The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (35 page)

In Western pluralist countries all central governments, except those in micro-polities, confront a twofold governing dilemma:

(1) how do they organize public policy delivery and control in ‘the country’, that is outside the central departmental structures in the capital city; and
(2) to what extent do they allow local citizens, or local élites, to manage the delivery of public services in their own areas.

In short, central governments confront problems of territorial administration and territorial politics. This is, or ought to be, the subject-matter of central-local relations. It is a dilemma which engages both
federal
and non-federal systems. In the present context, consideration will be given only to the latter, commonly called unitary systems.
In terms of territorial administrative patterns central governments have a number of options. The local delivery of public services can be entrusted to local offices of the central departments, or to
ad hoc
agencies composed of local people chosen by the central government, or to elected local authorities, or to some combination of these options. A further set of options concerns the centre's supervision of these various policy delivery agencies. Supervision (or control) can be divided between the relevant central departments in the capital city, or entrusted, comprehensively, to centrally appointed career officials in various areas of the country, or to specific central departments (and ministers) responsible for particular parts of the national territory.
The actual process of central-local relations is often highly influenced by political factors. Some central governments may try to exert detailed supervision over local governments, especially elected local authorities. A principal weapon of control in these circumstances is finance: the extent to which local governments have their own sources of revenue and the degree to which they rely on central grants-in-aid. An alternative strategy is to shift local public services into the private sector and allow the discipline of market forces to act as the control mechanism. This can be done either on ideological grounds or simply because detailed central control of local governments is a complex, time-consuming, difficult task.
Traditionally, two political forces favour local governments. One is that they may be protected by national politicians representing particular local constituencies. The other is the popular ideology of local democracy. This asserts three things:

(1) that the best form of local administration is by locally elected representatives (local self-government);
(2) it follows that within localities local democracy is synonymous with elected local authorities; and
(3) that powerful, prestigious, local authorities divide power in the state—they are essential to the proper workings of pluralist politics.

This ideology has dominated the literature on central-local relations. It has had several unfortunate consequences. The literature, or most of it, assumes that central-local relations is solely about intergovernmental relations, particularly between elected local governments and the central government. It also assumes that central control (or centralization) is always a bad thing. Finally, it assumes that any attack on elected local authorities is an attack on local democracy and national pluralism. The empirical evidence to support these assertions is either ambiguous or in short supply.
JBu 

 
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Obviously, a centre party is one which lies between parties of the
left
and of the
right
; but as these two terms are so elusive, so is ‘centre party’. The easiest examples to define are those in countries where politics is mostly dominated by the single dimension of economic policy, such as the Liberal Democrats in Britain and the Free Democrats in Germany. In the French
Fourth Republic
there were strong and clearly defined centre parties. In the
Fifth Republic
, however, the two-round electoral system has tended to produce two coalitions. On the left, the Socialists may be regarded as more centrist than the Communists (though the label is seldom used); but which are the more centrist of the Gaullists and the non-Gaullist right? A further complication comes from Scandinavia, where right-wing parties renamed themselves ‘centre’ in order to increase their appeal.
Even in Britain and Germany, the ‘centre’ label can be misleading. The British Liberal Democrats are indeed centrist on economic matters (the leadership more to the left, those who vote for them more to the right) but socially liberal on a liberal-authoritarian scale. The Free Democrats are the most economically liberal (and therefore, on one definition, the rightmost) of the three main German parties.

 
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This particular approach to political analysis comes in three forms. First, the commonly called modern
world system analysis
is a theory of the international political economy rooted in a perspective which argues that since the rise of capitalism and the nation state in the sixteenth century global market forces, not domestic ones, have determined national economic development or underdevelopment. The structural form of this process, which has persisted over time, is one in which core manufacturing states dominate, exploit, and make dependent, peripheral (and sometimes semi-peripheral) states which operate primarily as raw material producers for the core. In short, peripheral countries exist, and have always existed, to service the economies of core countries. World politics must be understood in terms of this unequal division of labour. Hence capitalism, rather than contributing to the development of the global periphery, ensures the ‘development of underdevelopment’. The theory does allow for dominant centres within the core. Examples would be Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth century.
Second, the theory of
internal colonialism
is in many ways an offshoot of the first. Here the stress is on the unequal division of labour, exploitation, and dependency within singleton core or peripheral countries. Internal colonialism is concerned with patterns of domestic territorial inequality and with the various ways (not just economic) a core, or centre region, controls and exploits a peripheral region or regions.
Thirdly, the centre-periphery framework has been employed by some analysts as an approach to
central-local relations
, alternative to the intergovernmentalist bias of the traditional literature. Here the emphasis is on the variety of mechanisms by which the political centre seeks to control, or manage, or avoid dealing with, the rest of the national territory (the periphery or peripheries). This certainly opens up the study of central-local relations and inserts a much-needed concern with the centre. On the other hand, it suffers from a degree of uncertainty about the precise principal actor focus in the periphery.
JBu 

 
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Cabinet post, which, because of the negligible departmental duties, is usually given to someone in order to deal with an
ad hoc
measure, or one not covered by another government department. For instance, in 1970 Anthony Barber held the post to oversee Britain's entry into the European Common Market.

 
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