This article contributes to the current debate as to the role, scope and scale of local government in New Zealand. In 2008, the Nationals Local Government Minister announced his intention to undertake a fundamental review of local government in NZ. This review finally took shape in mid 2011 with the publication of the consultation document 'Smarter Government, Stronger Communities: towards better local governance and public services' (Hide 2011). This article adds to the debate by identifying four key themes within the NZ local government system, namely: the legislative framework; managerial capabilities; calibre of elected members and finally democratic deficit and community disengagement. Whilst the first two themes are undoubted strengths, the latter two are equally weaknesses in the local governance system of NZ. Hence the article makes a number of recommendations, seeking to exploit the strengths and to correct the weaknesses in order to create a robust and credible local governance system for NZ.

Setting the sceneThis paper presents the findings of a major quantitative study of employee attitudes survey within eight English local authorities. A representative sample of eight English local authorities, two from each of the major authority types (London boroughs, metropolitan districts, county councils and "shire" districts) were selected. These four authority types represent the strategic local authorities in England. In London and the six other metropolitan conurbations (Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire) there is only one tier of local government responsible for the provision of all local authority services. However, elsewhere in England there are two tiers of local government. These are the county and district councils which have the responsibility for service provision divided between the two tiers.The responses from the survey were then analysed using a management typology developed during qualitative research conducted in the same authorities which sought to ascertain élite perceptions of the organizational change process. In total 100 strategic élites were interviewed. The results of the qualitative research are reported elsewhere (Asquith, 1996).Following a brief summary of the typology, highlighting the main characteristics of each of the authority types, this paper will deal with the composition of the targeted population of non-élite actors. There is a general analysis of the overall rate of return from the various segments of the sample. Thereafter a detailed discussion will assess the results of the survey for each of the quantifiable items which were contained within the survey questionnaire. However, before this can be dealt with, it is essential to outline the basis on which the questionnaire was designed. Specifically what were the aims and objectives of the exercise and what hypotheses were to be tested by it?The emergence of "managerialism" or "new public management" has had major impacts on the roles and functions of public sector organizations in a number of countries (Hughes, 1994). In terms of English local government, this impact can most clearly be seen through the introduction of a number of management techniques more traditionally associated with the private business sector. Examples of this can be seen in the introduction of compulsory

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This article examines the implementation of the directly elected mayor (mayor) in England. Following a short examination of the history of the mayoralty, the article addresses the impact of the 2000 Local Government Act. Introduced by a reforming Blair administration, the Act sought to radically transform the ways in which local government in England operated and introduced the concept of the mayor. As we shall see, the introduction of the mayor has not been without its problems. Despite these initial teething difficulties, it has nevertheless provided opportunities to demonstrate what can be achieved by this radical innovation. Finally, the article speculates about what the future might hold given the White Paper on local government leadership that was published in late 2006.