Local Power and State Regulation in Nineteenth Century Britain

Abstract

This paper challenges the orthodox dualistic analysis of central-local relations presented in histories of nineteenth century social policy. It argues that local power does not rest within conceptions of community, or in the ideology of local possessive pluralism characteristic of ratepayers' democracies, but in the administrative structures of the spatial state apparatus. This understanding of central-local relations as part of the modem state's extension of surveillance across its territory is elucidated and substantiated through an analysis of the form of central-local relations which presents them as regimes of power/knowledge; an analysis of the shaping of the 1856 Police Bill which demonstrates that it was the product of a strategic engagement of central and local state agencies; and a history of poor relief policy in Portsmouth which demonstrates that local social policy outcomes are the result of strategic negotiation within configurations of administrative rules and resources.