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The Power of the Labour Party in Local Government: a Case Study of Kirklees Council

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The Power of the Labour Party in Local Government: a Case Study of Kirklees Council University of Huddersfield Repository Ellam, Angela The Power of the Labour Party in Local Government: A Case Study of Kirklees Council Original Citation Ellam, Angela (2015) The Power of the Labour Party in Local Government: A Case Study of Kirklees Council. Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/26222/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ THE POWER OF THE LABOUR PARTY IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: A CASE STUDY OF KIRKLEES COUNCIL ANGELA MICHELLE ELLAM A thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Huddersfield July 2015 Copyright statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Huddersfield the right to use such copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the University Library. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of any patents, designs, trademarks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions 1 Abstract Political power has been much contested and debated, culminating in the development and measurement of many distinct and narrow facets of power. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by providing a conceptual and operational framework for researching power in a political system in a relevant, observable, comprehensive and meaningful way. Using this framework to consider the power of the Labour Party in local government, as perceived by practitioners, has provided new insights into existing understandings of power in both theory and practice. Many different facets of power are relevant to researching the power of the Labour Party in local government. These were brought together using an abstract model of a political system to provide a comprehensive and meaningful framework for researching power. The framework makes it possible to operationalise power by identifying three principal dimensions that are observable - capacity, decision making and power – and connect the different facets together. This framework makes clear the distinction between conceptions of power at micro-level, which concern the capacity to influence others, and macro-level, which concern the capacity to influence outcomes; and the significance of applying the appropriate conception to the research context. The conceptual and operational framework was used to research the power of the Labour Party in local government through a case study of Kirklees Council. The research was conducted between October 2012 and August 2013 and used a mixed methods approach incorporating a survey of Labour Party councillors, interviews with Labour Party members, and observation of various meetings, this research explores each facet of power. This case study shows that central government controls the capacity of Kirklees Council, but the Labour Party has the potential to influence local political outcomes well beyond the sphere of the Council. In terms of decision making, the Leader dominates the Labour Party, but due to the professional expertise of officers and bargaining power of other political parties has less control over Kirklees Council. Regarding outcomes, the activities of the Labour Party in local government makes marginal differences to the electorate and policies of Kirklees Council, but a significant difference to the Labour Party itself. So, even though political parties dominate the governance of local authorities, this case study shows that local party politics in practice makes only marginal differences in the locality. 2 Table of Contents COPYRIGHT STATEMENT ....................................................................................................................................... 1 ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................................. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................. 3 LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................................... 6 LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................................................... 8 DEDICATIONS ........................................................................................................................................................ 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................................10 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................................................................11 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................12 RESEARCH OUTLINE ...................................................................................................................................................... 12 RESEARCH CONTEXT ..................................................................................................................................................... 12 RESEARCH AIMS AND OBJECTIVES ................................................................................................................................... 21 RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION .............................................................................................................................................. 23 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ............................................................................................................................................. 25 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .............................................................................................................................27 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................................ 27 CONCEPTUALISING POWER ............................................................................................................................................ 28 OPERATIONALISING POWER ........................................................................................................................................... 33 OPERATIONAL MEASURES FOR RESEARCHING POWER ......................................................................................................... 36 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................................... 40 3. RESEARCH FRAMEWORK ..................................................................................................................................42 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................................ 42 RESEARCH ASSUMPTIONS .............................................................................................................................................. 43 RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES ............................................................................................................................................... 43 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ....................................................................................................................................... 47 RESEARCH METHODS .................................................................................................................................................... 49 CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................................................................................
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