Active citizenship and local governance: political and geographical dimensions

PoliticalGeography, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 155175,1995 Copyright@ 1995 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Gnat Britain. AU ri@ts reserved 096”29&95 $10.00 + 0.00

Active citizenship and local governance: political and geographical dimensions hE

&TARNS

Centre for Housing Research and Urban Studies, Univenily of Glasgow, 25 Bute Gardens, Glasgow G12 SRS, UK

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the possibility of a participatory form of democracy emerging in the UK out of the confluence of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘local governance’ and through reform of the state and civil society. A consideration of the type of ‘active citizenship’ strategy being pursued, an examination of the institutional and constitutional nature of ‘local governance’, and a review of patterns of participation in voluntary sector governance all serve to raise doubts about the potential outcome. It is important to recognize that both the citizen’s inclination to participate or ‘get active’ in local governance, and the institutional structures and arrangements of local governance, have crucial geographical dimensions. The nature of places affects the citizen’s capacity for governance and yet, although local governance exacerbates territorial fragmentation, disjuncture and conflict, the improvement of places can be a beneficial outcome of local governance. A study of the role of place as both mediator and outcome of active citizenship and local governance is relevant as an empirical question relating to the impacts of modernism and Thatcherism, but also affords opportunities to consider the causes and significance of ‘place-uniqueness’, and to evaluate their consequences for postmodernist epistemologies which eschew the notion of generalized theories of place.

Introduction In recent

years, two phenomena

have emerged,

and are developing,

with the potential

to

discusses the political and geographical dimensions to active citizenship and local governance as barriers and opportunities to the establishment of a more participatory democracy in the local public sphere. The first section of the paper outlines the political development of the two phenomena, giving reasons why an active citizenship strategy has been adopted (primarily to overcome an uncaring image of the British polity, and as part of an attempt to reform the welfare state), and why a wider range of organizations has been involved in local public service. After providing a definition of local governance, which emphasizes the primacy of negotiation and influence rather than the exercise of rule in local politics, the paper discusses the prospect of a government-controlled strategy producing a wider involvement affect

substantially

the

experience

of citizenship

in Britain.

This paper

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Active ci&&@

and local governance

of citizens in the exercise of power and influence in the local political arena. A number of problems facing such an outcome are noted, namely the dual, elitist character of active citizenship; the tendency for voluntary service, education for citizenship and the Citizen’s Charter to depoliticize rather than politicize citizens; and the government’s distrust of the ‘amateur’ and its preference for paternalistic governance involving the use of paid directorships. Local governance involves a transfer of power away from elected local authorities towards other organizations. Increasingly important among these are voluntary organizations, which may provide services under contract to local authorities, in partnership with them, or by means of direct, central-government funding. The voluntary sector is, of course, one where a great many citizens (a little over a fifth of the adult population) are already active. The second section of the paper discusses the potential for the voluntary sector to overcome the social biases in political participation that are currently evident in formal, local politics. Evidence from a number of studies is reviewed to show that the exercise of control functions in the voluntary sector is subject to many of the same biases as in local government, but to a lesser degree. Although voluntary sector management is more open to participation by women, younger adults, public sector tenants and manual working groups, there is still a bias among voluntary activists in favour of control being exercised by the professional and managerial class, and against power being in the hands of the skilled manual class, the unemployed and those with home and family responsibilities. The third section moves on from the consideration of existing patterns of voluntary activity and voluntary sector organization to identify a number of characteristics of local governance itself that may hinder the evolution of a participatory democracy-one in which citizens feel involved in, and in control of, local collective affairs. Many of the organizations involved in local governance are disadvantaged by virtue of their own internal democracy: poor relations with local government, unclear definitions of governor and governed, and variable and intermittent mechanisms for granting consent to be governed all serve to weaken the resistance of such organizations to centralized regulation. Participation in local governance and the autonomy of non-governmental organizations are also inhibited by the promotion of a management accountancy culture in the ‘public sector’ (so-called ‘New Manageriahsm’), and by the search for economies of scale, which inevitably results in moves towards rationalization in the intermediate sector, making organizations larger in scale and less local in character and in constitutional terms. Both the citizen’s inclination to participate in local governance, and the institutional arrangements that comprise local governance (the subjects of the second and third sections), have important geographical dimensions. The geographical conditions and consequences of local governance are set out in the fourth section of the paper. Local governance has to cope with a situation where the pattern of voluntary activity is regionally uneven. In its response to this, the government faces a difficult choice between expanding the geographical areas of activity of existing organizations-a cheaper option but one that makes the local character of governance difkult to maintain, or fostering new, local organizations-an expensive, longer-term option with less guarantee of success. However, the main geographical condition which the section discusses is the mediating role that places play in determining the citizen’s capacity and inclination for governance. The history of places, the quality of the socio-spatial environment, the configuration of neighbourhoods and the sense of place-attachment all inlluence the citizen’s ability and willingness to contribute to local, collective endeavours. This is due to their effects on: the extent of shared interests and values; the positive and negative images of places held by

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local residents and others; and the opportunities for participation in space and time. Structures of local governance, if they are to be successful, must also accommodate the politics of locality-existing concerns, interest groups and power relations-and the citizen’s own definition of community and territory. AS well as being a condition that local governance must respond to, places are also an outcome of such a process, for initiatives of this type can not only improve the local physical and social environment, but can also generate new shared interests, and enhance social interaction and place-attachment. The other geographical consequences of local governance are less beneficial, comprising: a weakened locational link between the governors and governed; a fragmented system of governance whereby the coordination of services is made more difficult, and administrative rationality and efficiency are sacrificed; a boost to the politics of turf and the exercise of territoriality; and a confused citizenry facing calls for its allegiance to different territorial entities. The final section of the paper contrasts a service-orientated with a citizen-orientated strategy towards active citizenship and local governance. The former would perpetuate an elitist approach to governance less local in scale and focus, and would miss the opportunity to strengthen place-based communities and the citizen’s sense of belonging. In contrast, a citizen-orientated strategy would attempt to enable all citizens to become involved in local democracy and self-governance (if they so choose) by means of institutional adaptation, as well as through the use of appropriate recruitment methods, educational and family policy, and employment reform. A key element of this approach is the recognition of places as both mediating conditions and outcomes of the process of local governance. The counterposing of these two approaches is seen as raising both empirical questions about whether Britain’s social and political geography is heading towards a modern or a postmodern future, and epistemological issues pertaining to whether generalized theories about the mediating role of place and the behavioural significance of place-attachment have more to offer political geography than do celebrations of place uniqueness.

