Abstract
Local Government in England: Centralisation, Autonomy and Control is a serious book and an important contribution to the scholarship around local government. It opens however, with a pleasingly comic tableau as academics from England, Portugal and Poland bicker amiably at a conference and on Twitter about whose country is really the most centralised. The rest of the book is devoted to showing why the English academics were right, why it matters and what should be done about it.
 
 The main thrust of the text is an analysis of the impact of the dominant policy narratives around centralism and localism. The argument that Copus, Wall and Roberts put forward could be boiled down to the assertion that the problem with local government in England is that it is neither local nor government. But to make this case they first helpfully unpack several sets of concepts that are all too often elided together.
Highlights
The main thrust of the text is an analysis of the impact of the dominant policy narratives around centralism and localism
We must distinguish between local democracy and local government
Review: Local Government in England thought in which this ability to exercise local autonomy is seen as an essential precondition of liberty and well-being
Summary
We must distinguish between local democracy and local government. Local democracy is a process of governance which gives political expression to the views of people in a locality such that they may shape the places they live in. Local Government in England: Centralisation, Autonomy and Control by Colin Copus, Mark Roberts, Rachel Wall (Palgrave McMillan 2017 ISBN 978-1-137-26417-6 price £59.99) www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137264176 Local Government in England: Centralisation, Autonomy and Control is a serious book and an important contribution to the scholarship around local government.
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