Local Government and Strategic Choice

Local Government and Strategic Choice, Second Edition discusses decision-making in local government, in particular, to those more strategic levels of choice which tend to be linked with the terms 'planning' and 'policy-making.' This book is organized into four parts. Part I centers on an appraisal of planning in a major local authority. Part II details the nature of the planning process in any governmental setting and the characteristic types of operational and organizational problem to which it gives rise. Parts III and IV use the medium of case examples to suggest how the planning process can be made more effective, first through the development of an appropriate technology of choice, and secondly through the adaptation of organizational forms to allow the technology to become a workable instrument of democratic control.