Control and Power in Central-local Government Relations by R.A.W. Rhodes

Author:R.A.W. Rhodes [Rhodes, R.A.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138612235
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Open or Closed?

The foregoing discussion assumes, for the most part, that the most significant interactions are interactions at the national level. Thus policy communities have been discussed as if their members were the national professional associations, national interest groups, central departments and public interest groups. However, any such community will be composed of organizations which, constitutionally, are accountable to their members and in some cases to elected representatives. Interactions are not limited to the national level.

It could be argued that each participating organization has close contacts with its membership and that this contact takes the form of briefing and debriefing national representatives. There are, of course, many forms of reporting back: for example, annual conferences, ‘house’ journals and regional committees. In such an ‘open’ organization, the more varied the interests of the membership, the greater the constraints on the leadership. However, the inability of members to hold leaders to account has often been documented (Michels, 1962). Given the available evidence on this topic in the study of central-local relations, it is perhaps more plausible to argue that, for example, the policy communities are ‘closed’: that is, contact between leaders and membership is limited (Isaac-Henry, 1978). And at least two reasons for this development can be identified: first, the bureaucratization of the internal structures of organizations as they grow in size; second, the pressure upon an organization from other participants in the policy community to commit itself to an agreement without continual reference back. As a consequence, the organizations with a policy community are hierarchically ordered or closed.

In the study of central-local relations, many of the organizations differ from the interest groups which are the focus of corporatist theory because they are controlled by elected representatives. As a result, the terms ‘open’ and ‘closed’ can have a distinct, second meaning besides that of links with organizational members. They also refer to the political accountability of officials to elected members (and, of course, to the accountability of elected members to the electorate). To avoid any confusion, the accountability of officials and of elected members is discussed separately below.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.