Islington - where (originally) twenty-four neighbourhood forums were established. These forums gave local people the opportunity to take decisions about the structure and delivery of local services at neighbourhood level. This approach did not empower local councillors, but, instead, favoured a principle of 'participatory' rather than 'representative' democracy. From one point of view this might appear to be a meaningful exercise in the decentralisation of power. But it raises the question whether direct democracy can, in certain circumstances, subvert the power of elected representatives. As in the case of Tower Hamlets, there may be an important difference between the original democratic theory of decentralisation and actual practice. ₂₂

Harlow District Council has combined neighbourhood offices and area committees of elected members, the latter replacing the traditional council-wide service committees. Other recent innovative schemes for neighbourhood or local area decentralisation are those of Portsmouth City Council, Nottinghamshire County Council, and the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. ₂₃ In effect most local authorities have now established forms of area decentralisation, but in general they have tended to stress decentralisation of service delivery rather than of democratic decision-making. (The earliest experiments in creating neighbourhood offices do indeed go back to the late 1970s.) There is clearly scope for both dimensions, but it is the second of the two which is presently least developed.

The many bold attempts to devolve power within geographically small but densely populated local authority areas deserve careful analysis. It is not a matter of any one experiment being positively good and others bad. All such examples reveal a whole range of issues and problems related to strategies of area decentralisation, and in particular they highlight the need to design a system of decentralisation which fits the particular circumstances of specific communities. An ethnically polarised community or a community in which there is a clear imbalance of power amongst constituent social groups will not necessarily be suitable for certain forms of decentralisation. If different political parties are 'in power' in different neighbourhoods there clearly will be major conflicts to be resolved on a whole range of policy (including financial) matters. This also means that the role of the corporate centre of a local authority in relation to neighbourhoods or areas needs to be carefully defined. To take one more example of a possible political problem: if a neighbourhood forum is dominated by 'delegates' from tenants' associations, then other groups of people (for example, owner-occupiers) may have reasonable grounds for complaining that their interests are being overlooked.

Experience from continental Western Europe reveals a very wide range of approaches to neighbourhood decentralisation. In France, from the late 1970s, the issue of enhancing citizen participation at local level without sacrificing the important representative function of elected councillors led to many interesting initiatives in a number of towns and cities. The general approach was to establish networks of neighbourhood (quartier) councils or committees which would bring together local citizens, community associations, councillors, the mayor, deputy-mayors, and adjoints (assistants). The first such experiment was in Lille in the mid-1970s, where the mayor (Pierre Mauroy) first created ten mairies de quartier (neighbourhood mayor's offices) between 1975 and 1985, and then ten conseils de quartier (neighbourhood councils) between 1978 and 1987. These innovations effectively established a new rank of neighbourhood councillors (initially between 12 and 15 for each quartier), selected by the members of the municipal (town) council from amongst leading local citizens in areas of activity such as culture, education and sport. The municipal councillors (members of the Lille town council) resident in each quartier attend meetings of the conseil de quartier, but have only a consultative vote. Meetings are chaired by the mayor, an adjoint or another municipal councillor. ₂₄

Similar experiments in major German towns and cities are if anything more strictly formalised, with the constitutional recognition of districts (Bezirke) as component political units of the whole local authority area. The constitutional capacity of individual German Länder to establish their own frameworks of local government has been recognised since the Federal Republic was created in 1949. This has meant that in any particular Land (for example, North-Rhine Westphalia) there is a general legal provision for constitutional decentralisation within towns and cities. Decentralisation is accordingly regarded as perfectly normal, both for reasons of political democracy as well as for reasons of efficient service delivery. It may also be seen to be in harmony with the principle of subsidiarity, which underpins much German thinking about territorial divisions of power. ₂₅

In general, continental West European local government reform has had much less difficulty in acknowledging the importance of neighbourhood/area decentralisation than has been the case in Britain. In part this is because the constitutional position of British local authorities has produced a somewhat entrenched notion of the corporate identity of the local council as a kind of unitary institution with no possibility for further federalisation or devolution: not dissimilar, perhaps, to the problem of trying to split up the notion of the sovereignty of parliament. But it is also, perhaps, because for too long local councils in Britain have been regarded essentially as deliverers of services. It is mainly when discussion shifts to the political and democratic virtues of decentralisation that the need for a smaller-scale level of representation than the single, supreme local council ('representing' perhaps several hundred thousand people) becomes evident.

Neighbourhood or area decentralisation can bring power 'closer to the people' in several different ways. It has an 'output' dimension in terms of producing more localised service delivery and management of technical functions, with opportunities for local people to seek information and make enquiries to both councillors and officers. It also has an 'input' dimension in terms of allowing individuals and community associations and groups of all kinds to participate in debate, argument and perhaps even decision-making. It thus allows councillors to keep closely in touch with the needs, aspirations and concerns of their local communities. There are particular issues of representation here which need to be addressed: for example, the relationship between the electoral division or ward in which a councillor is elected and the boundaries of a neighbourhood or area forum, committee or council. If the two do not coincide clearly there are likely to be conflicts of loyalties amongst councillors. But, perhaps even more importantly, the link between representation at the neighbourhood or area level and at the level of the whole local authority needs to be carefully worked out. A federal solution would perhaps be ideal, since federalism allows for a clearly delineated division of responsibilities between different territorial levels of decision-making; but, of course, federalism is generally regarded as being alien to the British constitutional tradition. It is thus better to call it 'community' government and politics - along the lines, perhaps, of the Belgian solution to the issue of territorial politics. ₂₆ Or, if the British government is serious about the commitments it endorsed in the Maastricht Treaty, let us refer to it as the principle of subsidiarity, which is defined quite clearly in that treaty in terms of ensuring that decisions are taken 'as closely as possible to the citizen'. ₂₇

