Local Government Failure

A substantial public choice literature exists on the generic phenomenon of government failure in advanced western representative democracies. However, much less attention has been focussed on this question in the specific context of local governance, with the important exceptions of Bailey (1999) and Boyne (1998). In this paper we advance the argument that not only is government failure an essential dimension of policy making at all levels of government, but that cogent reasons exist for believing that the problem of government failure may be much more acute in local government than at higher tiers of governance. This argument runs counter to conventional wisdom amongst commentators, including Bailey (1999) and Boyne (1998). *Senior Lecturer Department of Economics University of Otago PO Box 56 Dunedin, New Zealand Phone: 0064-3-4798650 Fax: 0064-3-4798174 email: [email protected] ** Professor Department of Economics University of New England Armidale 2351 New South Wales, Australia Phone: 00612-67-732500 Fax: 00612-67-733280 Email: [email protected]