Inter-municipal collaborative networks can be initiated either voluntarily by local actors or mandated by superior authorities, yet little is known about how these initiation processes shape networ...

Two opposing views are central to the literature on local politics. An older view holds that local policy outcomes are determined primarily by cities’ structural constraints. A newer view claims th...

Digital governance has reshaped state-society interactions by creating new channels for citizen engagement in environmental affairs. Using 23,655 environment-related message-reply pairs from the Pe...

The ‘decline thesis’ posits that centralisation of power often signals a decline in local government innovation. Drawing on the innovation ecosystem theory, however, we move beyond this thesis to d...

Rising support for radical-right parties has reshaped public discourse, yet little is known about whether electoral signals resonate across government tiers. Using two decades of data from 299 Flem...

Polarised political landscapes have amplified identity-based narratives, emphasising traits like race, gender, and ethnicity. This article contributes to debates on representation by examining whet...

This study investigates localist voting in local executive elections, focusing on how candidate profiles and contextual factors shape friends-and-neighbours voting (FNV). Building on the FNV concep...

Municipal permitting is a procedural tool that city officials can use to facilitate housing development. City officials control housing permitting in their jurisdiction, but state law ultimately de...

Extensive research has examined municipal resilience to external shocks; however, quantitative assessments of financial resilience based on performance remain limited. This paper addresses this gap...

Polarised political landscapes have amplified identity-based narratives, emphasising traits like race, gender, and ethnicity. This article contributes to debates on representation by examining whet...

This study investigates the impact of non-partisan lists on fiscal discipline in Norwegian municipalities, using new data on actual coalition agreements in three election periods (2008–2019). Unlik...

This study examines the impact of intergovernmental transfers, particularly the Municipal Participation Fund (FPM), on municipal fiscal performance in Brazil, with a focus on per capita current exp...

How much does local politics shape public spending? Despite extensive research on federalism and local governance, existing studies primarily focus on fiscal constraints and municipal characteristi...

Under international human rights law (IHRL), local governments complement the national government in undertaking their human rights obligations. Regarding the right to food, local authorities in th...

Federal democracies rely on active local political participation, yet both anecdotal and empirical evidence from Western democracies highlight increasing challenges in recruiting municipal candidat...

Under the ‘decentralized’ or ‘fragmented’ authoritarian governing structure, China’s local officials have long enjoyed leeway in implementing central policies in their areas of jurisdiction. Specif...

Civic engagement is a crucial sociological indicator for the sustainable success of public policies, yet prior work often treats it as one dimensional. This study examines civic engagement through ...

Julien van Ostaaijen and Sander Jennissen ‘I am fed up. It was interesting, fascinating, and frustrating. As a small faction it is difficult to be on top of everything and I noticed that I became l…

This article presents a systematic literature review on European research on the mayoral model as a local management system. As our research strategy, we utilised the PRISMA guidelines and research...

We examine whether confidence in local governments reduces the intensity of drought-induced migration. Since confidence in government stems from the assurance of support, it may reduce households’ ...

This article examines changes in women’s local level political leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic based on political oversight proposals approved by the City Council of Cali, Colombia between ...

This study examines the relationship between satisfaction with local safety services and trust in local government among the Arab minority in Israel. A survey of 201 residents from Sakhnin and Arra...

This study utilises data from the 2017-2021 China Social Survey (CSS) to explore the impact of various forms of government transparency on public service satisfaction. The findings reveal that both...

The burgeoning issue of local government debt has emerged as a pivotal factor influencing the trajectory of sustainable economic growth in China. Using a novel county-level panel data spanning from...

Homogeneity of opinions is important for the cohesion and unity of political parties. While most research focused on homogeneity at the national level, we argue that opinion homogeneity between nat...

Transparency is crucial for good governance and the prevention of maladministration. Since 2013, the Municipal Transparency Index – Portugal has assessed the transparency of local governments based...

Volume 52, Issue 1 of Local Government Studies

As digital transformation accelerates, the Chinese national government has introduced policy initiatives urging local governments to provide accessible electronic services for digitally vulnerable ...

Comparative analyses of policy datasets enable explanations of variation, but not all policy activities are extensive enough to be assessed through the established ‘policy intensity’ approach. We i...

The 2015 ‘migration and refugee crisis’ had a major impact on national level politics, media and policy debates in Austria. This article explores how the conflictual politics of refugee reception a...

Coercive, mimetic and normative pressures contribute to the tendency for local authorities operating in the same institutional environment to develop increasingly similar policies. This article use...

This article argues that previous public administration and political science research might have missed important class-based inequalities by primarily focusing on ethnic discrimination among publ...

This study takes its vantage point from the increasing decentralisation of welfare by examining the growing trend of welfare states implementing active labour market policies (ALMPs), with a focus ...

This study challenges the conventional assumption that high voter turnout signifies a well-functioning democracy and government legitimacy. In the case of Arab local elections in Israel, exceptiona...

Dr. Nicolai De Wulf, Prof. Dr. Joris Voets When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, millions of people fled their homes seeking safety across Europe. In Belgium, cities such as Antwerp, Ghent,…

The concept of community is synonymous with local governance. It is relied upon to speak to populations and to define the values of a region. This paper draws on an analysis of non-metropolitan loc...

After the third wave of democratisation, many countries underwent reforms of decentralisation to consider the heterogeneous preferences of voters across different localities. However, contrary to t...

This study investigates politico-administrative relations across four key crisis management tasks: sense-making, decision-making and coordination, meaning-making and account-giving, and learning du...

Governance in the Nordic countries has a highly local character. Most public services are provided by locally elected bodies that enjoy a high degree of autonomy in relation to political institutio...

With few exceptions, women are underrepresented in local councils throughout the world. Moreover, female councillors have much higher turnover than their male counterparts, leaving political life q...

This paper examines the political and identity-based consequences of the 2019 Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) in Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP), where three historic towns were mer...

Co-production requires two main actors: citizens and local governments. However, a significant portion of existing research has primarily examined co-production from the citizens’ perspective. Addr...

As a result of the ongoing European integration process, the EU increasingly impacts local governments. However, how they respond to this differs: local governments ‘Europeanise’ in different ways....

The attitude of small units is crucial to the success of city-county amalgamations. This paper focuses on the impact of amalgamations on small units from the perspective of land transfers. Based on...

This study aims to advance the understanding of new political party longevity by examining an overlooked phenomenon: challengers formed exclusively to run for local elections (‘local parties’, ‘loc...

This study responds to the call in the literature for more attention to examine the inclusive nature of co-creation processes. It explores the dynamic nature of inclusion within co-creation process...