The manner in which central and local governments engage has taken on extra salience in recent years as governments seek to address wicked issues and begin to appreciate the role of place as a key contributor of economic growth. Different approaches exist, ranging from formal and constitutional to informal and political, but none represents a magic bullet with outcomes always subject to local circumstances. In this context the example of New Zealand highlights a particular challenge; how to maintain effective of inter-governmental relationships in the absence of either constitutional recognition of local government or a formal agreement between the two sectors.

The Market Towns Initiative (MTI), a UK community-led development programme, operated throughout rural England from 2000 until 2005/6. It was designed to help local people, with professional support, identify – and then capitalize on – the economic, environmental and social strengths and weaknesses of small country towns. This paper explains the origins and ways of working of the MTI. Examples of the topics explored and participants’ views are given, and conclusions drawn. The opportunity is also taken to explain how interest in the roles of England’s small country towns grew in the years following the Second World War, and how this led to the development of the MTI. Evidence suggests that the programme worked well. It demonstrated that local people have the enthusiasm, skills and knowledge to take a lead in the development of the places in which they live; something which, until local government reforms changed roles and structures, was largely taken for granted.

Context is important in developing strategies to address alcohol related violence. Knowledge of local conditions is critical to action in rural areas. The aim of this study was to gather information about context specific alcohol related problems experienced by frontline workers in a regional centre to inform the local alcohol action plan. Frontline workers were invited to participate in one of five focus group discussions that investigated problems experienced as a result of other people’s alcohol use. Alcohol related problems were more frequently associated with time periods than any single group in the community. Social media was used to incite arguments between groups in different venues during the lock-out periods. The focus groups identified that the location of licensed premises and a taxi rank; and previous relationships between protagonists were the key contextual factors causing alcohol related problems. A second taxi rank was identified as a useful local management strategy. Supply reduction was suggested as a key factor in long term solutions to alcohol related problems in rural towns. The local liquor accord did not want to reduce supply of alcohol by closing late night venues earlier. Local action to reduce alcohol related problems will be limited to pragmatic solutions because supply reduction is unacceptable to those in the business of selling alcohol.

Whilst many countries have been devolving power to the sub-national level England has moved in the opposite direction. For the last decade English local government has been subjected to tight top down performance monitoring and financial controls. The evidence suggests that these policies have helped to encourage significant improvements in performance. However critics argue that they have been costly to implement and have undermined local democratic accountability. In response to these concerns the current government has promised to sweep away external assessment in favour of self-regulation by councils and in-depth scrutiny by citizens. This ‘new localism’ poses important questions for both policy makers and researchers. In particular how far will the promised reforms actually go and what impacts will they have on the service standards?

Local Economic Development (LED) is a contested concept in southern Africa, and has become synonymous with delivery of generic job-creation projects, often grant-dependent and unsustainable. Municipal LED has followed this pattern in South Africa since 1994, with little lasting success. Each local economy is unique, and has its own problems and opportunities. The ’Plugging the Leaks’ method recognizes that communities themselves know best how money enters and exits their area. By asking people to analyse their local economy as a 'leaky bucket', the method puts control back in the hands of local people, rather than external experts, and allows them to analyse their own local economy to identify gaps and opportunities for enterprise. By better networking and working collectively to improve their local economy, local communities are able to re-circulate cash internally. This circulation of cash is explained as the local multiplier effect in the workshops. A pilot process of running ‘Plugging the Leaks’ workshops in low income communities in South Africa and Namibia revealed that spending choices in these communities are severely limited in a context where there is no effective welfare state. Therefore, empowerment with this method came from the discovery of collective action and networking, rather than from individual spending choices. Local start-up business tends to be limited to survivalist and copy-cat one-person ventures, and are a last resort when formal employment is absent. In this context collective enterprise offers the necessary empowerment for people to attempt financially sustainable ventures that respond to a gap in the local economy. The pilot project is attempting to show that municipal LED staff can play the role of facilitator for initiating the enterprise-identification process and further mobilise state enterprise support agencies around the locus of LED, without crossing the line between facilitation and implementation of ’projects’.