<title/> This article reports the results of an intensive study of the quality of local governance in a town in the UK, demonstrating how the concept of local governance can be operationalized, presenting key findings on the quality of local governance in the case study and suggesting that more limited,...

An 'activism index', combining data on membership of civil associations and societies and the level of activism suggests that, notwithstanding cultural differences, civil activism in European countries could be a great deal higher than its current level. If higher civic participation is to be...

<title>Abstract</title> Complexity theory demonstrates that there are fundamental conceptual difficulties in the concepts of ‘planning' in any open system which contains a significant level of decentralization of decision making. This paper presents a revised conceptual framework for strategic management in...

The Best Value (BV) regime in UK local government became mandatory on 1 April 2000. This paper explores the international sources of the ideas behind BV. It maps out the evolution of BV from an approach primarily directed at achieving high quality local services into an approach which is...