Changing geographies of prosperity and representation: the role of the local state

The Authors develop an analysis of the political response to the economic and social necessity of dealing with the problems of the depressed regions and inner cities. In their analysis, they focus in particular on the growth of local initiatives in the mid- and late- 1980s within the context of a highly centralised state relying on the operation of free market forces to generate and, ultimately, distribute wealth. Local responses to economic decline and restructuring have, for the most part failed as they have been founded on an interventionist local state and have been countered by a party in control of the central state apparatus which has been firmly committed to non-intervention. The relative power of central and local states in the UK has ensured that the local politicans have very largely lost the fight. Concludes that the central state policies of the past decade or more are unlikely to produce a less divided nation in terms of either employment and prosperity or in terms of political representation. -from Editors