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

不信任时代的中央与地方政府关系：格伦菲尔大厦灾难

• 批准号: 2240018
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2240018
• 关键词: Central; Local; Government; relations; age

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.

大量研究记录了公民对公共和私人机构的信任度下降。在造成这一趋势的各种原因中，其中一个因素与缺乏尊重的新一代价值观的出现有关。如果这种解释被接受，那么就没有理由怀疑这一代人中的精英不也具有这样的价值观。他们所居住的机构并非完全独立于公民社会，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，仍缺乏旨在了解公民不信任下降对精英间关系有何影响的研究。在对政府内部精英进行分析的地方，例如在核心行政研究和对英国政治传统的研究中，焦点仍然是孤立的，低估了精英运作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。我将通过考察“避免指责”来研究精英间关系中的不信任，由于其跨越政治和行政领域的迭代性质，这是一种非常合适的方法。这项研究最重要的是精英们用来影响公众舆论的表达策略。我将在这些文献的基础上，评估潜在的公众情绪（例如对政府的不信任）如何影响表达策略及其内部叙述的形成。这将通过回答以下研究问题来完成：如果有的话，公民对公共机构的信任度下降是如何被用作英国治理体系中中央和外围精英之间形成相互指责的战略资源的？出于本研究的目的，我打算使用格伦菲尔大厦灾难作为中央和地方政府之间避免相互指责的例子。将采用解释主义认识论来分析本案例研究。微观层面的分析将在呈现策略的形成中识别基于文本的叙述，同时也位于对制度约束的中观层面的分析中。主要数据样本将是独立格伦菲尔恢复工作组、部长们、住房、社区和地方政府部以及肯辛顿和切尔西皇家自治市议会 (RBK&C) 在 2017-19 年间制作的公开文件和会议记录，涵盖灾难管理情况。除此之外，还将采用人种学方法，包括对中央政府机构和 RBK&C 开展与格伦菲尔相关业务的事件进行观察。这将有助于分析政策文件中发现的叙述在政治精英之间的面对面互动以及任何责任归属中的体现方式。