Conclusions

Abstract

Abstract Since 2010, the UK government reduced funding for local governments in England, introduced local financial self-sufficiency, and encouraged innovation and risk-taking as well as retained centralized control and inhibited behaviours deemed too risky and speculative. Local statecrafters were compelled to prioritize savings and income generation to balance budgets and maintain local service provision. Looking beyond high-profile financial innovations, Financialization and Local Statecraft revealed and explained the wider and differentiated landscape across local government in England since 2010. Framed by local statehood, local statecraft explained how local statecrafters act in realms, including financial strategies and risks, external advice, borrowing and debt management, and in and out-of-area activities. Local governments following vanguard, intermediate, and long-tail approaches with varying engagements with the relations and process of financialization were explained by local government types and sizes, capacities and capabilities, risk appetite, openness to commercial finance, and economic and financial conditions. While financialization is limited within the overall landscape in England since 2010, its relations and UK government policy are rewiring and rescaling local statecraft and relocating risks and uncertainties onto local government and the wider local state. Local government financial sustainability and resilience risk being undermined by national policy and the wider extension and intensification of its engagements with financialization. Fundamental questions of local political economy are raised: what is local government for and how should it be funded? Strengthened accountability of local statecraft in financialization can counter local governance depoliticization and post-democracy.