Direct Democratic Decision-Making by Citizens As has already been stressed, there can be tensions between principles of participatory politics and those of representative democracy. The contrasting examples of neighbourhood decentralisation in Tower Hamlets and Islington show that the position of elected local councillors is a crucial variable in any scheme for devolving power 'downwards' towards local communities. The French system of concertation ('concertation') (as exemplified by the case of Lille) seeks to establish a clear basis of partnership between community groups and associations of all kinds and elected councillors: even to the extent of creating a new category of neighbourhood councillors. The permutations are endless. Different solutions will suit different circumstances. But the point to be stressed is that there is a role for both participatory and representative elements in any strategy for enhancing local democracy. Greater citizen participation can actually promote the ability of councillors to perform their representative functions and to 'speak' for their communities.

On the other hand, why not allow communities to speak for themselves? At national level it is clearly impossible for millions of people to meet in the same place and take a direct decision (although, of course, it is technically possible to get everyone to vote electronically via the telephone or the television system). At local level, however, direct democracy is possible, particularly if it is on a genuinely communitarian scale so that all individuals concerned in making a decision - even if they cannot literally meet - do share a common experience of the issues involved. In general, continental West European countries have sought for a long time to integrate some elements of direct democracy - including, for example, citizens' initiatives and referendums - into systems of representative government. In Britain, however, such an approach is unusual and might even be regarded as unconstitutional. The time has now come to reassess this anxiety about direct citizen decision-making.

There is some irony in the fact that in 1981 it was a Conservative minister, Michael Heseltine, who proposed to make local referendums compulsory if a council sought to raise more than a centrally prescribed amount of money through the rates. Such a proposal - which never proceeded beyond a first reading in the House of Commons - was motivated by the Conservative Government's belief that high-spending Labour-controlled local authorities should be subjected to popular control and censure by local citizens on a free vote. In other words, the idea was politically (and ideologically) motivated, and followed an actual referendum ('public consultation') in Coventry when the local Labour-controlled council asked local citizens to make a clear choice between public spending cuts (made necessary by new central government financial restrictions) and higher local rates. The turnout was only 25.8 per cent, but 87.9 per cent of voters expressed a preference for cuts in public spending. Thirteen years later, in 1994, the Conservative Government considered making local referendums more difficult after Strathclyde Regional Council consulted local citizens on Government proposals to take away council responsibilities for the control of water supply. On a high turnout of 71.5 per cent, 97 per cent of voters said 'no' to these proposals. (This vote was widely interpreted as a rejection of the Government's policy of abolishing the Regional Council as part of Scottish local government reform.) ₂₈

There is a cynical view that politicians always favour a referendum when they are certain that the outcome will be in their favour. This is clearly not an acceptable case for direct citizen decision-making. Referendums only serve a legitimate democratic purpose if it is acknowledged that there are occasions when 'the voice of the people' deserves to be heard directly. By enabling citizens to communicate their preferences on a specific question or issue directly to the local council, referendums are in fact the ultimate mode of public consultation. In the last two decades or so a range of statutory bodies - local authorities themselves, health authorities, Urban Development Corporations, Housing Action Trusts, City Challenge Boards, and so on - have engaged in a range of public consultation exercises related to specific community programmes. ₂₉ The local referendum - which is used in many continental West European countries as both an advisory mechanism and, in some circumstances, as a formal decision-making device - takes the notion of public consultation to a broader level of political debate. It extends the mechanism of voting beyond the cycle of elections for the council, encourage political participation and public awareness, and can be used to allow citizens actually to shape the local political agenda by insisting that certain important matters are dealt with by the local council. This is where the referendum becomes the power of citizens' initiative. ₃₀

Referendums do not automatically enhance genuine representative democracy. If turnout is low or if a referendum simply becomes another party political battle, or if a complex issue is reduced to a simple 'yes' or 'no' decision, then it may be doubted whether a referendum is really an expression of the community's political will. Is it fair, for example, for voters in one part of a local authority area effectively to determine by a majority decision what happens in another part of the area where the actual inhabitants might be in the minority on this particular issue? In this kind of situation the 'not in my back yard' attitude might work against the general community interest.

The use of referendums therefore raises delicate political issues about the legitimacy of direct citizen decision-making versus council decision-making. But it has to be said that if local councillors genuinely want to know what local people, including their own constituents, think about a particular question, then the referendum - whether advisory or binding - can be of considerable value. In Germany there is a particularly interesting mixture - in many of the Federal Republic's constituent Länder - of direct democratic mechanisms and what might be described as the British model of representative local government: this is well illustrated by current reforms in North-Rhine Westphalia, a Land which was originally (after the Second World War) greatly influenced by British local government practice. There is, moreover, a general tendency in Germany at present - even in the new Eastern Länder - to move towards a directly elected chief political executive in combination with a range of constitutional devices for citizens' initiatives and referendums (which, in some cases, may actually be prompted by a decision of the municipal council). Ironically, a 'British' system of local government in North-Rhine Westphalia has been found wanting and insufficiently democratic, and is therefore being democratised by the deliberate establishment of new procedures for greater citizen participation. ₃₁

Scrutiny Mechanisms The third type of new democratic structure which deserves consideration is that of scrutiny or review mechanisms. Such mechanisms might focus on the right of elected backbench council members to investigate local authority proposals and decisions (perhaps in the presence of the public): a major innovation, since backbenchers are often excluded from the inner circles of political power. Or, if this idea is taken one stage further, the public might be given an opportunity to meet local councillors, officers and other 'experts' in a forum, commission or committee in order to examine a specific set of proposed measures, or perhaps to examine a range of alternative solutions to a problem. This is the nearest thing to the notion of 'deliberative democracy' in any local government system, and the idea is also closely related to the principle of the jury system in the sense that ordinary men and women have the opportunity to listen to evidence and justifications for different proposals, and then to come to a considered judgement. In practice there is a range of alternative ways in which this might work. If it works well, then the ability of councillors to represent the interests and concerns of their constituents is positively enhanced, and it also opens up opportunities to challenge the professed expertise of bureaucrats and technical advisors.

