Embedded Autonomy

Reviews / Votes

"Embedded Autonomy offers a new perspective that unites the often fragmented and competing concerns around local democracy and devolution of power with financial stability and resilience. Drawing fascinating insights from local government systems around the world it provides a holistic framework that moves beyond negative and partial tropes of local government insolvency, mismanagement, and debt towards considering a sustainable future for local democracy." (Dr Jonathan Carr-West, Chief Executive of Local Government Information Unit)

"Embedded Autonomy provides a meaningful and timely conceptual innovation to support thinking about balances in relations of power and money between central and local government. Through detailed empirical analysis, Muldoon Smith et al. demonstrate that learning and adapting from international experience and practice can help address the fundamental questions of what local government is for and how it can be funded in England." (Andy Pike, Henry Daysh Professor of Regional Development Studies, Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS), Newcastle University, UK)

"This book is a long overdue authoritative systematic analysis of an important and much misunderstood critical part of the state: local government and its finance system. The authors' calm and logical approach lays bare years of neglect by central government of an increasingly fragile sector, exposed to austerity and badly thought-out piecemeal change, coping with ever rising needs locally. The authors' concept of embedded autonomy, their central concept for reform, underpinned by international comparisons sets out a clear roadmap for reform and says once and for all that the current system has exhausted the available options for financial survival and needs a dynamic and thoughtful solution." (Aileen Murphie, former National Audit Office Director and Honorary Professor, University of Durham)

"The UK state, particularly in England, has long been strongly centralised. It has limited space for the devolution of power, and even less for decentralisation of local government finance. At a time when reforms are under consideration, the authors have provided a timely study of how a culture of centralisation shapes England's local government finance system. The book shows how different views of the state shape other countries' systems in very different ways, with valuable lessons for England." (John Denham, former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Professor, at Southhampton University)