Rebuilding local democracy: the accountability challenge

There are signs that the leadership of the main party of opposition, Labour, is coming to terms with the institutions established by the Coalition and Conservative governments of recent years, and may well commit to retaining these structures and establishing more of them in the coming years (as the Conservative Party has also promised to do). [...] As a good deal of the research literature on the creation of new institutions of governance illustrates, one of the requisite conditions for their longevity is the degree to which they come to acquire legitimacy in the eyes of the people they serve. [...] Centralisation in the UK needs to be understood not just in terms of the capacity of parliament, and especially the executive, to exercise control over the country’s multitude of public agencies and layers of government, but also in terms of more fundamental assumptions about its role as the ultimate source of democratic legitimacy. [...] FIGURE 7 Inward accountability 2 5 The structure of mayoral combined authorities There are long-established inward accountability processes in the British governing system, many of which have been exported to other parts of the world.36 For example, the expectations of a minister to answer to Parliament, or of the Prime Minister to face a regular grilling by MPs in the chamber, or the ability of s. [...] In Leicester, the directly elected mayor of the local authority has effectively vetoed the creation of a metro mayor for the wider region.42 However, in Greater Manchester and the Tees Valley, the existence of local elected mayors has not created the same kinds of challenge.