The Comparative Study of Local Government and Politics: Overview and Synthesis

The book provides a review of the state of the art as regards local government studies, with an emphasis on contributions by political scientists. Particular attention is paid to the development of the research agenda in the field. At the end, a future research agenda is outlined. The first chapter of the book outlines the development of the research agenda of the field of local government studies; while community power studies were central topics from the 1930s and into the 1950s and 60s, policy-oriented research became increasingly popular in the 1970s. Institutional issues have always been important concerns to the scholars in this field. The next chapter raises a question of increasing relevance in a globalizing world: Will local government have any meaningful role in such a world? Various answers, mostly in the affirmative, are suggested. Local government studies face specific methodological challenges; these are reviewed in a separate chapter; the role of local government studies as a laboratory for the social sciences is highlighted. The book also provides a global overview of the infra-structure of research in the field (research institutes and groups, data bases, etc). Finally, ideas regarding a research agenda for the future are presented and a Laswellian platform for collaborative and comparative research is elaborated.

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Peter John is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, School of Public Policy at University College London.

Norbert Kersting is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Marburg, Germany. He has also coordinated large-scale research programmes on political participation and democratization. He has published extensively on public sector reform and new instruments of participation in a comparative perspective. He is a member of the board of the standing research committee on local government in the International Association of Political Science.
Harald Baldersheim is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published extensively on leadership and innovation in local and regional government. He has coordinated large-scale research programmes on processes of democratization in post-communist Europe and has also studied the spread of new communication technologies in Third World countries. He served as the chairperson of the standing research committee on local government in the International Association of Political Science.
TOMILA V. LANKINA is a research fellow with the Local Governance Research Unit, Faculty of Business and Law, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. She is the author of "Governing the Locals: Local Self-Government and Ethnic Mobilization in Russia" (2004). Her current research focuses on comparative local governance and on the impact of transnational and supranational actors on local democracy in Central and Eastern Europe
ANNEKE HUDALLA is a scholar and journalist specializing on the politics of the Czech Republic. She is the author of "Auenpolitik in den Zeiten der Transformation: Die Europapolitik der Tschechischen Republik 1993-2001 (Foreign Policy in the Time of Transition: European Policy of the Czech Republic, 1993-2001),"
HELLMUT WOLLMANN is Emeritus Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy, Institute for the Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. He is coeditor of "Local Democracy in Post-Communist Europe" and co-author of "Governing after Communism: Institutions and Policy-making,"