T’he emergence

of active citizenship

and local governance

It was in the late 1980s that Conservative ministers first started talking about the active citizen, following Mrs Thatcher’s controversial speech to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in May 1988 (see Raban, 1989), in which she discussed the citizen’s responsibility to be merciful and generous to others. This theme was then developed over the next two years by a succession of ministers (primarily in the Home Office and Education Department) who expanded the notion to include a role for ‘active business’ and a partnership with the voluntary sector (see Kearns, 1992). The version of active citizenship that has emerged has a number of key characteristics. First, it is individualistic and counterposed to collectivist approaches to welfare. Increasingly, responsibility for welfare is being passed over from the state to individual citizens whose compulsion to get active is to derive from their personal morality and the prospect of the approbation of others, rather than from feelings of community belonging and communal endeavour. This combination of personal effort and the exercise of moral judgement by citizens (who have been educated in the right way) has facilitated the linking of active citizenship to the longer-term project of reforming, curtailing and cheapening the welfare state. Some five years after the active citizen was first mentioned, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury sought to justify impending welfare benefit cut-backs by repeating many of Mrs Thatcher’s moral themes, saying that the state and taxation have

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removed the opportunity for citizens to exercise individual, Christian responsibility towards others by sharing their wealth and doing good (Wintour, 1993a). Active citizenship has consisted of a process of moral hectoring and mild coercion by the state reinforced with inducement of social recognition and civic reward-the latter achieved through the private sponsorship of caring citizen awards and a slight re-emphasis within the public honours system. Indeed, Dahrendorf (1990) has called active citizenship ‘an almost totalitarian concept because it implies mobilisation’, and Oliver (1991) has noted ‘the scope for it to encroach on the privacy and autonomy of the citizen’. As such it can be a threat to voluntarism (Barnett, 1989; Keams, 1992), i.e. that activity freely given in an open generous spirit, to use Heginbotham’s (1990) definition. Active citizenship has also become a selective, dual and elitist strategy. Only a small group of wealthy, professional citizens are expected, selected or provided with opportunities to exercise control functions, or power, in the new structures of ‘public’ sector management being put into place as government and the welfare sector are reformed (see below). Many more ‘ordinary’ citizens (though some believe there may well still be a passive majority) will increasingly be given the chance to engage in the more mundane activities of citizenship, such as face-to-face welfare or service provision. The government’s own explanation of its interest in the active citizen has been to stress a logical progression from an emphasis on liberty and wealth creation for most of the 198Os, which provided the foundation for the exercise of responsibility, and the release of generous, caring activity thereafter. Others (Dahrendorf, 1990; Heater, 1991; Kearns, 1992) have pointed out that there were pressing concerns and public criticisms of the government in the late 1980s which led it to stress the role of the active citizen. The public’s perception was that social provision was being run down, social problems were intractable, and the government in the face of this was uncaring. The adverse reaction to the famous statement by Mrs Thatcher that ‘there is no such thing as society’, combined with the labels of selfishness and greed that had been applied to the Reagan-Thatcher-led societies, led the government to re-launch itself under the guise of a fresh idea, namely the party of the active citizen-free to be generous and caring. In addition to the appearance of the active citizen on the political stage, there have also been, during the current period of Conservative rule, substantial changes in the complexion of local political institutions and in the role of elected local authorities. Stoker (1991) has observed rapid institutional innovation with the growth of non-elected agencies operating in the local political arena. Thes agencies are used by central government to bypass local authorities unsympathetic to its aims; to channel constrained resources to priority areas; to enable services to be operated in a business-like manner; to challenge the monopoly position of local authorities; and to gain access to private sector funds and expertise. Whilst Stoker acknowledges that local authorities themselves have made use of non-elected agencies, they do so under conditions not of their own choosing. Others see the ‘enabling’ local authority (at the centre of this myriad of organizations) being born out of hostility to local discretion (Local Government Information Unit, 1992) and reflecting ‘a new concern to reduce the role of local government in the locality as well as in the national economy’ (Goodlad, 1993: 4). Once we recognize these recent developments, involving further extension of directly funded, opted-out sevices, compulsory competitive tendering with more local services being provided under contract, and the adoption of ‘executive management’ models of service delivery, then Stoker’s original typology of non-elected local government agencies needs further elaboration. To his list of central government ‘arms length’ agencies, local authority implementation agencies, public/private partnership organizations, user organiz-

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ations, inter-governmental forums and joint boards, should be added private trusts and companies, and voluntary organizations. This is reflected in the Economic and Social Research Council’s Local Governance Research Initiative, which defines its object of study as ‘the transformation of the structure of government beyond Westminster and Whitehall from a system of local government into a system of local governance involving complex sets of organisations drawn from the public, private and voluntary sectors’ (ESRC, 1992). The change in emphasis in the functions of local authorities has been summarized by Leach et al. (1992) as a consistent reduction in the direct provision of services and a redirection towards service-purchasing and regulation, together with an uneven development of the proactive facilitation function. With regulation so far offering little scope for enhaced local political direction and control, I would argue that power in local politics is shifting towards those agencies other than local authorities that are involved in collective services and strategies. With less direct service provision by local government, and a greater range of organizations (governmental and non-governmental) involved in the local public sphere, the exercise of influence through negotiation rather than the exercise of rule through laws and by-laws will be a feature of the system of ‘local governance’. The latter can, therefore, be defined as: A system of arrangements for collective affairs whereby: firstly, organisations other than elected local authorities (both public and private, for-profit and not-for-profit) are partly or wholly responsible for the funding and/or direct provision of public and welfare services at the local level, either separately or under contract to local elected authorities; secondly, responsibility for allocation decisions relating to those services are partly or wholly the responsibility of people other than local elected authority members; and, thirdly, local authorities enter into negotiations with these other organizations in an attempt to influence the level and nature of the services provided. On paper, at least, local governance provides openings for the active citizen to exercise power and influence within a pluralist system for devising collective strategies and providing public services. However, we have several reservations about this prospect becoming a reality were the government entirely to control the outcome. As already noted, active citizenship as propounded by the government has elitist tendencies. It is the upper-middle and professional classes who will be expected to exercise control within a range of new or expanded governmental and non-governmental organizations, placed there by appointment or encouraged there through regulation. In the main ‘the activities in which citizens are to be engaged are to be far removed from any levels of real political power’ (Heater, 1991: 153). Kearns’s (1990) study of the voluntary management committees of British housing associations found that the majority of members were those who already possessed management experience and wished to exercise it further. The call for some citizens to give of their wealth (e.g. through direct debits or covenants) and their skills, and of others to give their time and physical effort, in the service of others, reflects the objective of allying active citizenship to local governance in order to create a paternalistic form of local politics, which is seen as another unfortunate loss from the last century (Roberts, 1979). Since the government neither trusts local authorities as institutions, nor trusts the ‘amateur’ in the control of public affairs (‘amateur’ defined to include councillors and lay people), its preference is to expand the use of paid directorships in the public arena. Furthermore, a number of factors currently serve to depoliticize rather than politicize

