Publishing performance information about local public services, an increasing trend in many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, matters politically because it has an effect on incumbent local governments' electoral support. Voters are able to use performance...

This paper is about the longevity and resilience of the form of local government that emerged in England in the nineteenth century and took shape in the twentieth. The paper focuses on contrast between the flexibility of its outer organisational form and a more stable central core, the system of...