The everyday local state? Opening up and closing down informality in local governance

ABSTRACT

Seeking to understand local governance under austerity localism raises questions about changing state-civil society relations. Polarised debates have resulted in different disciplines that can be bridged by considering the practice. We use the case of Cardiff, Wales, to consider how the practice is reshaping local governance, focusing on community service delivery and the role of the Council and of third sector organisations in creating new ways of coping, doing and working together and apart. Drawing from understandings of informality as a top-down as well as bottom-up process, we argue that both sides of (local) state-society relations got better at opening up informality and navigating its contradictions as austerity localism rolled out, underlining the mutually constitutive nature of the ‘everyday local state’. But over time we find that the ongoing strictures of funding cuts have closed down informality, constraining the creativity engendered, as the local state centralises in response.

KEYWORDS:

• Local governance
• austerity
• localism
• practice
• informality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Government’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, National Development Plan [CSO2012–32817].

Notes on contributors

Madeleine Pill

Madeleine Pill is a senior lecturer in public policy in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research into the theory and practice of governance and collaboration focuses on change in state-society relationships at the urban and neighbourhood levels in a context of austerity politics in the US (Baltimore) and the UK.

Valeria Guarneros-Meza

Valeria Guarneros-Meza is a reader in politics and public policy in the Department of Politics, People and Place at De Montfort University, UK. Her research focuses on local governance and the relationships between public management processes and citizen participation in contexts of austerity, violence and political economy of mega-infrastructures. She has published in Policy and Politics and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.