Post-Pandemic Renewal Has to Be Reimagined in Radical Ways: Making the Case for New Municipalism in Liverpool City Region

Abstract

Purpose

Post-pandemic renewal has to be much more radical. In this chapter we develop a considered response to reimagining the public sector with a focus on Liverpool City Region, its local economy and local government. By drawing on wider ideas of new municipalism, new narratives of how to make local economies more social through public investment, accountability and democratic governance can be made. The local scale offers the frame through which this can be examined as we make the case for new municipalism in the Liverpool City Region.

Design/Method

As scholar-activists we have been involved in responding to the continuous austerity imposed on local government. We research and debate the social and economic problems faced in the Liverpool City Region and present some of our findings here. In our work, through an organisation known as ‘Beacon’ – a grass roots movement agitating for new municipalism – we make the case for new policy initiatives and seek to demonstrate a need for a different type of public sector reform through local government.

Findings

In the context of the ‘levelling up’ agenda of the UK government, there remains concern across the city region about how local government can function given the ongoing austerity imposed from the centre. We have a public sector that has faced disinvestment in communities for over a decade and because of this, we reimagine public sector renewal by advocating for a new municipalism based on strategies of economic and political innovation that can lead to greater levels of democracy, accountability, wealth creation and distribution. We show examples outside of the UK, such as in the US and Spain, where embryonic forms of new municipalism are evident.

Originality

Our work sets out a roadmap to achieve a new municipalist agenda in the Liverpool City Region through an activist movement, Beacon. We bring together ideas and practices that are often underway elsewhere that have real political and economic impacts. In articulating the need for renewal, not only must we critically reflect on underpinning problems but seek to campaign for the change we advocate. The challenge we face is one of coordination and scale.

Citation

Furmedge, P., Hughes, C., Southern, A. and Thompson, M. (2022), "Post-Pandemic Renewal Has to Be Reimagined in Radical Ways: Making the Case for New Municipalism in Liverpool City Region", Diamond, J. and Liddle, J. (Ed.) Reimagining Public Sector Management (Critical Perspectives on International Public Sector Management, Vol. 7), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 83-99. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2045-794420220000007007