Scrutiny or review committees consisting of councillors from all political parties (plus independents) can be compared to parliamentary select committees. At both local and national level this kind of innovation can give backbenchers (councillors or MPs) much greater scope for trying to control the previously concealed processes of decision-making by officials and members of the core political executive. Various methods exist for involving the public and/or local associations and groups in such processes, possibly matching their involvement in neighbourhood or area councils and forums. In all these cases there is an infinite variety of possibilities for bringing councillors and communities together in a close working relationship or partnership. In Britain, Kirklees Metropolitan Council has set up a series of both policy and quality reviews and scrutiny commissions which have enabled elected members to examine a wide range of community matters: from the management of local authority services to the auditing of local social needs (in terms of poverty, health care, and so on). This seems to be a particularly promising way of developing the role of councillors as community representatives. ₃₂

The principle of public scrutiny can be extended further in the direction of various kinds of "citizens' panels" or even "citizens' juries", which can be given the opportunity to investigate and deliberate on specific matters of local concern. In Britain the tradition of the public inquiry might be seen as a forerunner of the idea of a citizens' panel. But the emphasis of the panel is less on legalistic discussion than on questions of community interest. Panels should enable local citizens to call experts, examine documents and to probe into the justifications for alternative planning proposals concerning issues such as land use, city centre development, and so on. In several German towns and cities 'planning cells' have been established in which groups of local citizens - from various backgrounds - actually take decisions on the basis of a range of alternative 'expert' proposals. The idea here is that democracy requires the breaking down of barriers of technical expertise and bureaucracy, and that ordinary citizens - if given sufficient relevant information and the right to ask awkward questions - can make informed judgements about what is in the best interests of their communities. ₃₃ It might be said that in this respect local citizens are often in exactly the same situation as councillors, who are rarely experts in any technical sense and who must also try to get through barriers of 'red tape' and technical jargon.

Warwickshire County Council has recently set up a number of electoral division panels which have the status of sub-committees of the Council's Policy and Resources Committee. It is the express purpose of this innovation (a) to develop closer working relationships between the county and parish councils, and (b) to enhance the constituency role of the local county councillor in each electoral division. Each panel consists of the local county councillor plus the chairperson or vice-chairpersons of each parish council in the division concerned. Local district councillors may also be co-opted. The public can normally attend panel meetings, which are held quarterly. Panels do not have formal decision-making powers but can make recommendations. This innovation seems to fall between the idea of a full citizens' panel and a local area forum, but it is of considerable significance in that it seeks to establish direct links with the parish level of local government and gives new representative responsibilities to councillors. ₃₄

Similar ideas have recently influenced the democratisation strategy of Arun District Council in West Sussex. Three area liaison panels have been created, bringing together district councillors and representatives of thirty-one 'sub-local' units within the district authority's area (that is, from three town councils, twenty-one parish councils and seven parish meetings). Not only do these area liaison panels help to assess the district's service delivery performance. They also provide a direct input into the preparation of the annual district strategy review and can offer valuable advice on town and parish priorities and needs. Gradually Arun District Council is extending this network of area panels to link with public forums and a range of opportunities for direct citizen involvement and consultation with local groups. ₃₅ This particularly bold example of institutional innovation also raises the important issue of whether local democratisation can build upon the renovation of the role of town and parish councils within a district or county (and this also involves the possibility of new roles for town and parish councillors): a strategy which, if taken to its logical conclusion, could in effect produce new forms of formal area decentralisation and thus link up with the first of our three categories of new democratic structures. (It is worth stressing that in Britain the parish or small town is the nearest equivalent to the continental commune.)

Bedfordshire is an example of a county council which has committed itself to new linkages: not only with its borough council (Bedford) but also with town and parish councils in its territorial area. Six community liaison forums and three urban community councils have brought councillors together in new structures of co-operative debate and decision-making, although hitherto the focus has been on service delivery functions. ₃₆ The point of this example is that an integrated system of local government can profitably seek to offer all levels of territorial representation - from the parish to the county - an opportunity to come together to discuss issues of common concern. In this way, also, the formal structure of a 'two-tier' local authority system can actually achieve forms of inter-tier co-operation which can only be helpful to the diverse local communities involved. Once again, the challenges for local councillors, including the 'grassroots' councillors at parish level, are enormous.

