Local governance and local business interests: a critical review

Since 1980 the dominance of elected municipal government in Britain has giv en way to a broader local governance. While the precise configuration of th is change has been debated in detail, approaches to the processes of restru cturing and the operation and relative efficacy of new arrangements remain empirically limited and theoretically underdeveloped. We explore the useful ness of a range of contemporary theoretical accounts including regulationis t approaches in responding to these lacunae. in developing our analysis we argue first that explaining the restructuring of local governance requires (amongst a range of developments) further theoretical and empirical work on local business interest representation; and, secondly, that attempts to mo ve beyond partial evaluations of the new local governance must be predicate d upon appropriate and rigorous theoretical foundations.