Central-Local Government relations in an age of mistrust: The Grenfell Tower Disaster

大量研究表明，公民对公共和私人机构的信任度有所下降。在这一趋势的各种原因中，给出的一个原因与新一代价值观缺乏尊重有关。如果这一解释被接受，那么几乎没有理由怀疑这一代人中的精英阶层不也具有这样的价值观。他们居住的机构并不完全脱离公民社会，他们作为个人也不能免受更广泛的社会变革的影响。尽管如此，缺乏研究试图了解公民不信任的下降对精英之间的关系产生了什么影响。在政府内部一直以精英为分析焦点的地方，例如在核心高管研究和对英国政治传统的研究中，重点仍然是孤立的，淡化了精英运作所在的更广泛的社会背景。我的博士学位试图通过调查公民信任度下降对中央精英和外围精英之间关系的影响来拓宽政治精英研究的分析视角。我将通过研究“避免指责”来研究精英之间关系中的不信任，由于其跨越政治和行政领域的迭代性质，这是一个非常合适的方法。对于这项研究来说，最重要的是精英们用来影响公众舆论的表现性策略。我将在这本文献的基础上，评估潜在的公众情绪，如对政府的不信任，如何影响陈述策略的形成和其中的叙述。要做到这一点，需要回答以下研究问题：在英国治理体系中，公民对公共机构信任度的下降，如何被用作在中央精英与外围精英之间形成相互指责的一种战略资源？出于本研究的目的，我打算以格伦费尔大厦灾难为例，来说明中央政府与地方政府之间的相互推卸责任。本文将运用解释主义认识论对这一案例进行分析。微观层面的分析将在表现性策略的形成中识别基于文本的叙述，同时也位于制度制约的中观层面分析中。这方面的主要数据样本将是2017-19年间由独立格伦费尔恢复工作组、部长、住房、社区和地方政府部以及肯辛顿和切尔西皇家自治市理事会(RBK&C)编制的涵盖灾难管理的公开文件和会议纪要。除此之外，还将采用一种人种学方法，观察中央政府机构和RBK&C开展与格伦费尔有关的业务的事件。这将有助于分析在政策文件中发现的叙述在政治精英之间的面对面互动中的表现方式，以及在任何责任归属中的表现。

A breadth of research documents declining citizen trust towards public and private institutions. Among the varying reasons for this trend, one causal factor given relates to the onset of new generational values lacking in deference. If this explanation is accepted there is little reason to suspect that elites within this generational cohort do not also bear such values. The institutions they inhabit are not wholly separate from civil society, nor are they as individuals exempt from wider societal change. Despite this, there is a lack of research which seeks to understand what effect declining citizen mistrust has upon inter-elite relations. Where there has been an analytical focus upon elites within government, for instance in core executive studies and research upon the British Political Tradition, the focus has remained insular, underplaying the broader social context within which elites operate. My PhD attempts to broaden the analytical lens of political elite studies by investigating the effect of declining citizen trust upon the relations between central and peripheral elites. I will study mistrust within inter-elite relations by examining 'blame avoidance', which, due to its iterative nature spanning political and administrative domains is a highly suitable approach. Of primary importance for this research are the presentational strategies that elites employ to influence public opinion. I will build upon this literature by assessing how underlying public sentiments, such as mistrust of government, influence the formation of presentational strategies and the narratives within them. This will be done by answering the following research question:How, if at all, is declining citizen trust in public institutions utilised as a strategic resource in the formation of blame between central and peripheral elites in the English system of governance?For the purposes of this study, I intend to use the Grenfell Tower disaster as an example of blame avoidance between central and local government. An interpretivist epistemology will be employed to analyse this case study. A micro-level analysis will identify textual based narratives in the formation of presentational strategies, whilst also being situated within a meso-level analysis of institutional constraints. The primary data sample for this will be public documents and minutes produced between 2017-19 by the Independent Grenfell Recovery Task Force, Ministers, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council (RBK&C) covering the management of the disaster. In addition to this, an ethnographic method involving the observation of events in which central Government agencies and RBK&C conduct business relating to Grenfell will be employed. This will allow for the analysis of the way in which the narratives discovered in policy documents manifest in face-to-face interactions between political elites and in any attribution of blame.