Local Government

Abstract

The United Kingdom, as we have emphasised, is a unitary state. Parliamentary soveriegnty gives Parliament unlimited legislative competence and there is no entrenched division of powers. Yet, unlike other unitary states in Europe, the UK has never established large centralised bureaucracies to administer the basic public services (defence and social security excepted). Rather, administration has been devolved to local authorities and ad hoc agencies. Bulpitt (1983) has described the British tradition of territorial government as a ‘dual polity’ in which central elites were prepared to hand down the business of low politics’ to local notables, freeing themselves to concentrate on the ‘high politics’ of foreign affairs and finance. Many observers, indeed, have seen local government in the unitary state as essentially a branch of national administration, filling in the details of policies decided at the centre.