Local Elections in Britain: A Statistical Digest - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0948858346 ISBN 13: 9780948858345

Publisher: Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre, 2003

Synopsis

An 'at a glance' guide to the electoral history of every local authority in Great Britain since the implementation of the London Government Act 1963 and the Local Government Acts of 1972 (England & Wales) and 1973 (Scotland). Publishing in May 2003 at £125 (for institutional purchases), the second edition of this definitive source of data shows: Election results for each local authority, conveniently set out on one easy to interpret page; The fascinating picture of the growth of party competition; The rise of the 'centre' parties; The declining number of Independent candidates and councillors; The varying levels of turnout.

Local Elections in Britain: A Statistical Digest is an invaluable reference guide, a marketing tool and an indispensable resource for: Civil Servants; Journalists; Local Government Officers; Councillors and party activists; Librarians; Academics; Students of all levels; and of course for all those with an interest in how the system of democratic local government in Britain operates.
CONTENTS: Overview of local election trends in England & Wales, and in Scotland; Political composition of the council after each election; The electorate and the turnout in each election year; The number of seats contested and won by each political party and its share of the total vote; Information on women candidates - total number and number elected; 2-party share information; and largest group on the council.

About this title

Review:

...a hugely authoritative, indispensable reference book;a source of raw and illustrative material for every social science library shelf. -- Local Government Studies, Vol 30, No 2, Summer 2004

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Excerpt from Introduction:
The discussion in this chapter largely reflects the organisation of results on the pages following. The opening section examines specifically elections in London where local government reorganisation pre-dated that introduced elsewhere. Consequently, the time series for London’s local elections extends from 1964 onwards. In the second section the focus switches to the metropolitan boroughs and counties covering the more densely populated urban areas outside of the capital. Elections for the remaining parts of England are examined in the third section. The organisation of this section raised a number of issues. This was because of the large scale restructuring of local authorities that took place during the 1990s. In four English shire counties (Avon, Cleveland, Humberside, Isle of Wight) the two tier system of county and district was replaced by a number of unitary or single-tier authorities. A later review of administrative arrangements in the county of Berkshire also saw the administrative county abolished and the two tier structure replaced by unitary authorities. The former county of Hereford and Worcester was dissolved, replaced by a unitary authority, Herefordshire, and a two-tier county of Worcestershire. In other parts of the country administrative counties continued but some of the bottom-tier districts were removed and turned into unitary authorities, effectively making them independent from the surrounding county. At the conclusion of this re-structuring the number of English shire counties had reduced from 39 to 34 and a total of 46 unitary councils, either direct replacements or amalgamations of former district authorities, were established. Faced with the scale of this change we were tempted to devote a separate section to the unitary authorities but this would have had consequences for the continuity of analysis of the shires. We concluded that separating the unitary authorities from the shires would make the interpretation of general trends rather difficult. For these reasons, therefore, the third section analyses patterns of voting and party competition in the shire counties, shire districts and new unitary authorities taken together. In the fourth section elections in Wales are considered and here again a choice had to be made following structural changes introduced prior to the 1995 local elections. As in parts of England the two-tier system of county and district was replaced by unitary authorities but on this occasion there was a systematic replacement across the whole of Wales. For this reason the analysis simply acknowledges that a whole layer of local government (administrative counties) was replaced in Wales.

About this edition

• Publisher: Local Government Chronicle Elections Centre
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0948858346
• ISBN 13: 9780948858345
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 624
• Editor: Rallings Colin, Thrasher Michael