Newcastle City Council and the grassroots : accountability and budgeting under austerity.

摘要

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed light on new accountability relationships betweenudNewcastle City Council (NCC) and its citizens and stakeholders in the wake of the British government’sudausterity politics and its budget cuts for local authorities. It seeks to show some of the ways in whichudvarious kinds of budgeting, for example, for alternative sources of funding, the use of volunteers forudservice provision, resource sharing, and asset transfers, as well as a diverse set of accounts of the socialudimplications of resource diversions and service cuts, have been implicated in those changes.udDesign/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a qualitative field study of some of theuduses of budgets in the shaping of accountability relationships through interviews with council officers,udconversations with activists and citizens, analysis of council and other documents, and observation ofudpublic meetings and demonstrations. The approach focused on the relationship between the city’sudpolitical grassroots and the NCC leadership and administration.udFindings – The authors find that NCC’s senior politicians and officers co-opted the city’s politicaludgrassroots and managed to reconstitute local political accountability to citizenry and stakeholders as audchoice between the cessation of different types of local government services, by combining appeals toudthe legal framework of English local authorities, the unfairness of national politics, and the fairness ofudlocal government service provision. Local government blamed the funding cuts and the resultingudresource shortages on the central government. It sought to push responsibility for cuts to the localudcitizenry whilst reserving for itself the role of mediator and adjudicator who makes the final decisionsudabout the portfolio of causes that will be funded.udOriginality/value – This is the first study to offer detailed insight into the effects of the Britishudgovernment’s austerity budget cuts of local authority grants on the politics of accountability in a localudauthority.