Renegotiating Local Leadership in Times of Austerity: Findings from an English Local Government Case Study

Following “the toughest local government finance settlement in living memory” which would lead to “inevitable” cuts (BBC News, 14th December 2010), English local authorities have formulated various solutions, some deeming it an opportunity for reforming the design and delivery of services, mobilising different models of privatisation, mergers, ‘easyCouncil’ and Big Society (Lowndes and McCaughie, 2013; Lowndes and Pratchett, 2012). The local politics of austerity and change have been far from uniform, implying power-plays between local actors dispersed across different organisations. Despite this dispersal and disputes over the scale and solutions to austerity, situated solutions have emerged, illustrating the strategies deployed by local leaders in renewing their power, building coalitions and negotiating solutions to austerity. Deploying a discourse theory approach, where leadership is understood as discursive construction resulting from power plays (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001; Howarth, 2013), this paper articulates data collected from a nine month case study of an English local strategic partnership (LSP) formulating a project of commissioning and integration to deal with austerity. Based on a four-decade long genealogy of this locality, the conflicts and coalitions surrounding leadership and policy change are explored. Despite ongoing distrust and recent reforms threatening the leading position of the County Council, this local political leadership renewed alliances across the 27 organisations member of the LSP. This paper demonstrates how the renewal of local leadership is helped by the mobilisation of ‘popular’ policy solutions such as commissioning as universal demands (or empty signifiers) and gripping narratives of ‘more with less’ and equality (Glynos and Howarth, 2007; Laclau, 1996). Four situated dimensions of leadership are proposed, helping to better understand the practices linked to leadership and leaders in this specific locality. What is made clear by this research is the contingent and conflictual nature of local leadership, further exacerbated by austerity.