Meeting the critical challenge: re-tooling and re-founding defences of local democratic institutions

Local government studies was born as a sub-division of public administration, but was progressively cross-fertilised with a range of disciplines, notably political geography and urban studies. This buffeted what had been normative foundations of the field, notably liberal democracy, and challenged meanings of key concepts from its lexicon, including the 'local', democracy, government, place and scale. These cherished concepts have been re-imagined and are now more than ever 'up for grabs'. Subsequently, normative theorising about the local government waned. This paper argues that we need to meet the challenge set by these new insights and ask what would a defence of local government look like if we took them into account? In doing so, we should recognise both their value and limitations; engaging in the challenge will reveal the need to re-visit some long-held assumptions about not only the value of local democratic institutions but also their continuing fundamental relevance.