In the 1980s, British local government was at the eye of the political storm. Councils were blamed for overspending and central government was blamed for threatening to bring an end to local democracy. In 1990 a new local tax - the poll tax - proved so unpopular that it helped to bring an end to Margaret Thatcher's reign as Prime Minister. But what has really happened to local government over the last 15 years? What do the changes tell us about the nature of British politics in the 1990s? And what do they mean for the future direction of local government? These questions are at the heart of this book, which argues that it is necessary fundamentally to reappraise the ways in which we understand local government. Allan Cochrane develops a wide ranging argument, drawing on material from across the traditional divisions created by academic disciplines and theoretical systems to show that local government in Britain will never be the same again. It needs to be seen as just one element in a more complex local welfare state, which is itself being transformed to fit in with a new (business-led) agenda for welfare)