Ideology, Democracy, and the Foundations of Local Self-Government

Abstract

At a congress of the International Political Science Association held at The Hague in 1952, Professor Georges Langrod delivered a paper entitled “Local Government and Democracy,” subsequently published in the British journal Public Administration. The incisive logic and unorthodox conclusions of that paper seemed at the time to demolish, once for all, the justification of local representative government commonly found in much traditional liberal political theory. Mr. Keith Panter-Brick, facing a skilled prosecutor, and doing the best he could with a difficult case, replied in a later issue of the same journal. Dr. Leo Moulin next entered the discussion in defence of Langrod, and Panter-Brick wrote a second rejoinder. I felt that the contest, although conducted with flair by all parties, left far too many important questions unsettled. The object of this paper, however, is not to reopen points raised in dispute by the recent combatants; it is rather to suggest that the problems connected with the theory of local self-government ought to be approached in different terms.The question to be considered refers to the relation between local self-government and democracy. By local self-government is meant that system of subordinate local authorities which has developed in many modern states. Each unit of local government in any system is assumed to possess the following characteristics: a given territory and population; an institutional structure for legislative, executive, or administrative purposes; a separate legal identity; a range of power and functions authorized by delegation from the appropriate central or intermediate legislature; and lastly, within the ambit of such delegation, autonomy—including fiscal autonomy—subject always, at least in the Anglo-American tradition, to the limitations of common law such as the test of reasonableness.