Throughout the 1980s and 1990s partnership has come to be the accepted mechanisms for the delivery of regeneration initiatives. The widespread evidence of partnership working across all spheres of government activity suggests that it now represents the new economic orthodoxy in the approach to co-ordination. During the same period there has been considerable attention drawn to the emergence of new forms of co-ordination based upon networking. The growth of partnership and networking has however proliferated in the absence of any systematic evaluation of their efficacy as an organisational form. Throughout this period a major objective of regeneration partnerships has been to alter the internal dynamics of partnership by broadening the range of participants involved. Partnership and network forms of working have thus become significant channels through which a range of actors have been incorporated into regeneration initiatives. In light of the growth of partnership and networking a major lacuna in our understanding arises from the absence of any theoretical framework which might describe the specific characteristics of these organisational forms of co-ordination. This thesis seeks to fill that vacuum by postulating a theoretical model of both partnership and network forms of co-ordination. The key attributes of the two models are identified, with common characteristics and key differentiating qualities discussed. This approach generated a set of analytical tools (a partnership checklist) designed in the first instance to be of practical use to the community and voluntary sectors as they engage in partnership but also to be of use to practitioners and participants generally. The checklist was tested on the Single Regeneration Budget partnership formed by the Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership, however, the insights developed have wider application for our understanding of partnership and networks in general.

Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, including Cuban scholarship which has been overlooked by other non-Cuban scholars, this thesis traces the evolution of local government and popular participation from the overthrow of the Batista regime in 1959 to the present day, and in so doing, it exposes multiple sites for participation in the business of local governance which are available to the average Cuban citizen. By examining the municipal election process, mechanisms for close contact between citizens and their elected delegates, and the relationship between the mass organisations and the Communist Party, this study illuminates the interface between state and populace, and demonstrates that popular participation at the level of the community is linked to domestic national policy-making. Furthermore, evidence is presented which demonstrates that the evolution of local Cuban polity is affected though continuous review of local government practice and is itself a participatory process. Decades of popular participation in local affairs have developed and strengthened the capacity for collective action, and this thesis assesses its contribution to the remarkable survival of Cuba’s socialist project after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. As the revolutionary leadership expanded opportunities for popular participation whilst continuing to maintain control over decisions it considered were necessary for economic development, for the maintenance of national unity, and for the development of Che Guevara’s New Man (and Woman), tensions were generated between localism and centralism, and between pragmatism and ideology. Responses to these tensions can be seen in the contemporary Cuban scholarship presented in the final chapter of the thesis. This thesis makes a sustained case for the importance of local government to the revolutionary leadership and argues that no assessment of the Cuban polity can claim to be comprehensive without taking local government into account.

This thesis examines the particular sphere of gender equality working in UK local government in relation to feminist ideas and activism. In doing so it addresses questions about the nature and legacy of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), as well as how we should understand those engaged with feminist issues but organised in apparently non-traditional ways and locations. It also considers the significance of national legislation in shaping how this area of work has developed, with reference to the most recent Equality Acts. Taking as my starting point classic debates about organising for social change within the WLM, I undertook a qualitative comparative analysis of local government gender equality working. This examined three councils during the period in which they first created municipal feminist women's initiatives, and the present day. To do this I undertook interviews with those working during both time periods, and gathered contemporary and archival texts relating to the councils' work on gender equality. I suggest that the council gender equality initiatives, and those working within them, present an interesting way to complicate several boundaries; those usually defining the feminist movement and its organising; social movements in relation to the state; and feminist activity in relation to professionalism. I argue for the significance of the municipal feminist initiatives for present day work on gender equality, particularly in terms of their organisational position and form. I explore the utility of, and problems with, recent legislative developments in relation to gender equality, suggesting they have played an important role in standardising the work that takes place. I also examine the processes through which the concepts and practices of local government gender equality working have developed. In doing so I argue for the non-linear way this takes place and the importance of individual workers in shaping this arena. Finally, I present the idea of the ‘professional feminist' as a way to understand the workers who identify as feminists. This challenges the terms of the early WLM but does so through drawing out and reconciling professionalism with feminist ideas.

This study explores the role of boundary-spanning individuals in the development of Strategic Service Partnerships (SSPs). SSPs are the latest manifestation of Public- Private Partnerships (PPPs). However, these partnerships are remarkably underresearched. Furthermore, the role of key boundary-spanning individuals in developing and maintaining PPPs and other partnership forms is poorly understood. This study closes these gaps in the literature by examining the development of SSPs and showing how the role and contribution of boundary-spanning individuals can be understood. Boundary-spanners are shown to exist as dynamic, structurally contextualised agents whose actions are shaped by a combination of organisational and contingency pressures and their own individual psychology. To understand the development of an SSP and the role of boundary-spanners, the study develops and tests a conceptual framework. This framework combines a sequential account of emergent interorganisational relationships with a policy process model. The thesis presents case study evidence from an in depth qualitative investigation of an emergent SSP in an English Local Authority to show that interaction between public and private sector organisations is critical to development of an SSP. It is also shown that boundaryspanning individuals are of critical importance in managing and shaping these interactions. This study represents an advance in understanding both PPPs and boundary-spanning individuals.

The implementation of the Education Reform Act (DES 1988) saw fundamental changes in the structure of education in England; in the relationship between schools and local education authorities and in the establishment of the private sector as a competitor to local education authorities in delivering services. Further legislation introduced by both the then Conservative Government and after 1997 by a Labour Government saw these changes further embedded. This research seeks through a review of literature to find out why those legislative changes were implemented and by investigating four local education authorities review how those changes impacted on their performance. This is a qualitative study that gathered data through the use of semi-structured interviews to create four case studies. Against a background of successive governments seeing the use of the market place, competition and the private sector as a means of delivering their aim of improving public sector performance this research provides an insight into how four local authorities worked with the private sector following their Ofsted inspections.

