New and Established Mayoralties: Lessons for Local Governance in Constructing New Political Institutions: The English and Polish Cases

Abstract

Reforming local government is a tool of government policy when faced with local, national and international pressures for change and no more so than in times of political, social and economic crises. The re-design of the institutional architecture of local political decision-making is therefore driven as much by the needs of the centre as of the localities, with a series of arguments for change propagated by the centre. Once local government is re-designed at the macro level, local political actors are faced with opportunities for micro-level re-engineering of the structures bequeathed by the centre. By using research among political leaders conducted in England and Poland the chapter explores how institutional design by central government aimed at solving one set of policy problems, can energise further local re-design of the new local political institutions. The chapter also explores how central government re-design of local politics can create a pattern of unfinished business which leads to further central interference in the architecture of local politics.