There are, of course, many other new democratic structures which deserve to be considered. But the three major forms of innovation which have been discussed above - and each form has many sub-types, with important linkages between them - illustrate the general point that local representative democracy can be enhanced if processes of decision-making are opened up to allow greater citizen involvement, the expression of community interests and concerns, and the breaking down of barriers of bureaucracy and expertise. If councillors recognise the complexities of their representative role, they ought to respond positively to ways in which the voices of their respective communities might be given clearer and stronger expression. This not an easy task, and it requires willingness on the part of councillors to listen not only to the loudest voices but also to the voices of those who are less articulate and less accustomed to public expression. Any form of direct democracy involves the danger that powerful interests and well organised minorities will dominate the weak, the alienated and the marginalised. Direct democracy only works if it is related to positive strategies for overcoming social exclusion and to the positive encouragement of 'grassroots' community organisation. There are likely to be conflicts between elected councillors and those individuals who see themselves as the legitimate representatives of specific groups, associations and networks of local people. In the end local councillors must retain overall political responsibility for the vast range of decisions which are taken on behalf of their local communities. But this responsibility assumes a close relationship between councillors and communities rather than one of distance and non-communication.

5. COUNCILLORS AND COMMUNICATION: TOWARDS INFORMED ACCOUNTABILITY

If local councillors are to serve the local community, there has to be some unambiguous method by which they are held accountable to local citizens. This brings us to the fourth and final juncture of the democratic system. But it also returns us to the first, the electoral process. For it has traditionally been assumed that elections are the real test of accountability: mechanisms whereby voters, by putting an 'X' in the appropriate box on the ballot paper, can express their judgement of the local council, of the controlling party group (if there is one), and of individual councillors.

The right of each voter to put a small mark on a piece of paper once every few years hardly amounts to a system of full and direct accountability. This is surely one of the few areas of agreement uniting individuals and groups across the political spectrum. What has happened in the last fifteen years or so is that an enormous number of new methods of accountability have been injected into the local government system, many of them rooted in an endorsement of market and quasi-market mechanisms which have elevated the role of 'consumers' to a position of pre-eminence in conceptions of enhanced local democracy. To critics of 'market-led' democracy, the political dimension of local authority accountability to local communities, constituencies and citizens has been sacrificed on the high altar of New Right economics. Local government has assumed an increasing consumer- rather than citizen-orientation. And this political 'democratic deficit' has been exacerbated by the loss of decision-making power, in many areas of policy, to unelected quangos, as well as by the increasing fragmentation of responsibilities for governing communities.

In one sense power in local communities is now more dispersed than ever before - and this may have succeeded in some respects in opening up local government to a wider range of influences; but, on the other hand, the overall responsibility of the local elected council for pursuing the general public interest, and for dealing with issues which are not simply about market efficiency, has been submerged in a vast array of generally unaccountable bodies (or, at least, in bodies which are in the end responsible to the central government). The final irony is that there is now such a proliferation of unelected local magistracies that putting an 'X' on a ballot paper is an action of hardly any consequence for the way in which a whole range of local decisions are taken. The 'quango state' is unelected and (in that sense) unrepresentative.

This paper does not review all the parameters of this debate. The purpose here is more modest: to highlight the absolute importance of the councillor--community link as the basis of any genuine system of political accountability. Of course elections retain some significance in this repect, but it has to be stated that in many individual wards and electoral divisions there is often no real electoral competition (because of 'safe' or even uncontested seats), and indeed in some local councils as a whole a single dominant political party is often in an almost impregnable position. Perhaps even more importantly, local elections rarely determine the actual policies to be pursued by a council. This is one crucial reason why a greater element of direct democracy in local politics and a stronger community voice are highly desirable. A strong community voice can also help to overcome the low legitimacy of an electoral system which produces very low turnouts and has no measure of proportionality within it.

No proposals for enhancing local democracy can succeed, however, unless it is recognised that the accountability of decision-makers to citizens requires both improved two-way communication and for there to be more open and complete sources of public information. Both councillors and communities require as much accurate information as possible about local policy issues. Without such information councillors cannot make informed decisions. Equally, lack of information means that citizens and communities have no basis on which to make judgements of their local political representatives and of the council as a whole. What is needed is a greater level of communicative democracy, or, put another way, 'communities must communicate'.

In recent years rapid changes in information technology and the communications media have opened up a whole range of opportunities for making government at all levels more open and accessible to the public, and for enhancing the capacity of elected politicians, officers and civil servants to improve the quality of the information base they use in order to make decisions and formulate proposals. The emergence of new forms of community broadcasting and the growth of new kinds of local press activity have also raised expectations that there will be more opportunities for local individuals and groups to monitor the performance of local authorities, and indeed that there might be an enhancement of the quality of local public debate on the major issues which confront communities. The spread of relatively inexpensive systems of electronic desk-top publishing, and of small-scale media networks, have made it possible for almost any community group, as well as any local government department or local political party, to disseminate its beliefs, demands and policies rapidly and effectively. In many localities the communications and information technology industries are a very important part of the local economy. In reality technological change and the various media systems that exist at local level have rarely been harnessed for the specific purpose of enhancing local democracy. Much has depended on particular local circumstances and on specific initiatives taken by local councils, community groups or by local media. The haphazard nature of change suggests that the time has come for the significance of local media and information policy to be recognised more formally and to be investigated as an extremely important dimension of the local democratic process. Significant measures of empowerment are rarely possible without the skilful use of information and communication.

