Locating Localism: Statecraft, Citizenship and Democracy

✍ Scribed by Jane Wills

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 265
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Locating localism explores the development of localism as a new mode of statecraft and its implications for the practice of citizenship. Drawing on original research, Jane Wills highlights the importance of having the civic infrastructure and capacity to facilitate the engagement of citizens in local decision making. She looks at the development of community organising, neighbourhood planning and community councils that identify and nurture the energies, talents and creativity of the population to solve their own problems and improve our world. Combining political theory with attention to political practice, the book takes the long view of this new policy development, positioning it in relation to the political geo-history of the British state. In so doing, it highlights the challenges of the state devolving itself and the importance of citizens having the freedom, incentives and institutions needed to act.

✦ Table of Contents

LOCATING LOCALISM
Contents
List of figures and tables
Figures
Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction: the argument being made in this book
1. Making sense of localism
What is localism?
Emergent forms of top-down and bottom-up localism in England today
Challenges to localism
The emergence of localism as a political vision for change
Localism and reform since 2010
2. The geo-constitution and the long history of localism
Crown, church and local government
The drive for standardisation via centralisation
Small steps in the development of localism
The political and cultural legacy and its challenge to localism
Taking the long view of localism
3. The place of the people
Public engagement in political life
Localist institution building for political voice and civic engagement
State-led localism and the missing community
Localism’s missing social and civic infrastructure
4. Localist local government
Adopting a cooperative approach to government in Lambeth
Localist lessons from Lambeth
5. Institution building for localist futures
Neighbourhood planning in its wider context
Research in three different locations
6. Community organising: past, present and future
Chicago, sociology and Back of the Yards
Community organising, the English way
7. A localist future?
Appendix: Research design and methods
1 Poplar Neighbourhood Community Budget, 2012–13 (Chapter Three)
2 Lambeth Council’s Community Based Commissioning project, 2014–15 (Chapter Four)
3 Neighbourhood planning in Exeter St James, Devon, Holbeck in Leeds, and Highgate in London, 2013–15 (Chapter Five)
4 Citizens UK, 2001–15 (Chapter Six)
References
Index