Applying a Systems Perspective to Local Government Finance

In this chapter, we consider the system-wide influences that frame and help shape local government finance practice. We set out influences that emerge from constitutional imperatives: the different forms that central–local relationships can take. We then explore the impact of politics: key changes to local government finance policy in England since 2010, summarising the discernible effects of these changes. Next, we reference scholarly literature on financialisation—the reworking of policy decision-making in the interests of mobile capital and its peripheral role in local government finance. This chapter then outlines the research project from which this book emerged.