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the citizen. Active citizenship and education for citizenship are not being introduced in order to create a politically vocal or politically active public. For the latter to come about, citizenship education would have to be broadened to include the skills for political participation, and be aimed at enabling and encouraging critical opinions to be expressed on sensitive issues. Rather, the government wishes to leave behind the politics of advocacy and of protest-seen as the product of the irresponsible 1960s and 1970s. It does not want a politically vocal or engaged citizenship, but a politically uninterested public. Active citizenship is itself silent about the assertion of positive rights by citizens. The emphasis of education for citizenship in schools is to be on obligations, not rights (Department of Education and Science, 1990). Rumbold (1991) has discussed how political protest movements have died a death due to the settling of some major issues, the rise of consumerism and the removal of differences between the political parties. The public preference for comfortable ways of registering dissent is one that Major’s big idea, the Citizen’s Charter, exploits: it diverts the citizen’s energies into complaints to the service provider rather than into an engagement with, or involvement in, governance; and it places responsibility on the individual citizen if she/he has not secured better services. The Charter was also notably silent on the question of Freedom of Information legislation, which would have politically empowered citizens (Baxter, 1991). Others have also agreed that the notion of an active citizen depoliticizes the citizen (see Heater’s [1991] discussion of Wringe).

Voluntary sector Involvement

in governance

and patterns of participation

Notwithstanding the elitist tendencies of active citizenship, it is worth investigating the potential that could exist for overcoming perpetual social biases in political involvement, through expanding the scope of responsibility for collective affairs and services beyond the confines of formal local politics as it is currently framed in the United Kingdom. The caricature of local councillors as male, middle aged, middle class and white holds true more often that it does not, and a review of successive surveys of councillors over a 20-year period showed little change in their social origins (Gyford et al., 1989: Ch. 2). The last study of the characteristics of local councillors concluded that ‘elected members as a group are still highly unrepresentative of the overall population’ (Widdicombe Committee, 1986: 19). A similar picture emerges if we consider citizens’ involvement in political activity more generally. The British Political Participation Study of 1985 found 23 percent of the adult population to be political activists. Confining the analysis to activists involved in formal political structures (the three groups termed ‘collectivists’, ‘contacting’ and ‘party campaigning’ activists), there were consistent biases towards those with higher education qualifications, the richest quarter of the population, the ‘salaried class, and the early middle aged (Parry et al., 1992: 234). The most significant break with the profile of councillors was along gender lines, with the group of formalized political activists being weighted in favour of women. One of the potential benefits of a greater role for the voluntary sector in a system of local governance could be to open up opportunities for hitherto ‘excluded groups to participate in collective affairs. For example, the Second International Inquiry of the European Values Systems Study Group, in its British survey of 1990, found that whilst women were less likely than men to engage in political action, they were more likely than men to do unpaid work for certain types of voluntary organization, in particular for religious organizations and for organizations involved in youth work, education and community activity (Timms, 1992: 29). These types of organization were those more likely

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to be harnessed to the iocal governance project than those in which men had the greater role, namely trades unions, professional associations and sports organizations. The differences between the exercise of control functions in local government and the voluntary sector are highlighted in Table 1. The data on voluntary committee members come from a secondary analysis of the 1991 National Survey of Voluntary Activity in the UK.’ The table shows that whilst voluntary sector management displays many of the social biases evident among local authority councillors, none of the biases is as extreme as in local government. Notably, women, younger adults, public sector tenants and those from the manual working groups all have a greater role in the running of voluntary organizations that they do in the control of local authorities. This is not to suggest that the voluntary sector is without its own problems of participation and representation. The national survey also revealed that the propensity to volunteer increased with social class and education level, and was higher among those in employment than among others. T&e 2 presents a social profile of ‘current volunteers’, that is people who have done some voluntary activity in the past 12 months. We can see that volunteering is more common among non-manual than among manual social groups, and is by far most frequent among professional and managerial people. On the other hand, only a minority of the unskilled manual class volunteer. An official review also concluded that ‘for both sexes, it was those in the professional, employers and managers and intermediate non-manual socio-economic groups who were most likely to participate’ in voluntary work (Central Statistical Office 1992: 195). TAFSLE 1.

Social profile of voluntary sector committee members and local councillors

Categoy

Socio-economic group Managerial/professional Other non-manual Skilled manual Semi-skilled Unskilled Tenure Own Social rented Private rented Sex Male Female 4ge la-24

25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-t Totals (N> Source: Lynn and Davis-Smith (1992) Widdicombe (19%).

Committee members (Column %)

32 33 17

15 3

Councillors

41 28 16 4 1

79 18

a5

3

4

55 45

ai

10

19 0

a 17 23 20 14 17

7 19 25 27 22

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Active citizenship and loud governance

TABLE 2. Level of current volunteering, by socio-economic group Socio-economic group

Percentage volunteering (row %,I

Manageri&professionaL Other non-manual Skilled manual Semi-skilled manual Unskilled manual Unclassified

72 59

58 48 37 33

Total (N)

1488

Source:Lynn and Davis-Smith(1992), Table 14

Table 3 divides regular volunteers into those people engaged in committee work, and those involved in other types of activity, such as visiting, raising money, etc. It reveals that there is more of an imbalance in committee membership than in other types of voluntary activities. Compared with the British adult population, the non-manual social groups are over-represented by 1.5 times on voluntary management committees. This is particularly evident for the professional and managerial classes who, unlike the ‘other non-manual’ group, are not over-represented among volunteers engaged in activities other than committee work. The biggest difference between the two types of voluntary activity occurs in the case of the skilled manual class who, when they volunteer, are far less likely to exercise the levers of power than to engage in the other voluntary tasks, and are significantly under-represented on committees of management. Forty-two percent of all regular volunteers are engaged in committee work. This includes 45 percent of regular volunteers who have a job, and 47 percent of the retired, regular volunteers. But only a third of unemployed, regular volunteers, and only a quarter of those who look after the home or family, are involved in committee activity. There are also marked differences in type of voluntary activity by age-group. Rates of committee membership are highest among young-retired regular volunteers (aged 65-74), 62 percent of whom are involved in committee work. Between the ages of 35 and 54 the balance between committee and other activities is around 50:50. Among the under 35s however, only 29 percent of regular volunteers are engaged in committee work.

