Too Little, Too Late: The Politics of Local Complacency

Abstract

: Contemporary regime analysis has increasingly taken on a comparative dimension. Bristol, England, illustrates the politics of regime building and, in a traditionally conservative and affluent city, the attenuated processes of interest coalescence. The discussion illustrates the susceptibility of an emergent English regime to external forces: a changing economic environment, the weakening of traditional authority, the oppressive nature of central/local relations, and the imposition of formalized competition for resources. Regime formation in England has taken place within the context of the transfer of power from local democratic government to less accountable forms of local governance. The presence of a “new magistracy” in urban governance (analogous to the local notables of traditional community power), together with the institutionalization of interurban competition, gives a distinct English flavor to the growing literature on European regime formation and offers an explanation for the belated emergence of a new urban regime in Bristol.