Political management and local performance: a testing relationship?

Abstract

Purpose

Reform of local political management continues to be part of the international agenda for change as governments seek to create the conditions for better performance in local government. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of changes in political management upon the performance of local government, with England as a case study, and the implications for local government reform elsewhere.

Design/methodology/approach

Using statistical data derived from the system of comprehensive performance assessment (CPA), the analysis uses Kendall's tau to correlate CPA score per local authority against the respective political governance arrangement of each local authority in England.

Findings

As the correlation coefficient did not reach the level of statistical significance, the principal finding is that the relationship between different political governance arrangements and local authorities' performance is not demonstrated. The implications of this for governments' reforms of political management are discussed.

Research limitations/implications

The data are based upon English sources and point to the importance of conducting comparable analysis in other societies that have undergone similar changes in local political management.

Practical implications

In instituting reforms of local governance, governments rarely pay serious attention to measurable outcomes and the paper suggests the value in so doing.

Originality/value

The specific relationship between local political management and performance has not previously been measured in precisely this way.

Citation

Fenwick, J. and Johnston Miller, K. (2012), "Political management and local performance: a testing relationship?", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 25 No. 3, pp. 221-230. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513551211224261