TABLE3.

Profile of regular volunteers, by type of activity Committee members

Socio-economic group

Manageri&professionaf Other non-manual Skilled manual Semi-skilled Unskilled Total (IV) ‘Excluding unknown and unclaMfiible cases.

(Column %I)

other dunteen (Column % ‘)

32 33 17 15 3

22 30 30 15 3

138

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The nature of local governance: a problem for participatory democracy The previous section showed that although an enhanced role for the voluntary sector could result in a broader citizen participation in collective affairs, there are still participatory weaknesses in the increasingly important area of control functions in voluntary organizations. In this section, I wish to show that it is not just the pre-existing pattern of voluntary activity among individuals and within voluntary organizations that is a problem, but that the potential for a participatory democracy to emerge is also compromised by the nature of the emerging local governance itself. To start an assessment of the significant characteristics of ‘local governance’, I shall look at the related areas of consent (or authority), autonomy and accountability from the point of view of those organizations other than local government that are involved in public and welfare services, i.e. the sorts of organizations in which ‘active citizens’ might be involved. One of the features of government is that someone, usually the electorate, gives the governors their authority to govern. Within the sphere of local governance, the granting of consent or permission to govern to the various organizations involved is far less clear, far more varied in character, and often less perpetual and more intermittent in its application or conveyance. Sometimes, an organization’s permission to operate in the local public sphere comes not from local government itself, but directly from central government, or from a public agency at national or regional level-as with approved landlord status required for the taking over of local authority housing estates. Sometimes, positive consent may be entirely absent, and it is simply the case that an organization’s activities are not prohibited by law. Or again, with many membership organizations, consent to an organization’s activities may be granted by an unrepresentative membership-there are, for example, no minimum requirements placed on the membership levels of housing associations before they may develop and manage social housing for rent. There are a variety of ways, therefore, in which one of the central components of governance (as a system of managing communal affairs) can be compromised under ‘local governance’; the forms in which the consent to govern exists, therefore, necessitate scrutiny if we are to elucidate the nature of ‘local governance’. Dunn (1992) defines one of the services provided by modern representative democracy to be ‘a measure of real responsibility of governors to governed’. Given what I have just said, it is also worth asking to what extent the same can be said to exist throughout the sphere of ‘local governance’. If the authority to govern does not come in full measure from those subject to the governance in question, will the governors act, or feel they ought to act, with responsibility to the locally governed? This begs the question of whether one can always define who the governors and the governed are. This is easier under a system of local government (albeit subject to difficulties at the boundary and with mobile groups) than it is under a system of ‘local governance’. Does a neighbourhood watch committee, for example, feel that it is governing the entire neighbourhood or just those areas with significant participation rates ? Do local non-participants feel governed by the neighbourhood watch? The definition of governors is the more straightforward. We might say that a local governor is anyone responsible for deciding policy for the making of allocation decisions at a subnational level in relation to public or welfare services. A system of governance may also involve citizens in ways other than as governors in the sense just described. They may be co-opted to serve as monitors, observing practice and recommending changes, as with prison visitor committees. Scope exists for autonomy to reside at a local level within a system of ‘local governance’. In his study of local justice, Elster (1992) has pointed out that local institutions make

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allocation decisions in a variety of ways, with different weight being given, for example, to the principles of equity and efficiency. Echoing a point made by Elster, that the public (more so than either politicians or professions) is concerned with equity and desert as allocating principles, we have found cases where locally based housing associations have given significant weight to length of time on the waiting list in the prioritization of applicants for rehousing, a practice that local people perceive to be fair. Yet housing professionals have moved away from using this factor within allocations policies, preferring to allocate according to severity of housing need. The autonomy and diversity of local governance institutions, an important factor in the morale and voluntary input to such organizations, can come under threat from three directions. First, there is the thorny question of accountability. This is a problem for local governance for, whereas the accountability of government is given by its democracy, the institutions of local governance are not so much ‘made accountable’ as reguIated. There are a few things we should note about this aspect: 1. Many such ‘local governance’ organizations have a flawed form of public accountability. Private companies and voluntary organizations are accountable to their members (share-holding or not), but the membership rarely matches the local population they serve. Although citizenship, that which gives us control over government, is also based on membership, membership of these other organizations is harder and less often achieved. 2. Regulatory systems are put in place not as a substitute for the ‘democratic deficit’ of local governance organizations, but in order that the policies and practices of such institutions match the preferences of government. Regulation is not relaxed where local governance organizations are well and truly locally democratic. 3. It is not the case that regulatory systems in Britain have developed as far as Osborne and Gaebler’s (1992) preference for incentives rather than command and control mechanisms. Compliance orders continue to exist and expand, but there is often a thin line between an incentive and a command. 4. The predominant form of regulatory system instated in the UK places central government as both the master and client of the system. We might have expected that a system of ‘local governance’ would give the former role to local government, with the client being local citizens. To this end, Bogdanor (1992) has suggested that a ‘local authority could become protector of the citizen against Whitehall-regulated public services which would otherwise be too remote for real accountability to the consumer’. The local authority ‘might see itself as representative of the consumer, in relation to all the public services within the community, whether these services are under the control of local government or not’. The struggle for autonomy is a key element in the analysis of citizenship (Held, 1989: 199). Further, in participatory theory, the objective of self-governing and self-expressive individuals depends upon their ability to participate in decision making within associations that are themselves free to control their own a&it-s--see Pateman’s (1970: 35-40) discussion of Cole’s theory of associations. In ‘local governance’ there is a symbiotic relationship between autonomy and accountability. Whilst we can agree with Foster (1988) that accountability presupposes autonomy, the reverse is equally true where the governance of public and welfare services is being passed to new organizations. If the ‘little platoons’ spoken of by Conservative politicians and right-wing policy gurus such as Murray (1988) are to have the autonomy nominally ascribed to them, they have to have grounds to avoid or resist over-regulation by central government. To do this the

