Overview

The UK government reduced expenditure and introduced local financial self-sufficiency in pursuing austerity after the 2008 crash, forcing local governments in England to find savings and new income sources to close funding gaps. As new financial strategies and practices were devised, 'councillors at the casino' were characterized as taking risks with local taxpayers' money and jeopardizing local public service provision. Looking beyond the high-profile cases in an internationally resonant local public sector reform laboratory, Financialization and Local Statecraft examines the wider landscape across local government in England since 2010, which comprises a local tier of over 300 governments managing £100bn of revenue expenditure, employing almost 1.5 million people, and providing services to over 56 million people across the country. Andy Pike draws on a new local statecraft theory to explain how local statecrafters act in realms including financial strategies and risks, external advice, borrowing and debt management, and in and out-of-area activities. The framework reveals and accounts for their vanguard, intermediate, and long tail approaches with differing engagements with financialization. While limited within the overall landscape, such relations and UK government policy are rewiring and rescaling local statecraft and relocating risks and uncertainties onto local government and the wider local state. UK government policy and the extension and intensification of financialization expose the local state's financial sustainability and resilience in the longer term. They raise fundamental questions about what local government is for and how it should be funded. The erosion of local accountability of local statecraft in financialization risks creating a de-politicized and post-democratic local governance.

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9780192856661

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Reviews

Reductions in local government spending since 2010 will have long-term consequences for citizens' perception of the State, but also for the UK's constitutional settlement. Financialization and Local Statecraft is an important examination of how local government has responded to the Treasury's particular, lop-sided, approach to balancing the books * Tony Travers, London School of Economics and Political Science * This is a fantastic book which examines local government's entanglement with financialization since the onset of austerity in 2010. By exploring the theory of local statecraft, Pike shows that what local government does, how it is funded, and how it manages its financial affairs are matters of vital importance. The book examines the contradictions and tensions between local and national government, governance, finance, and politics. In the end, the book is not just about financialization of UK local governments, but of how the constraints of governance and fiscal stress produce multiple outcomes and responses. Pike's nuanced analysis will be of interest to urban and regional geographers, political economists, and local government scholars and practitioners around the world. * Mia Gray, University of Cambridge * Pike shines when describing and explaining the variation of local government strategies adopted within England. He argues that a combination of politics, economic conditions, and organizational cultures determines whether local governments have the capacity to resist the overtures of those seeking to profit from the public fisc. Financialization and Local Statecraft is both an excellent primer on public administration in the UK and a provocative, timely interpretation of trends transforming a sector previously associated with caution and restraint. * Rachel Weber, University of Illinois at Chicago * Local government plays a formative role in shaping the conditions of people's everyday lives. In England, the past decade or so has witnessed deep-seated transformation in local governments' powers and practices, rooted in particular in shifting relations with various financial actors, assets and attributes. Andy Pike proves an engaging and informed guide to this complex but crucial political-economic terrain. * Brett Christophers, Uppsala University *

Author Information

Andy Pike is the Henry Daysh Professor of Regional Development Studies in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University. His research interests, publications, and research projects are focused on the geographical political economy of local, regional, and urban development, governance, and policy. He has undertaken research projects for the OECD, UN-ILO, European Commission, UK government, and national, regional, and local institutions. He is a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association and an Academician of the UK's national Academy of Social Sciences.

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