“We are witnessing the transformation of the structure of government beyond Westminster and Whitehall from a system of local government into a system of local governance, involving complex sets of organisations drawn from the public, private and voluntary sectors.” (Stoker, 1996, p. 1)
This picture painted by political scientist Professor Gerry Stoker, while it summarises a moment in time towards the end of the Thatcher years, is just as apt today. It recognized that local democracy is no longer a simple equation of local representation governing local matters on behalf of the local population.
While this book will set out a complicated portrait of the current state of local democracy – and a tortured history of contention between central and local government to explain it – the events of the last 30 years have precipitated a new crisis in the UK’s local democratic system.
Politicians and protestors of all parties and persuasions bandy around the importance of local accountability but there is little consensus as to what the concept of “local accountability” means and how it might work.
The starting point for any examination of the wider theme of the role of local government communications, the local media and their role in local democracy is to capture some definitions of local democracy and the accountability these theories contain.
Defining local democracy
Author and social theorist David Beetham defines democracy by saying it is “not confined to the area of government alone, but can be realized wherever there are common rules and policies to be made, and disagreement about these rules to be resolved, whatever the collectivity or association happens to be, from the family outwards”. He adds
What makes collective decision-making at the level of government especially important is that its association (the state) embraces everyone within a given territory, that membership and tax contributions are compulsory, that disagreement about its rules and policies is correspondingly intense, and that the institutions for deciding and enforcing these rules and policies are highly developed.
(Beetham, 1996, cited in King & Stoker, 1996, p. 29)
Central to the most legitimate – and idealized – models of democracy is the principle that citizens need to be active and educated and that those elected to represent them should hear their voices.
How “active” and “educated” are defined and realized are at the core of any debate as to whether any model of democracy has ever truly succeeded in reaching such ideals. It is often argued that democracies should aim as high as possible in attempting to achieve these principles with the knowledge that these ideals will never be reached. Beetham expands on the practicalities of democracy:
[P]opular control and political equality are the key democratic principles. They are most fully realized in small groups . . . in larger associations, and especially at the level of a whole society, practical considerations of time and space necessitate that collective decisions be taken by designated agents or representatives acting on behalf of the rest.
He argues
democracy is realized . . . not as direct popular control over decision-making, but as control over the decision-makers who act in their stead. How effective that control is, and how equally distributed it is between individual citizens, and between different groups of citizens, according to their numbers, are key criteria for how democratic is a system of representative government.
(Beetham, 1996, cited in King & Stoker, 1996, p. 30)
For such “control” to be exercised, Beetham suggests that authorisation and accountability are the key planks for the achievement of some sort of effective concept of democracy.
“Authorisation” is achieved through universal, equal suffrage and the use of this to hold regular elections to appoint key decision makers. In local government’s case, this is achieved through the cycle of election of local councillors.
Such public representatives are then “accountable” to the people for the policies and actions undertaken in office with “the credible threat of being turned out of office in the event of ‘failure’ or abuse of trust central to the authorisation granted to them.” Beetham concludes that,
To be effective, such a threat requires not only that the public have access to independent information about government activities, but also that the electoral process is not tilted to the advantage of the incumbents.
(Beetham, 1996, cited in King & Stoker, 1996, p. 31)
So the threat of being “turned out of office” is only a realistic prospect when those who have elected those representatives have “access to independent information about government activities”, which begs certain questions:
- Where should electors seek such “independent” information?
- Who is best placed to provide such information in an impartial manner?
- Should a truly democratic society see provision of such information as a core principle?
- What does “access” truly mean in this context?
- Assuming that electors have access to this information, what constitutes a credible threat of being turned out of office?
Professor Lawrence Pratchett, an expert in business, government and law from Canberra University, contends that any attempt to renew local democracy – as illustrated by the attempts of the Labour administration 1997–2010 – is “symptomatic of wider failings in democratic culture and practice” (Pratchett, 2000, p. 6). He argues that moves to improve local democracy are central to attempts to fix the wider failings in society: ‘It is more about renewing democratic understanding within communities, encouraging political awareness and enhancing opportunities for political participation.’ He adds that “[t]he problem being addressed…. is not a failing in the formal institutions of democracy but a more deep-rooted failing in the relationship of citizens with the institutions of government” (Pratchett, 2000, p. 6). In essence, he argues that one central defect of the current democratic system is a lack of accountability.
Defining Accountability
“Political accountability begins when individuals are given responsibility for carrying out tasks on behalf of their fellow citizens. The division of civic labour, the delegation of particular roles to individual citizens, creates the demand for political as distinct from personal accountability.” (Day & Klein, 1987, p. 6)
Using the Athenian state as a model, Patricia Day, senior research fellow from Bath University and Rudolph Klein, visiting professor at the London School of Economics, describe this early iteration of democracy as rooted in the concept of accountability.