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organizations concerned would have to ensure that they are locally accountable by means of their own internal democracy and the nature of their relations with local elected authorities. Two other related phenomena have accompanied increased central government funding of non-governmental organizations in the public and welfare service arenas, and serve to curtail the autonomy of such institutions and refute the scope for participatory democracy at a local level. This first has been referred to under the rubric of ‘New Managerialism’, with the emphasis placed on the three Es of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, serving to bolster the growth and empowerment of managers and management accountants as a professional group. Non-governmental organizations are increasingly subject to the norms of this culture, and increasingly inhabited by this credentialized population: there have for example been recent reports about the number of private sector directors seeking jobs in the charitable sector, where the risks are less but ‘their way of doing things’ is in demand. The fact that this environment may inhibit the freedom of thought and action of the volunteers who run many non-governmental organizations is not a problem for a government whose ministers have expressed doubts about the wisdom of trusting the ‘amateur’. The other important factor at play is the government’s search for economies of scale. The professed preference for the ‘local governance’ of public and welfare services is slowly but surely subject to erosion by this tendency, which has long existed in government. As the cost of farming out service provision to a myriad of local organizations becomes apparent, attempts are made to rationalize the intermediate or non-state sector. This can take the form either of enforced agency arrangements and the sharing of resources between organizations, or simply the redirection of state funding to fewer organizations, which are encouraged to grow at the expense of others (the latter may appear under the guise of ‘performance-related funds allocation). The result is that the larger organizations become less local in constitutional and operational terms, and the smaller or less successful organizations suffer restricted autonomy and reduced morale. Geographical

dimensions

to active citizenship

and local governance

Having looked at the inherent institutional deficiencies and constraints contained within a system of local governance, I now turn to the geographical dimensions of active citizenship and local governance. These comprise, first, the geographical conditions that a participatory civil society would have to respond to, adapt or seek to change. Second, there are geographical consequences of a system of local governance that are social, political and functional (i.e. service-related). A review of these two sets of dimensions shows not only why geography is important to active citizenship and local governance, but also helps us to recognize how the study of these phenomena can give political geography a role in examining how the nature of places affects social participation, and enable it to contribute to debates about ‘postmodern geographies’. The most obvious geographical precondition faced by local governance is that of an uneven pre-existing pattern of voluntary activity and voluntary organizations on which to draw. A study carried out as part of the 1987 General Household Survey showed mat organized voluntary work was more common in the south-east and south-west of England than elsewhere (Central Statistical Office 1992: 104). The 1991 National Survey of Volunteering reported a different pattern, with the highest rates of volunteering in the Midlands (Lynn and Davis-Smith, 1992: 36), but both studies recorded the lowest rates of activity in the north of England. Local governance clearly faces the problem that, in some parts of the country, the necessary activity and organizations do not exist for civil society to

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take on the tasks of governance. The government is then situated between a rock and a hard place. If it imports or expands organizations based elsewhere, the local dimension to governance is either lost or more difhcult to maintain in organizational terms. It if decides to promote the growth of new organizations, this requires a hefty investment of resources, and it may take some time for such organizations to establish their independence and credibility with local people. Local governance must, then, be a long-term project. I shall now consider how the character of places influences the practices of citizenship and the capacity of citizens to engage in local governance. To start with, it must be recognized that place can be an important mediating factor to the success of local governance initiatives, both as regards the level of involvement of local citizens, and in operational terms. Place, here, is taken to consist of the following elements: 1. Locale: This is the setting in which people live, consisting of a particular mix of household types and socio-economic groups, residing in a physical environment containing unique combinations of different types of dwelling, other buildings, and public and private spaces. This socio-spatial structure is akin to elements of Kemeny’s (1992) theory of residence. 2. Neighbourbood: For individuals, their neighbourhood consists of the time-geography within which they move as they follow their own paths. Focal points may form within the neighbourhood as individuals’ paths converge in time and space, either as they each pursue their own interests, or as they contribute to collective, institutional projects. 3. Community: Through social encounters within the neighbourhood, people may develop a set of shared interests and values, which contribute to the predictability of social encounters and social outcomes (and hence to ontological security), and can form a foundation for collective social and political endeavours. Places also have hktories which contribute to their present-day cburucter. The development by citizens over time of personality, ideology and consciousness, and the acquisition of language, are some of the constraints and enabling conditions that affect the nature of cultural and social practices within a locale. They are based on rules, resources and norms that reflect geographically and historically specific power relations. This is Pred’s (1984) concept of place as historically contingent process. The physical elements of locale, the neighbourhood and the community form an important combination of factors relevant to the capacity for governunce within any particular place. Giddens (1984, 1987) has suggested that the timing and spacing of the settings of action and of interaction are essential to the generation and sustaining of meaning in people’s lives, and Sennett (1976: Ch. 13) has explored the relations between ‘communal, collective personality and the concrete territories of community in the modern city’ (p. 294). My argument is that shared interests and values are essential if local citizens are to engage in collective projects such as self-governance. Socio-spatial structures are important because people must interact with each other and have the opportunity to interact as a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the generation of these shared interests and values. The socio-spatial environment is crucial for the dual internal and external role that it plays. Internally, it is important since citizens must feel comfortable and safe in their locale if they are to be willing and able to take part in its public life. The external role of the socio-spatial environment derives from the fact that places are in part defined by their external relations with broader social, economic and political (administrative) structures, and with each other. As important as the views that residents hold of their own places, are the perceptions held by outsiders. The relationship between place and identity, then, can