The crux of the matter has been summarised in a recent report on accountability and legitimacy in local governance by the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE):

Frequently the electorate will have no clear idea of how well their council is performing. The vast majority of council activities receive very little public exposure at all. The public are heavily dependent on the local media for information about the council, yet this can be actively distorted by a partisan newspaper editor, in either a supportive or hostile way. ₃₇

At the same time councillors are often deprived of essential information which they, in turn, need in order to call professional officers to account, and in any case they lack the time and technical support to monitor effectively what is going on in each local authority department. It is a vicious circle: officers are supposed to be accountable to councillors, and councillors are supposed to be accountable to the electorate. In reality these relationships are shrouded in secrecy, confusion and misunderstandings. The electorate may have totally unrealistic expectations of what a local council can achieve in a limited period. Councillors may present officers with 'impossible' objectives. From a democratic point of view it is by no means clear how these situations might be resolved in terms of accountability:

Decisions often have to be taken on the basis of imperfect knowledge, without being able to see the full consequences of action in advance, with public perceptions of these decisions being filtered and even distorted by the media, with the state of national politics likely to have a higher profile in the voters' minds than local issues. ₃₈

These inadequacies lend further weight to the argument for establishing some or all of the new democratic structures discussed above in Section 4. Area decentralisation, direct citizen decision-making and consultation, and mechanisms of scrutiny or review are all innovations which can improve the quality of available information, knowledge and understanding. They can certainly go some way towards bridging the enormous distance between up to a million or so citizens and the local council. They do not eradicate political conflict or create an artificial level of consensus in the local community; but, in bringing disagreements and tensions out into the open, they can both facilitate the accommodation of conflict and lead to a greater visibility of the arguments for and against particular policies and proposals.

The growth of techniques of 'community profiling' as a basis for informing the local decision-making process is highly significant in this respect. However, not only officers, planners and other professional service-deliverers require full information about local needs, and audit-type assessments of policy impact. Councillors - as elected representatives of local communities - need to be allowed full and open access to statistical and qualitative information about those communities, and need to be offered adequate training in the handling of such data. It is difficult to see how any councillor can perform his or her role as an elected representative without some basic information technology support. Research suggests that this is a particularly crucial area of concern at present, and that councillors in almost every local authority are aware of the inadequacies of existing levels of technical support. In some cases relevant data - for example demographic data on a ward basis - may not even be available. In other cases the data may be available but inaccessible to councillors. This may be due to a lack of appropriate technology (such as computer hardware and software) or to a lack of clear policy guidelines on matters of information technology. ₃₉

If councillors do not have access to accurate and relevant information about resources and needs in their communities, how can they possibly represent those communities effectively? Local communities, in turn, need to develop the capacity to gain up-to-date and comprehensible information about 'what is going on' in their local councils and, more specifically, about what their own particular local councillors are actually doing for their constituents. This issue would seem to have three distinct dimensions:

* First, the local council as a corporate body should make a greater effort to furnish the local community with information and guidance about its overall policy strategies, visions for the future, and specific sets of objectives. It should also seek to promote efficient and accessible systems whereby local people can ask questions, make complaints and seek advice.

* Secondly, individual councillors, and perhaps distinct groups of councillors, should go beyond the traditional 'surgery' method of meeting constituents to develop a broader range of strategies for keeping in touch with local community interests and concerns.

* Thirdly, the importance of the local media of communication (press and broadcasting services) in 'filtering' information from councils to communities, and from local residents and community groups to the council, should be recognised. Media policy is now a matter of great democratic significance at local level, and the various ramifications of media policy - including such issues as citizen access to local media, the ownership and control of media enterprises, and the use to be made of the media by the local council itself - need to be high on the local political agenda

Many innovations are in fact being made under all of these three headings in local authority areas in Britain and continental Western Europe. What is needed now is a more systematic overview of such innovations, and the sharing of good practice and informative experience (whether positive or negative). ₄₀ In the limited space available attention will be restricted to a few specific examples of what is actually being done, focusing on the potential for enhancing local political accountability through improved methods of local communication.

* Under the Citizen's Charter provisions of the 1992 Local Government Act, local authorities are required to publish performance indicators each financial year. The aim is to provide the public with 'measurements' of how well, successfully or efficiently local services are provided. There is an emphasis here on the notion of 'value for money': it is assumed, for example, that local citizens will judge their local councils in terms of the hard, usually quantitative, evidence which is provided, and will form an opinion about whether levels of council tax are reflected in an appropriate level of service delivery. While acknowledging that standards of service are of considerable significance, it must be commented that there seems to be a confusion here between the notion of a "citizen's charter" and that of a "customer's charter". What about the democratic quality and openness of the local council's work in the community? Or the 'performance' standards of local councillors themselves? (How many councillors could themselves monitor their own effectiveness as local representatives?) How can citizens actually assess statistical information and relate it to the complex political struggles going on in their communities and to the role of central government in constraining local expenditure? In effect, lists of performance indicators seem to amount to a summary survey of local government activity with the politics taken out. Often such summaries appear in aggregated form and apply to the whole local authority area with no further breakdown to neighbourhood or other more localised geographical levels. In any case what can citizens actually do if some of the indicators seem to be unsatisfactory? Complaining and waiting until the next election seem to be the only significant alternatives. And it has to be said that in many situations neither of these strategies will have much effect.

