Law, Localism & Governance

“我有三个非常明确的优先事项：地方主义，我们将把这一点融入我们所做的一切，从公园到金融再到政策。我的第二个优先事项是地方主义，我的第三个优先事项是……地方主义”(社区和地方政府部长埃里克·皮克尔斯，2010年6月)。毫无疑问，本届政府的目标是提高地方社区自行决策的能力。目前正在议会通过的2010年地方主义法案承诺，赋予社区“挑战”目前提供公共服务的方式的权利，如果社区资产面临关闭的威胁，“购买”社区资产的权利，以及如果能够在地方公投中收集到足够的选票，则给予社区“建设的权利”。在2010年的法案中，没有对“本地人”的法律定义，这一概念被认为是被广泛理解的。目前看来，基于社区的地方主义似乎主要旨在将权力下放给基层，赋予地方民主权力，特别是在社区规模的土地利用方面。这一研究项目将考虑法律如何定义和促进“地方”，以补充并有时挑战对地方政府的传统理解。它有两个关键的调查线索。第一个问题是，地方是否能够足够地分开，以证明完全由地方制定决策是合理的。在法律上，地方仍然必须遵守国家、欧盟和国际法，保护栖息地或人权，或从事透明的采购做法，或确保从一个地方到另一个地方的公路畅通。在伊林的喜剧《通向皮姆利科的护照》中，很明显，一个地方不可能长期脱离。地方和人是紧密相连的。然而，地方主义唤起了地理和法律上的界限，区分了内部和外部，人们要么‘进入’，要么‘退出’。这对许多人来说是一种熟悉的经历。学校集水区、初级保健信托基金和地方当局都可以在这条分界线的两边提供非常不同的服务。我们熟悉“邮编彩票”，但很少对它们可能产生的赤裸裸的分歧感到满意。如果地方主义现在进一步下放到“微地方”的规模，区分社区或教区议会，这是否意味着那些愿意在11月寒冷的夜晚晚上7点开会的人可以做出影响所有居民的具有约束力的决定？或者地方主义将名存实亡，地方当局或其他监管机构仍然需要解决地方内部和地方之间的争端？这项研究项目将调查的第二股地方主义是，促进地方民主和自治的地方主义机制(社区规划、地方治安、GP委托或城市重建项目)是否真的会允许志愿者和“意愿联盟”决定他们的地方应该是什么样子，无论是在发展方面(新房子或工业机会)还是在行为方面(例如，在‘家庭社区’中被认为是反社会的音乐可能不会在学生公寓街区被认为是不合适的)。既然贫穷和财富都与地方密切相关，地方决策是否会排除错误类型的居民，无论是学生、通勤者还是穷人？这项研究旨在通过询问对当地法律的理解是否在程序上和实质上是公正的，来调查这两组问题。这项研究将在法律和地理方面明确跨学科，并将与居住社区合作，调查居民、社区和地方当局如何使用法律机制来定义和实施地方主义和当地政府。该项目还旨在将学术界与实践联系起来，建立一个网络和一个博客，以确保来自所有学科的学者定期和一致地与政策分析员、监管者、地方当局和服务用户接触。

'I have 3 very clear priorities: localism, and we'll weave that into everything we do from parks to finance to policy. My second priority is localism, and my third is ... localism' (Eric Pickles, Minister for Communities and Local Government, June 2010). There can be can no doubt that the current Government aim to increase the ability of local communities to make decisions for themselves. The Localism Bill of 2010 currently making its way through Parliament promises to give communities 'a right to challenge' the ways in which public services are currently provided, a 'right to buy' community assets if they are threatened with closure and a 'right to build' if sufficient votes can be gathered in local referenda. There is no legal definition of 'the local' in the 2010 Bill, the concept is assumed to be widely understood. As it stands, community based localism appears primarily to be aimed at devolution to the grass roots, empowering local democracy, particularly in land use terms at the neighbourhood scale. This research project will consider how law can define and promote 'the local' to supplement and at times challenge conventional understandings of local government. It has two key strands of investigation. The first is to ask whether localities can ever be sufficiently separate to justify wholly local-decision making. Legally, localities must still abide by national, EU and international law, protecting habitats or human rights, for example or engaging in transparent procurement practices or ensuring that highways run smoothly from one locality to the next. In the Ealing comedy, A Passport to Pimlico, it was evident that a locality could not secede for long. Places and people are closely connected. Yet localism invokes a boundary, both geographic and legal, distinguishing between an inside and an outside, with people either 'in' or 'out'. This is a familiar experience for many. School catchment areas, primary care trusts and local authorities can all offer very different services either side of this dividing line. We are familiar with 'post code lotteries' but rarely comfortable with the stark divisions they can produce. If localism now devolves still further to the 'micro-local' scale, distinguishing between neighbourhoods or parish councils, will this mean that those willing to sit in meetings at 7pm on a cold November night can make binding decisions affecting all residents? Or will localism exist in name only with local authorities or other regulators still required to resolve disputes both within and between localities? The second strand of localism this research project will investigate is whether the machinery of localism (neighbourhood planning, local policing, GP commissioning or urban regeneration projects) that facilitate local democracy and autonomy, will in fact allow volunteers and a 'coalition of the willing' to decide what their locality should be like, both in terms of development (new houses or industrial opportunities) or behaviour (music deemed anti-social in a 'family neighbourhood' may not for example be inappropriate in a block of student flats). Since both poverty and wealth are closely correlated with place, will local-decision-making exclude the wrong type of resident, be they students, commuters or the poor? This research fellowship aims to investigate both these sets of questions by asking whether legal understandings of the local are procedurally and substantively just. The research will be explicitly cross-disciplinary in law and geography and will work with residential communities to investigate how residents, neighbourhoods and local authorities use legal mechanisms to define and implement localism and the local on the ground. The project also aims to connect academia with practice, establishing a network and a blog to ensure that scholars, from all disciplines, are engaging with policy analysts, regulators, local authorities and service users on a regular and consistent basis.