Local Government and Structural Crisis: An Interpretive Approach

This article examines ideas of local government crisis in the UK aiming to apply macro-level political economy debates to this sector. Two observations underpin its rationale. The first concerns structuralism's neglect of local government and the disconnection from its lively history of crisis discourses. Crisis discourses are a key frame through which local government actors have come to understand their environment. The second is that the fast-growing literature on crisis leadership says little about the underlying causes of crises. The article synthesises a political-sociological interest in crisis with the grounded focus of interpretivism to offer insights about context and practice.