* Providing official statistics and information is one thing. But treating local citizens as more than mere consumers of such officially produced 'messages' is another. A broader view of citizen and community empowerment through enhanced communication requires the positive facilitation of 'grassroots' involvement in the communicative process. Local councils need to monitor very carefully the factors which inhibit individuals and groups from getting their voices heard in the local political process. It is now acknowledged, for example, that opening up public access at community level to even basic information technology and to the local press and broadcasting media can have a remarkable effect on levels of awareness of 'what is going on' in the community. For any individual or group the ability to publish one's views (even in a simple newsletter) or to have a few minutes of air-time on local radio can produce a greater sense of political involvement than any number of surgery meetings with a local councillor. This can be especially important in large territorial areas where there is a perceived sense of distance between local communities and the location of the town, city or shire hall. Increasingly, community schemes are emerging which seek to provide information- technology training to individuals, groups and even local businesses, which often make equipment available at low or no cost, and which sometimes include the possibility of local media training (for example in conjunction with local radio stations). ₄₁ It is a sobering thought that any citizen with access to a desk-top computer system and an electronic mail facility can now send a message, statement or request to almost anywhere in the world, and that this is invariably quicker and easier than trying to communicate with a local authority department. For both councillors and ordinary citizens in any community recent innovations in information technology open up a vast range of possibilities for participation, education and the handling of complex information. The growing international relations of local authorities - for example in the developing system of European governance - are also going to become increasingly significant in terms of computer-based networking, and the phenomenon of 'global localism' will demand more and more sophisticated communications links between local authorities across national frontiers.

* It follows that priorities for any local authority include extending the use of information technology beyond the authority's internal organisational and administrative processes, using modern forms of electronic communication to provide local communities with as much clear information as possible about council operations, and opening up complaint, enquiry and comment lines (which can include remotely accessible databases and a range of interactive systems). Information networks linking councils and communities are at present relatively underdeveloped in Britain. This is partly a matter of cost, but it is also a matter of lack of understanding and lack of political (and bureaucratic) will at national and local levels. There is certainly a growing interest in this area of technical development, but many local authorities - especially the smaller ones - are clearly lagging behind, and are significantly slower to initiate new technological projects than are businesses in the private sector. There is also an urgent need for local authorities in areas which have an inadequate infrastructure for electronic communication networks to develop a positive strategy to improve this infrastructure. But it is not easy in a situation in which just two major companies occupy positions of local dominance in infrastructure provision. Manchester City Council and Kirklees Metropolitan Council offer two particularly noteworthy examples of the development of innovative information and communication-based 'telematic' services. These were originally set up with financial assistance from the Department of the Environment under the Urban Programme with the clear implication that there were direct, perceivable benefits in terms of local economic development. Like Manchester and Kirklees, Bristol is now part of the HOST wide-area network computer system. There is obviously potential for the further development of such systems for broader and more democratic purposes of local government and administration. Recent initiatives in Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Bradford suggest that this potential is beginning to be appreciated. ₄₂ What is needed is a development from community information systems to more interactive and participatory forms of electronic democracy. Whether any British local authority would wish to go as far as Amsterdam's comprehensive 'digital city' project is debatable, but a start needs to be made with some fairly modest innovations.

* Ideally the quality of information provision and interactive communication should be developed on two levels if local representative democracy is to be enhanced: councillors need much better access - facilitated by the latest information technology - to the information base of local authority departments; and, secondly, the public need to be able to enter into more direct forms of communication with the local councillor and, indeed, their own particular councillors. This is not to deny the continuing significance of face-to-face surgeries or local meetings, nor to ignore the great importance of printed literature of all kinds (leaflets, handouts, booklets, council newspapers, etc.). But the twenty-first century is now only a few years away, and a major distinction is now emerging between dynamic local authorities which are seeking to exploit the potential of the latest information technologies, and other local authorities which have not even begun to do so.

* On a European scale of comparison the distinction between different levels of development is even more staggering. Community information systems are a much more common phenomenon in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy, Spain and Portugal than in Britain. And there have been even bolder experiments in what might be called 'electronic participatory democracy' in some European cities. ₄₃ In France the mayors of major cities in which modern telecommunications have become a key economic resource have not failed to appreciate the opportunities that have thereby been created for adopting IT- and media-led civic leadership campaigns. It is much more widely recognised in France than in Britain that civic pride, image and boldness of community vision require above all else the dynamic and professional use of the communications media. ₄₄ There is, of course, a fine line to be drawn here between using the media for purposes of public relations ('transmission-belt communication') and using the media for the genuine encouragement of public debate. Genuine local democracy requires civic leadership, but not at the expense of pluralism and participation. In some European countries - perhaps most notably in Sweden and the Netherlands - there is an unusually open acknowledgement in media policy debates that the media have a legitimate political role. As Dennis Mcquail has argued:

Swedish press policy has been distinctive for its clear support of a press system fundamentally based on political diversity and for the extent and range of economic support. . . . It was the third parliamentary commission (1972) which, on the basis of social, as well as economic, research, extended thinking about the role of the press and the need for support. A statement of the proper functions of the press in a democracy was made. These were said to be: providing all-round information; commentary on the events of the day; scrutinzing holders of power; facilitating communication among and within organized groups. . . . Broadcasting policy in Sweden has similar overall aims to those of other European countries, but there is more emphasis on the role of critic and monitor of government and business than is found, for instance, in Britain, where a more neutral and mediatory role is favoured.