It is a tradition of political thought which sees the defining characteristic of democracy as stemming not merely from the election of those who are given delegate powers to run society’s affairs but from their continuing obligation to explain and justify their conduct in public.
(Day & Klein,1987, pp. 6–7)
They add, pointedly, “From this perspective, it is precisely day-to-day accountability, in which rulers explain and justify their actions directly to the ruled, which distinguishes a democratic society from an elective tyranny” (Day & Klein, 1987, p. 7).
Critics would argue that attempts to apply the Athenian model of democracy to modern day societies would be simplistic in the extreme. Today’s complex and multi-layered societies are the consequence of centuries of history and evolution and are on a scale that dwarfs the challenges facing the good burghers of Athens. Chapter three explores this history and progress in an attempt to explain how we have reached the models of democracy we have today.
Notions of equality – of status and expertise – are also central to any critique of modern democracy and so accountability becomes a more challenging mission when, as Beetham alludes to, incumbent representatives have an in-built advantage over those who might challenge them.
Day and Klein argue that accountability must include recognition that it is not just “political” decisions that must be accounted for but the quality of the way any democratic state performs on behalf of those it serves.
So the mechanisms for providing “checks and balances” on those in power must be developed. Essential to these will be the simple task of making sure that public resources are being spent appropriately and the monitors of this are fully independent of those being scrutinized.
The electorate pays its taxes and expects those it elects to use those resources for the purpose and in the interests of those being represented. One natural consequence of a democratic system is not all the electorate vote for those elected. But all citizens would expect a professional approach to the use of funds that would be monitored and accounted for through regular audit and inspection.
But Day and Klein further argue that there are “dimensions of accountability” with an initial distinction drawn between political and managerial accountability.
Political accountability is about those with delegated authority being answerable for their actions to the people, whether directly in simple societies or indirectly in complex societies. Here the criteria of judgment are, themselves, contestable and reasons, justification, and explanation have to be provided.
(Day & Klein, 1987, p. 26)
Importantly they emphasize the context of this accountability being the availability of information:
The main issue in complex societies is whether the linkages between action and explanation are in place and, in if in place, adequate to the task in hand: whether the channels of communication are operating and whether the sanctions are sufficient to compel a justification if needed.
(Day & Klein, 1987, p. 27)
They go on to argue that a secondary question is whether there is openness in the process and “the existence and availability of the information needed to assess actions”. Day and Klein conclude in their discussion on political accountability that the quality of the information flowing within the system of government is a central priority and “the extent to which public actions are consequently open to scrutiny by individual citizens” (Day & Klein, 1987, p. 29).
It has to be acknowledged that different solutions to these questions would need to be found dependent on the system of government in operation. For example, local government is characterized by the election of representatives – councillors – to oversee the policies and take responsibility for political accountability at the ballot box.
The National Health Service is not run by locally elected representatives and has, in recent years, been put at arm’s length by the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Clinicians have always been principally accountable to their professional bodies for the care they provide, while hospitals, for example, are accountable to a complex structure which allows national politicians to intercede but not take responsibility – or accountability – for the outcomes.
Many schools have also been extracted from the local democratic structures where they have opted to become academies, with regional school commissioners, appointed by central government, seemingly all-powerful in directing the actions of academy trusts.
Indeed as the Conservative Government implemented changes to the school funding formula in 2018, it became increasingly evident that, while central government was responsible for the overall level of funding through this formula, how that funding was spent, on who, by whom, was not clear or accountable to any elected body.
A picture thus emerges of two of the biggest areas of public expenditure – health and education – where direct, or indirect, accountability to elected representatives has largely disappeared into an opaque structure where central government controls the purse strings but there is no obvious accountability for how that money is spent.
Such reforms in both the NHS and education have been justified by the Government under the accountability challenges defined by Day and Klein as “managerial accountability” – that the public is most concerned about the performance of our doctors and teachers.
Instead, initiatives such as free schools – supposedly accountable to parents but in reality often only accountable to those that run them – have led to some schools being removed from the accountability picture completely.
It is evident that no priority has been given in any of these shifts in governance of schools, hospitals and indeed some areas of local government as to who should provide information to whom and how.
As if this increasing complexity was not confusing enough, the drive by central government to introduce a further layer of “elected accountability” through the introduction of city or regional mayors runs the risk of just adding to the public’s already stretched understanding as to who they should seek answers from when their local services fail them.
