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Elected Officials in an Era of Austerity: Stewards, Mediators, and Catalysts

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The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant

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Abstract

Elected officials in local government have increasingly come to play a role as collaborative leaders, overseeing a complex pattern of relationships in a mixed economy of local public services. In England, severe cuts to local government spending in the last decade have shrunk the scope of local government and further emphasized the importance of collaborative leadership skills. In this chapter we draw on new empirical data from an English region to explore the roles of elected officials (known as councillors) in an era of austerity, drawing on the three ideal types of collaborators developed by Ansell and Gash (Innov J Public Sector Innov J 17(1):1–21, article 7, 2012): stewards, mediators, and catalysts. In response to severe budget cuts, councillors increasingly frame their roles in ways that map onto the steward, mediator, and catalyst. However, these roles magnify existing boundary dilemmas for councillors: between the councillor and the officer, between the public and private self, and between the amateur and the professional. Understanding these roles and boundary dilemmas highlights the need for new forms of training and support for councillors.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for funding the initial research which underpinned this project, as a Knowledge Exchange Opportunity grant, the Twenty-first Century Public Servant (ES/K007572/1) in 2013–2014, and in providing additional funding through the Impact Acceleration Account at the University of Birmingham in 2015–2016.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Catherine Needham

  2. Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Catherine Mangan & Karin Bottom

  3. Local Governance Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Steven Parker

Authors
  1. Catherine Needham
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  2. Catherine Mangan
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  3. Karin Bottom
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  4. Steven Parker
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Catherine Needham .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Helen Sullivan

  2. Public Service Research Group, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Helen Dickinson

  3. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Hayley Henderson

Section Editor information

  1. Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Catherine Needham

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Needham, C., Mangan, C., Bottom, K., Parker, S. (2021). Elected Officials in an Era of Austerity: Stewards, Mediators, and Catalysts. In: Sullivan, H., Dickinson, H., Henderson, H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29980-4_18

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