In The Netherlands, a principle valued on a par with freedom of the press has been "pluriformity" - essentially the diversity of press structure and content, as manifested in alternative opinions and outlooks which reflect the key differences in the national society. . . . The Dutch broadcasting system is, in principle, open to all significant "voices" in the society. Successive media laws, since the 1920s, have provided for the recognition of claims to air-time by organized social groups which can demonstrate a sufficient degree of popular support. ₄₅

It also seems to be highly significant, in terms of European comparisons, that there is an increasing formal recognition in the making of media policy that local and regional diversity is a key element in any media system which claims to be democratic. Ideally, local and regional media should reflect the life, identity and social pluralism of the communities in which they are based, and should not simply serve the interests of national media conglomerates or become saturated with national political coverage. The very rapid expansion, from the late 1970s, of local radio systems - often in the face of opposition from both national governments and powerful national media corporations - offers one particularly forceful example of how the media 'landscape' has changed, and of how important it is for local authorities, elected councillors and community groups to engage in a wide-ranging debate about the potential significance of such change for local democratic practice. ₄₆

This is a complex and wide-ranging area for discussion. The essential focus of the argument is that any process of local accountability requires strong elements of communicative democracy. There can be no meaningful accountability if government and administration are shrouded in secrecy and are inaccessible to local communities and their elected representatives, or if councillors simply allow themselves to be dominated by local party elites. Both communities and councillors share a common interest in promoting mutual knowledge and understanding. The aim should be to make localities not only more 'intelligent', but also more 'intelligible' through greater transparency and a widening of access to information. ₄₇ With greater intelligibility come more meaningful opportunities for genuine democratisation and, almost certainly, increased levels of political participation.

The establishment of new democratic structures and the promotion of more effective, open and preferably interactive modes of communication at local level are the main requirements which need to be met if local representative democracy is to be enhanced. But none of these innovations will have much effect unless councillors themselves begin to appreciate the enormous challenges and opportunities which now face them in the new socio-economic, political and cultural circumstances of the late twentieth century.

The notion of accountability also needs to be extended beyond the simplistic view that every few years the electorate passes judgement on the majority political party (if there is one) and decides whether to vote another party into power. In representing local communities each and every councillor is important, whether or not she or he belongs to the majority party. The strongest argument for developing some or all of the new democratic structures discussed in this report is that this would almost certainly facilitate the active involvement of a broader range of councillors in processes of local governance, and would also bring councillors and communities closer together in a range of new creative, working relationships. In this way the full implications of the idea and ideals of representative democracy might at last be appreciated, and a linking of those ideals to the practice of a more active citizenship - promoted by a widening of access to information and localised media of communication - might become a reality in the next century.

Keith Taylor
Centre for the Study of Democracy
London
University of Westminster
March 1996

Footnotes

Note 1: This paper draws on the findings of a number of recent empirical research projects, including a major study on the theme of 'enhancing local democracy' undertaken on behalf of the Local Government Management Board and originally carried out by a research team at the University of Warwick's Local Government Centre: Madeleine Wahlberg, Keith Taylor and Mike Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy (London: Local Government Management Board, 1995). The present author gratefully acknowledges the contribution of his two co-researchers on that project to some of the basic themes and ideas which are developed further in this paper. (See also Madeleine Wahlberg and Mike Geddes, 'Taking the Initiative on Local Democracy', Local Government Policy Making, vol. 21/5 (May 1995), pp. 9-16.)

The project also involved a seminar, held on 16-17 June 1994, jointly organised by the Local Government Centre and the Warwick University Local Authorities Research Consortium. The seminar brought together elected members, officers and the Local Government Centre research team and focused on the theme of 'Promoting Local Democracy and Citizen Participation in the UK and Europe'. The value of the seminar was enormous, and the present author acknowledges the many helpful comments and criticisms which came out of those discussions and which have helped to clarify several aspects of this current work. Back.

Note 2: See Keith Taylor, 'European Union: The Challenge for Local and Regional Government', The Political Quarterly, vol. 66/1 (January-March 1995), pp. 74-83. Back.

Note 3: See Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, chs. 2-5. The model of local democracy's four junctures owes much to the suggestions of Andrew Taylor. Back.

Note 4: A useful analysis of the terminology used to describe the status of local government in different Western countries is provided in Alan Norton, Local Government in Other Western Democracies, The Future Role and Organisation of Local Government: Introductory Paper No. 4 (University of Birmingham: Institute of Local Government Studies, 1985), Part C. See also Alan Norton (ed.), Local Government in Britain and Germany (London: Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society, 1985), Appendix. Back.

Note 5: Article 3.1 of the European Charter of Local Self-Government. Back.

Note 6: See especially Anne Phillips, Local Democracy: the Terms of the Debate, Commission for Local Democracy (CLD) research report no. 2, June 1994 (London: Commission for Local Democracy, 1994); Gerry Stoker, The Role and Purpose of Local Government, CLD research report no. 4, August 1994; Jane Percy-Smith, Submissions to the Commission on Aspects of Local Democracy, CLD research report no. 8, December 1994; Chris Game and Steve Leach, The Role of Political Parties in Local Democracy, CLD research report no. 11, February 1995; Jane Percy-Smith, Digital Democracy: Information and Communication Technologies in Local Politics, CLD research report no. 14, May 1995; Des McNulty, Referenda and Citizens' Ballots: The Scope and Limitations of Direct Democracy at Local Level, CLD research report no. 15, July 1995; and the Labour Party's September 1995 report, Renewing Democracy: Rebuilding Communities. The Department of the Environment Working Party's Report (July 1993), Community Leadership and Representation: Unlocking the Potential, has also stimulated widespread debate and further proposals for reform. Back.

Note 7: Murray Hawtin et al., Community Profiling: Auditing Social Needs (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1994), pp. 1-2. Back.

Note 8: See above, p. 5. Back.

Note 9: Figures based on research for the 1986 Widdicombe Committee. See Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, p. 14. Back.

Note 10: Colin Rallings, Michael Temple and Michael Thrasher, Community Identity and Participation in Local Democracy, CLD research report no. 1 (London: Commission for Local Democracy, 1994), p. 20. Back.

Note 11: Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, pp. 13-14. Back.

Note 12: Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, p. 16. Back.