The public's trust in government is a subject that arouses interest and debate among researchers and politicians alike. This thesis is concerned with public trust in government in China and particularly in local government. It provides insights both on the patterns of public trust in different levels of government and explores the key factors that account for variance in this respect. In light of the findings in this respect, the thesis also makes suggestions about measures that might be taken to improve public trust in local government particularly in the China context. A mixed methods research design has been employed that has included analysis of responses to a major trans-China quantitative survey of public opinions and the conduct of a series of semi-structured interviews with local government officials operating at different governmental levels within one municipal city. The research examines the commonalities and differences between the perspectives of citizens and of officials with regard to the scale, nature and causes of public distrust in local government. The thesis considers the implications of the findings and makes suggestions as to the kinds of policy and practice responses that would seem necessary to improve Chinese's citizens' trust levels in their local government.

In recent years, ‘agencification’ and ‘autonomisation’ seem to have emerged as the new orthodoxy in the reform of public administration, fuelling a lively academic debate on bureaucratic autonomy and political control - on whether these two phenomena are diametrically opposed or can co-exist alongside each other. Using as its empirical basis two case studies of revenue administrations in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, this cross-jurisdictional, interdisciplinary piece of research seeks to advance current understanding of bureaucratic autonomy on two fronts. First, it explores the under-researched issue of factors which may condition the exercise of bureaucratic discretion. Second, it is distinct from current works because of its comparative analysis of bureaucratic manoeuvrability within differing legal traditions and systems of government. Notwithstanding the cases’ historical and cultural differences, findings revealed a number of common functional realities. The more influential macro-institutional constraints fed through to impact on internal operational functioning in areas such as the establishment of tax priorities and revenue targets. No support was found for the hypothesis that different legal traditions have a differential impact on bureaucratic functioning. In both jurisdictions, a detailed ‘fussy’ style of drafting revenue laws aims towards certainty and predictability, with no particular stakeholder biases. Legal drafting style may be a function of the specific policy area.

Advocates of local economic development (LED) in cities confront the problem of exclusionary socio-economic outcomes, despite the purported pro-poor objectives of many local authority leaders. Most studies engage with aspects of this problem in a fragmented manner. This study examines exclusionary outcomes systematically by integrating the themes of urban governance, leadership and LED; and by applying Stone’s (1989) urban regime theory (URT) and Heifetz’s (1994) adaptive leadership theory (ALT). The study employs a cross-national comparative case study design, by comparing and contrasting LED approaches in the urban regimes of Leeds in England and Johannesburg in South Africa. It uses primarily a qualitative research strategy, complemented by the interpretation of quantitative data. Empirical evidence was collected during primary research activities undertaken from 2008 to 2011 using document analysis, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and non-participant observations. Thematic analysis was applied to the data and the NVivo software package was used to verify the analysis of interview data. The thesis argues that governance processes in pro-growth urban regimes are neither sufficiently networked nor adaptive enough to achieve pro-poor LED outcomes. These failures can be explained in part by the power of private business interests and structural barriers that tend to perpetuate income inequality and unemployment, undermining both equitable regime governance and adaptivity towards pro-poor objectives. Drawing from the perspectives of URT and ALT, the thesis highlights four inter-related factors which are central to a better understanding of LED approaches and leadership processes in urban regimes: (i) context, (ii) capacity, (iii) consequences, and (iv) collaboration dynamics and power. It concludes by identifying lessons for theory and policy practice, together with proposals on how determined leaders could begin to confront the intractable challenges of socio-economic exclusion in cities.

This thesis is concerned with the measurement and determinants of efficiency of local governments in the provision of public goods and services. In particular, the three chapters provide new contributions to the literature of fiscal federalism studying, from different angles, the relationship between policies that can stimulate the electoral accountability of politicians and local government efficiency in the provision of public services. In all chapters the measurement of local government efficiency has been obtained through data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier models using different measures of inputs and outputs employed in the production of public services. Subsequently, the determinants of efficiency have been studied using panel data models and quasi-experimental methods. The analysis takes advantage of the policies implemented by the Italian and the United Kingdom (UK) government in the last 20 years. In particular, Italian local authorities have been subject to an intense process of fiscal decentralisation, and English councils have been subject to a unique process of performance evaluation based on quantitative measures of outputs.

Post-war Sierra Leone faces a deep deficit in the supply of basic public goods which is detrimental to quality of life and remains a risk factor for future conflict. The government, under substantial donor influence, seeks to address this deficit through democratic decentralization. However, evidence of the link between decentralization and improved public goods provision remains weak. I approach the public goods deficit from a different angle; rather than assuming that an imported solution is needed, I consider what can be learned from existing patterns of public goods provision. At the core of this study is a comparison of ‘success versus failure’ in local public goods provision in the city of Makeni, with the aim of understanding key dynamics that lead to divergent outcomes. While I set out to focus on cases of public goods provision led by two main categories of local government actors — elected councils and chiefs — I found that it in all four cases, citizens played a substantial role. I therefore analyze the cases as instances of coproduction of public goods. I find that coproduction is an important means of maintaining a basic supply of local public goods when state capacity is weak. With this in mind, I draw on the case study evidence to develop a set of propositions about the conditions under which coproduction is more likely to succeed in contemporary Sierra Leone. These propositions are suggestive of an alternate institutional approach to addressing the public goods deficit—one that is based on the development of workarounds for key obstacles rather than institutional overhaul. However, coproduction is no ‘magic bullet’; it has troubling implications for social equality and the development of state capacity over the longer term and thus judgements about the desirability of coproductive arrangements are likely to involve complex trade-offs.