ME

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be two sorts: on the one hand, places may be the focus of civic pride and invested identity, as mentioned by Bagguley et al. (1990); but they may equally be the focus of negative labelling, which serves to reduce civic pride and reinforce demoralization. Thus, the boundaries of places can be of two kinds: those which the residents wish to defend and remain within; and those which the residents wish to remove or cross. The former can become a motive for ‘local governance’, whereas the latter would be a barrier. Some of the characteristics of local areas that are important to citizens’ propensity to engage in voluntary activity were brought out in the analysis of the 1991 National Survey referred to earlier. Lynn and Davis-Smith (1992: 38-39) reported that there was a strong positive relationship between the number of people in the area known pesonally and the level of volunteering. People who had lived in the area a short time were less likely to volunteer than others, as were those who had a negative view about the quality of the area as a place to live. This represents a marked change from previous findings in 1981, which showed that ‘the nature of peoples’ links with, and attitude towards, the neighbourhood in which they live had little significant effect upon their propensity for volunteering’ (Humble, 1982: 10). Now it would seem that the prerequisites for participation in local civil society are social interaction, residential stability and a positive view of the local environment. If ‘local governance’ is about the regeneration of civil society, then one of the major barriers to its achievement is that it faces a situation where privatism is the norm. For some, the whole notion of a public life and a sense of place have been undermined by the growth of private lifestyles and a reliance on the electronic media to overcome isolation and define our social situation beyond our physical setting (Cohen and Taylor, 1992). For example, a reliance on the car as a means of transport may alter the whole notion of who is or is not our neighbour, which may be important if our willingness to participate in public activities for the benefit of others is partly dependent on feelings of proximity. In this situation, perhaps it is only a self-interested response to adversity or to a threat to a public service that will produce participation in ‘local governance’. In addition to the extent of privatism, the configuration of individual and collective time-geographies in different places (neighbourhoods) will determine whether or not citizens have sufficient time and energy to devote to the tasks of governance. Thus, it cannot be assumed that life in the locality is increasingly a focus for people’s lives, interests and identity (see Gyford, 1992), or that the ‘vitalization of civil society’ called for by Keane (1988) is everywhere easily achievable. Further, the ‘character of local civil society’ and ‘the politics of locality’ (Gyford, 1992) have to be accommodated within local governance if it is to be meaningful to citizens and democratic in its function. Locale and place-as-historically-contingent-process result in different mosaics of concerns and interest groups within a place, with different power relations between them. This has to be borne in mind when designing the structures of local governance in order that existing power relations are not simply reproduced. The inclination, as opposed to the capacity, for ‘local governance’ will also be affected by the presence, strength or absence of a sense of place. Neighbourhood and community together, or what Agnew (1987) calls ‘structuration in place’ can give rise to a sense of place. Following Relph (1976), this is taken to mean ‘a sense of identity with a place’, ‘a profound association with places as cornerstones of human existence and individual identity’ and a sense of ‘being inside and belonging to your place both as an individual and as a member of a community’. This sense of place, which some call ‘residential solidarity’, can be of different strengths and significance in people’s lives, depending on the quality of the locale and the type of neighbourhood and community involved. Since places can exist

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at a number of scales, the notion of a sense of place is not a contradiction with the argument that people can hold more than one identity and relate positively to more than one area at once (Urwin, 1990). Taylor (1988) highlights the similarities between ‘attachment to place’ and ‘territorial functioning’ (i.e. territorial cognitions, sentiments and behaviours). Territorial functioning is relevant to group cohesiveness and solidarity (1988: 5) but, on the other hand, Taylor says that attachment to place occurs at a larger scale and develops over a longer period of time (1988: 102-103). Whilst Taylor argues that territorial functioning does not take place at the neighbourhood level (but rather at the small group level of block or street corner), for our purposes we should recognize that the definition of territory has important consequences for ‘local governance’. Where a ‘local governance’ initiative is established, its success will partly depend upon whether or not its spatial definition coincides with the sense of place and feelings of community that the resident citizens hold. If an artificial territory is imposed within such an initiative, interest and participation in it will be difficult to generate and sustain. Two difficulties here are, first, the government’s longer-term tendency towards larger rather than smaller scales of operation (referred to earlier), and, second, the citizens’ preference for community identity at a very local scale. The latter is illustrated by Glasgow’s community council scheme, which in its construction permitted local definitions of community to take precedence, with the result that the city has a scheme comprising 113 such councils (Community Council Resource Centre, 1991). To resolve the tension between the two tendencies would require local governance structures that can accommodate both-through nested structures with different levels of responsibility, control and management, and via different spatial scales and configurations. Despite facing the obstacles outlined above, the discussion of the geographical conditions under which citizens may (or may not) participate in collective governance indicates that local governance initiatives present a means of changing and improving places: through the development of new shared interests; the presentation of additional means of social interaction; the improvement of services and of the physical and social environment; and, as a result of all these things, an enhancement of place attachment. There are also a number of other geographical consequences of a system of ‘local governance’, some intrinsic to the nature of the phenomenon itself, and others emanating from the way in which it is put into practice by those involved. AII obvious difference between government and ‘local governance’ is that, at the local scale, the latter is not holistic governance in the sense described by Dunsire (1990) of dealing with the whole of society. Thus, whereas government can be considered the management and control of territory (even if like Foucault [1992: 93-941 one wishes to call this the management of the imbrication of ‘men’ and things, with territory as a variable), ‘local governance’ comprises a complex set of arrangements for the governance of a service or services without any overarching control over public affairs within any one territory. Another distinction between ‘local governance’ and local government is that the locational link between governors and governed is weakened. Whereas local councillors must live or work in the district in which they wish to serve as elected members (notwithstanding the confusion caused by a recent legal case), the same is not true of other local governors. Those people responsible for the management of other organizations involved in ‘local governance’ do not necessarily live or work in the areas in which they are operating. This raises questions about the representation, responsibility and accountability of local governors: for example, they may not know the needs and preferences of local citizens, and they may be less accessible to local citizens. Under a system of ‘local governance’, governance becomes fragmented so that a

.bE

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multitude of organizations manage and control different services, each with different scales and overlapping territories of operation. The result is a burgeoning of governance networks as organizations collaborate to deal with problems that overlap spatially and functionally, and that impinge on one another. Far from administrative rationality or efficiency being the dominant principle for the design of administrative territories (Bennett, 1989), this is now being overridden by the axiom that ‘local is best’. The management of some services (e.g. housing and education) is being organized at more local, i.e. below-district, levels, but without consideration of the economy and efficiency of doing so, and without sufficient retention of resources and coordinating powers at the larger spatial scale(s) (district and county or region) to achieve economies in service provision, and to cope with problems that do not neatly fall into smaller spatial domains. An example of the latter problem is that of dealing with homelessness under a highly fragmented, localized housing service. Some of the problems of coordination arise because ‘local governance’ enhances the ‘politics of turf (Cox, 1989), or at least gives it greater scope to operate. In other words, citizens often become involved in, or take advantage of the opportunities presented by ‘local governance’ initiatives in order to maintain exclusive possession of relatively valuable resources within their territory (see Taylor, 1998: 22). Territoriality, i.e. the attempt to control people and resources by controlling area (Sack, 1986), can be a motivation for participation in ‘local governance’. For example, a local housing association may wish to restrict access to its houses to the sons and daughters of local residents, excluding what it considers to be undesirable citizens from other parts of the city and citizens unknown in the local area. Similarly, the governors of a ‘successful’ school may wish to opt out of local authority control in order to preserve access for privileged children from a wealthy locale, or to institute a policy of selectivity. Yet the externality effects of ‘local governance’ are left for others to cope with. The consequences of having multiple, overlapping and contradictory political territories under a system of local governance go beyond the more immediate problems of public policy administration and coordination. There is the more fundamental question of what the presence of a multitude of territorial institutions, each seeking the allegiance of citizens from the same and different places, will do to that sense of belonging to a community that lies at the heart of existential citizenship. As the institutions of local governance have their impact on the pattern of attachments and detachments to and from places, which are part of both the precondition and the outcome of this process, there is every possibility of producing a confused citizenry with unstable, conflicting social identities, rather than producing the sort of certainty and clarity of identity that, for example, we are told is being sought in the current reorganization of local government in the UK. Conclusion:

a service versus citizen-orientated

strategy

It is in the links between ‘active citizenship’ and ‘local governance’ that much of interest and importance lies, for they have the capacity, when taken together, to determine substantially the nature of citizenship in Britain. The prospect is that active citizenship and local governance will be promoted and implemented for service-orientated rather than citizen-orientated reasons. The objectives of cheapening services, making them more efficient, and strengthening central control at the expense of local power and control would take precedence, and the structural obstacles that local governance poses for participatory democracy (as described earlier) would remain. The consequences of such an approach are both political and geographical, though the two are closely linked.