Note 13: Rallings, Temple and Thrasher, Community Identity and Participation in Local Democracy, ch. 3, 'Participation in Local Elections'. Back.

Note 14: Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, pp. 16-20. Back.

Note 15: See Mike Geddes, Poverty, Excluded Communities and Local Democracy, CLD research report no. 9 (London: Commission for Local Democracy, 1995). Back.

Note 16: John Kingdom, Local Government and Politics in Britain (London: Philip Allan, 1991), pp. 122-3. Back.

Note 17: Kenneth Newton, Second City Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 136-42. Back.

Note 18: Kingdom, Local Government and Politics in Britain, p. 122. Back.

Note 19: See, for example, Dieter Grünow, 'Customer-Orientated Service Delivery in German Local Administration', in Richard Batley and Gerry Stoker (eds.), Local Government in Europe: Trends and Developments (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 73-88; and the references to German and Danish case-studies in Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy. Back.

Note 20: This has been one of the key themes in the research programme of the Warwick University Consortium of Local Authorities. Back.

Note 21: See p. 5. Back.

Note 22: See Danny Burns, Robin Hambleton and Paul Hoggett, The Politics of Decentralisation: Revitalising Local Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1994), ch. 8. This book offers a comparative analysis of decentralisation schemes in Tower Hamlets and Islington. Back.

Note 23: Percy-Smith, Submissions to the Commission on Aspects of Local Democracy, p. 18; Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, pp. 45-51; Lucy Gaster, 'Quality, Choice and Efficiency: The Case of Harlow's Neighbourhood Offices', Local Government Policy Making, vol. 20/4 (March 1994), pp. 18-23. Back.

Note 24: Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, pp. 51-2. Back.

Note 25: See Norton (ed.), Local Government in Britain and Germany; Taylor, 'European Union: The Challenge for Local and Regional Government'; Nevil Johnson, 'Some Effects of Decentralization in the Federal Republic of Germany', in L. J. Sharpe (ed.), Decentralist Trends in Western Democracies (London: Sage, 1979), pp. 235-58; Menno Wolters, 'The Principle of Subsidiarity in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands', paper presented to the Eighth Lothian Conference on Subsidiarity and Federalism Within the European Union, December 1993. Back.

Note 26: J. Van Ginderachter, 'The Belgian Federal Model', paper presented to the Eighth Lothian Conference on Subsidiarity and Federalism Within the European Union, December 1993. Back.

Note 27: Article A, Title I of the Maastricht Treaty. See further Taylor, 'European Union: The Challenge for Local and Regional Government'; Wolters, 'The Principle of Subsidiarity in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands'; and Andrew Duff (ed.), Subsidiarity Within the European Community (London: Federal Trust, 1993), parts 6 and 7. Back.

Note 28: Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, p. 53. Back.

Note 29: Hawtin et al., Community Profiling, pp. 3-4. Back.

Note 30: On the use of citizens' initiatives in German local government see Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, pp. 55-56. Back.

Note 31: Ibid. See also Dieter Grunow, 'Constitutional Reform of Local Government in Germany: The Case of North Rhine-Westphalia', Local Government Studies, vol. 18/1 (Spring 1992), pp. 44-57. Back.

Note 32: Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, pp. 39-40. Back.

Note 33: Ibid., p. 56. Back.

Note 34: This information was provided directly by Warwickshire County Council. Back.

Note 35: Jacqui Ball, 'Community Governance: The Arun Experience', Local Government Policy Making, vol. 22/3 (December 1995), pp. 13-21. Back.

Note 36: John N. Tizard and Kay Holman, 'Communities, Governance and Local Democracy: Roles and Relationships', Local Government Policy Making, vol. 21/5 (May 1995), pp. 3-8. Back.

Note 37: The Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, 'Faulty Powers: Accountability and Legitimacy in Local Governance', published in Local Government Chronicle, 27 January 1995. Back.

Note 38: Ibid. Back.

Note 39: Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, pp. 31-4. Back.

Note 40: The publications and reports of the European Institute for the Media, founded by the University of Manchester in 1983 in co-operation with the European Cultural Foundation, are of particular relevance here. See also the work of the independent Euromedia Research Group (a network of West European social scientists). Back.

Note 41: See Graham Drake, Issues in the New Europe (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1994), ch. 10.4. Back.

Note 42: See Ken Ducatel, 'Transactional Telematics in the City', Local Government Studies, vol. 20/1 (Spring 1994), pp. 60-77. Back.

Note 43: Ivan Horrocks and Jeff Webb, 'Electronic Democracy: Prospects for Development in UK Local Government', paper presented to the Political Studies Association Urban Politics Group, July 1994; Ivan Horrocks and Jeff Webb, 'Electronic Democracy: A Policy Issue for UK Local Government?', Local Government Policy Making, vol. 21/3 (December 1994), pp. 22-30; Percy-Smith, Digital Democracy. Back.

Note 44: Wahlberg, Taylor and Geddes, Enhancing Local Democracy, pp. 40-42. Back.

Note 45: Denis McQuail, Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public Interest (London: Sage, 1992), pp. 43-44, 61, 45, 62. Back.

Note 46: See Philip Crookes and Patrick Vittet-Philippe, Local Radio and Regional Development in Europe, European Institute for the Media monograph no. 7 (1985). Back.

Note 47: Jean Laterasse and Hervé Pauchard, 'Information Systems and Territorial Administration: a New Power Struggle, or Multi-Actor Rational Organisation', in Patsy Healey et al. (eds), Managing Cities: The New Urban Context (Chichester: Wiley, 1995), pp. 153-67. Back.