New and established mayoralties: lessons for local governance in constructing new political institutions – the English and Polish cases

Abstract

Reforming local government is a policy tool of central government when faced with local, national and international pressures for change and this is no more so than in times of political, social and economic crisis. The re-design of the institutional architecture of local political decision-making is therefore driven as much by the needs of the centre as by the needs of the localities, with a series of arguments for change propagated by the centre that reflects a set of central policy preferences. Once the shape, size, decision-making process, functions, purpose and tasks of local government are re-designed at the macro level, local political actors are the faced with opportunities for micro-level re-engineering of the systems bequeathed by the centre. The chapter employs the findings of separate research conducted among political leaders in England and Poland to explore how institutional design by central government, aimed at solving one set of policy problems, can energise further local re-design of local political institutions. Central government re-design of local politics can create a pattern of unfinished business which leads to further central interference in the architecture of local politics.