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A service-orientated approach to local governance fits in with an elitist, dual version of active citizenship, sustaining marked differences in the social profile of those citizens performing control functions in non-government organizations and those directly delivering services. In terms of the exercise of control within local governance, the power of the professional and managerial classes would persist and be extended, as they are the social group most trusted by the government to deliver the service outputs being sought. This would be achieved both by the extensive use of agencies to whom government can make appointments, and by the use of regulatory powers and pressures of expectation in respect of non-governmental organizations. Indeed, the government’s preference for local governance through appointees, variously termed ‘the quangocracy’ or new magistracy’ is becoming well documented (Stewart, 1992; Colenutt and Ellis, 1993; Wintour, 1993b). Gender inequalities in the experience of citizenship would not be redressed. The implications of these inequalities for the exercise of governance are illustrated by the fact that the level of volunteering among adults is far lower for those who have responsibilities for the elderly or disabled than for others (Lynn and Davis-Smith 1992: 367), and women typically outnumber men among informal carers by a ratio of two to one (Varnplew and Crookston, 1991). The government’s concern has not been how to relieve women of their unequal burden of informal caring, thus freeing them to take a more active role in the public sphere, but rather how to cope with an increased movement by women into the labour force (Social Services Committee, 1990). For convenient reasons, gender issues are avoided by the government in its promotion of active citizenship. An ‘inherent weakness’ of the service-orientated strategy is that the attempt to convert voluntarism into active citizenship will flounder as citizens see their own efforts replacing, rather than significantly enhancing, the state’s contribution to collective services; as they see their leisure time being reduced by the requirements of ‘voluntary’ service; and as the government’s emphasis on duty and individual responsibility is perceived as reducing the satisfaction that comes from freely choosing to take part, and as downgrading some of the other motivations for voluntary activity such as compassion and the chance to contribute to the community (see Timms, 1992: 30-31). ‘The adoption of an individualist, meritocractic version of active citizenship, offering civic rewards to the most deserving citizens, is, we would argue, one with limited chances of enhancing activity rates since self-interested reasons are not the most prominent among citizens’ motives for voluntary activity’ (Timms, ibid.). A sense of belonging (the central component of citizenship), and the strengthening of place-based communities are other potential casualties of a service-orientated strategy. This is, first, due to the bias towards larger-scale organizations providing a standard service package, which reduces the scope for local diversity and involvement. The second cause is the emphasis on citizenship, and particularly on active citizenship, as an individual issue rather than a collective experience with aims of social solidarity and enhancing the common good (Mouffe, 1988). Although we cannot readily make judgements about the impact on local democracy of what are often termed ‘bypassing’ measures (see Taylor, 1991), our review of ‘local governance’ has placed a question-mark against the extent to which such a system might be ‘local’. The government may make use of existing organizations of ‘local governance’ in situations where some of the objectives of the two sides coincide, but where it attempts to determine the full range of activities to be undertaken by such organizations, or the methods they are to employ (either through funding conditions or regulatory systems), then the objectives or goals of such organizations become distorted or displaced. Voluntary organizations with uncertain funding are particularly prone to this effect. This

,‘iDE

171

&SUNS

centralization works to transform ‘local governance’ into what we might term ‘government by proxy’. The political anatomy of Britain would then not so much include a ‘shadow state’ as ‘government under camouflage’. An alternative, citizen-orientated strategy for civil society would have as its main aim ‘to make people better democrats and fuller members of their political communities, and to enhance their personal development by involving them in all levels of public service from policy to performance’ (Kearns, 1992: 33). This would entail what Marquand (1988) calls the ‘politics of mutual education’, whereby citizens learn the art of government by practising it, and become responsible by taking responsibility. Such a strategy would recognize that a truly active citizenship, one which empowers as well as burdens its citizens, will depend more and more upon the nature of local governance, and the possibilities the latter offers for involvement as governors and governed that it opens up or closes down for citizens. ‘Local governance’ would be seen as a set of arenas in which all citizens can participate. Active citizenship and local governance together can form the basis of a participatory democracy, but one where not only is an educative function an outcome of the process as described by Pateman (1970: 42-43) but also where education is a precondition for ‘active citizenship’. ‘Education for citizenship’ has to include more than the teaching of one’s responsibilities to provide face-to-face welfare to others and to obey the law. It should seek to give citizens an interest in democracy and self-governance, a knowledge of their rights and opportunities to participate in the management and control of communal affairs, and the skills required to perform these functions. A key issue is the raising of the competence of the general volunteer so that he or she can master a system of local governance that involves significant financial responsibilities, a highly trained professional staif, extensive networking and heavy regulation. However, education alone is not enough. What is required is more the process of ‘double democratization’ of which Held (1989: 182-185) writes, involving the transformation of both state and civil society. The latter comprises the transformation of structures that inhibit collective decision making, the curtailment of powerful interest groups and systematic privileges, and the provision of a set of arenas in which citizens can control their own projects and resources. The transformation of the state is to include a ‘double focus’ on formal rights and the conditions under which they are realized or enacted (pp. 201-202); this includes ‘state’ rights (e.g. to vote, to be involved in collective decision making) and social rights (p. 183); particularly important to ‘active citizenship’ are education, financial resources and conditions of employment. So far, ‘active citizenship’ and ‘local governance’ are underdeveloped in both these respects. They may provide opportunities for participation for some, but do not yet provide what we might call ‘new state rights’. Equally, the social rights that are needed to support a greater voluntary involvement in ‘local govenance’ are not in place. On these grounds, I would conclude that non-participation in ‘local governance’, either as governors or as the willingly governed (i.e. those to whom the governors are answerable), amounts to a form of exclusion from citizenship. Phillips (1992), in her text on engendering democracy, has pointed out why this is particularly so for women, for whom a more ‘actively participatory democracy’ (p. 162) is required if they are to influence agendas and choices. ‘Active citizenship’ and ‘local governance’ have to overcome the sort of double bind whereby the more participatory democracy becomes, the more it exacerbates existing discrimination and power inequalities. Phillips points this out in the case of men and women, but it also applies to other groupings of citizens. As Held puts it: The study of citizenship

has to concern

itself with all those dimensions

which

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ana’ local govemaw

allow or exclude the participation of people in the communities in which they

live.

