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

广泛的研究表明，公民对公共和私人机构的信任度正在下降。在造成这种趋势的各种原因中，其中一个原因与新一代价值观缺乏尊重有关。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们不具备这样的价值观。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于更广泛的社会变革。尽管如此，仍缺乏研究试图了解公民不信任的减少对精英间关系的影响。虽然对政府内部精英进行了分析关注，例如在核心高管研究和对英国政治传统的研究中，但这种关注仍然是狭隘的，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心和边缘精英之间关系的影响，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。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象策略。我将以这些文献为基础，评估潜在的公众情绪，如对政府的不信任，是如何影响呈现策略的形成和其中的叙事的。这将通过回答以下研究问题来实现：在英国治理体系中，公民对公共机构信任度的下降，如果有的话，是如何被用作形成中央和外围精英之间相互指责的战略资源的？为了本研究的目的，我打算用格伦费尔塔灾难作为中央和地方政府之间推卸责任的一个例子。本文将运用解释主义认识论来分析本个案研究。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事，同时也位于制度约束的中观层面分析中。这项研究的主要数据样本将是由独立格伦费尔恢复工作组、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- 2019年期间制作的公开文件和会议记录，内容涉及灾难管理。除此之外，还将采用民族志方法，对中央政府机构和RBK&C开展与格伦费尔有关的业务的事件进行观察。这将允许分析政策文件中发现的叙述如何在政治精英之间的面对面互动中表现出来，以及在任何责任归属中表现出来。

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.