(1989: 202)

Some of these dimensions were revealed in the analysis of survey data on voluntary activity. Whilst some groups, and particularly manual workers, were less likely to volunteer than others, even if asked to do so, a social pattern of inclinations is not the whole story. There are also difEculties of resources, awareness and opportunity which a greater reliance on voluntary activity would need to tackle, raising policy issues in the fields of the labour market, education and the family. First, why is it that those people responsible for bringing up families are least likely to be involved in committee work when they do volunteer? Is it the constraints of their responsibilities; the lack of childcare assistance from either their partner (if present) or other sources (e.g. the state or the voluntary organization concerned); lack of self-confidence reinforced by their absence from the labour market; or the expectations or prejudices of other volunteers? Making people aware of opportunities for voluntary movement, through education and recruitment programmes, is also important. In the survey, some people simply had not thought about the possibility of voluntary activity. This applied, for example, to one in seven unskilled, non-regular volunteers. Furthermore, it was clear from the respondents’ potential reaction to being asked to volunteer that opportunities played a large part and that all that some people needed in order to volunteer was to be asked. An expanded programme of voluntary activity would, therefore, need to give considerable attention to its methods of recruitment, cognizant of the fact that direct approaches are currently an important and successful device. Lastly, the relationship between the worlds of voluntary activity and of employment need developing. Commonplace ‘active citizenship’ would need to rest upon a consideration of the suitability of the terms and conditions of employment of citizens, and the need for financial or other support to volunteers, such as the granting of public service time away from work for local governance activities. The secondary analysis of the 1991 National Survey of Voluntary Activity, for example, found that, among non-regular volunteers, 47 percent of those with jobs had never felt that they wanted to volunteer (more) because they lacked the time. And, of this group, 38 percent said they would fail to respond to a direct plea for assistance for the same reason. The survey report itself showed that the level of volunteering was very low among those who had to do overtime and shiftwork (Lynn and Davis-Smith, 1992: Table 20). ‘Local governance’ could open up greater opportunities for citizens to participate in civil society as the ‘shadow state’ (Welch, 1989) moves out of the dark towards centre stage. This will not happen, however, if ‘active citizenship’ is implemented as a dual strategy, if pre-existing geographical conditions-the mediating role of place-are not taken into account in the design of ‘local governance’ initiatives, and if the issues of autonomy and accountability are not addressed directly. In addition to the matters mentioned above relating to the individual citizen, the successful extension of voluntary involvement in governance, as opposed to either the extension of a process of selection and appointment of people to boards and committees by government or the exacerbation of selective patterns of voluntary involvement, depends upon a number of institutional adaptations: 1. the clear separation of policy issues from technical issues and issues of day-to-day administration so that the burden of workload on the voluntary governor is curtailed; 2. an apportionment of the burden of accountability to government between voluntary governors and senior staff in order that not too much weight is placed upon the

hE

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shoulders of the volunteer, and so that the latter can make effective use of the scope for delegation; 3. the preservation of the autonomy of the institutions of local governance; 4. promotion of the internal democracy of local organizations involved in governance; 5. curtailment of the government’s tendency to promote economies of scale and organizational and geographical expansion within the private and voluntary sectors. A citizen-orientated approach to active citizenship and local governance would recognize the collective foundations to the individual benefits of citizenship. In so doing, it would be sensitive to the geographical dimensions to these phenomena, and especially to the recursive relationship between the nature of places as both a condition and a consequence of local governance. Citizens’ inclinations towards voluntary, collective endeavour are affected by their views about the physical and social qualities of the places in which they live, and by their awareness of, and response to, how others view their places. Yet the practice of local governance has the potential to improve substantially the characteristics and experience of places, so that the dynamism and energy that local governance requires of citizens becomes self-reinforcing. However, not only are the geographical dimensions to active citizenship and local governance important to the practice and outcome of these strategies, but the new local politics formed by their interplay should be of interest to those involved in debates about postmodern geographies. The emerging local politics has the potential to work in the opposite direction from modernism’s supposed relegation or removal of place-based communities (see Entrikin, 1991), and from Thatcherism’s alleged elimination of differences between places (see Johnston, 1991), yet it does not necessarily provide the ‘maximum feasible local control’ sought by postmodernists (Cooke, 1990). But more than this empirical question about the changing complexion of Britain’s social and political geography, and contrary to the tendency to champion the explanatory virtues of uniqueness, the study of local political geographies, of active citizenship and local governance in practice, offers opportunities to address the challenge posed by Beynon and Hudson (1993); namely, to understand the causes and significance of place-uniqueness. To this end, it would be preferable not to adopt a postmodernist epistemology and discard the notion of generalized theories of place (cf. Warf, 1993). Rather, we should entertain the notion that political geography, through the study of new structures of local governance in practice, may shed light on general theoretical issues such as how and to what extent and why place attachment matters to places mediate social and political participation, citizens. Hence, political geographers might be able to reflect on the pertinence of a postmodern epistemology to the subdiscipline. Acknowledgements My thanks to Jon Bannister, with whom I have discussed at length the ideas in this paper, and to Chris Philo and anonymous referees who provided comments on an earlier draft. I am also grateful to Justin Davis Smith of the Volunteer Centre UK, for arranging the provision of survey data to me. Notes 1. The 1_991 National Survey of Voluntary Act&&y in the UK was originally carried out by the Volunteer Centre UK; for the full survey results see Lynn and Davis-Smith (1992). Apart from Table 2, the results reported refer to what are called ‘regular volunteers’, that is people who undertake voluntary activity at least once a month for at least one group or organization. This is known as ‘formal voluntary activity’ and is the type of acitivity under which participation in ‘local governance’

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would be classified. The survey definition of voluntary activity was ‘any activity which involves spending time, unpaid, doing something which aims to benefit someone, other than or in addition to close relatives, or to benefit the environment’ (p. 16). The questions themselves referred to ‘unpaid work or help’. A total of 1488 interviews were completed in the survey, including 444 interviews with regular volunteers. 2. This is an under-researched area in the study of voluntarism.

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