This article examines the governance challenges facing Australian local government, which include lack of constitutional standing, intergovernmental dependencies, financial constraints and weak democratic standing. The historical context has shaped the nature and place of local government in the Australian federal polity and has contributed to the tensions created by an expansion of the roles and responsibilities of local government, especially in the provision of services, which is not matched by concomitant increases in financial capacity and local autonomy. These governance challenges are discussed with a view to establishing local government’s capacity for autonomous self-governance in the face of intergovernmental and fiscal dependencies, and the implications of this for local government reform trajectories.

This study explores whether democratic Upazila Parishads in Bangladesh have become more responsive to those who elected them and whether people's expectations about their elected representatives and their functions to their elected have changed. The study carried out in eight Upazilas from seven Divisions in Bangladesh. The study has found that Upazila Parishads in Bangladesh with democratically elected representatives have largely failed to enhance their rapport with people. The recently implemented mandatory advisory role for the members of the parliament (MPs) has complicated the role of the local government and the interference by MPs in local government affairs has weakened the independence of local government. The findings of this study reveal that awareness is low, and that only 30% of respondents were concerned about the roles and functions of the Upazila Parishad. The data reveals that though the local citizens think that they are knowledgeable about the roles and functions of elected representatives and bureaucrats in reality many remain unaware of the roles and functions.

Social exclusion in the North Sydney local government area has increasingly become a matter for concern in the last decade. In 2005/2006 local government community service referrals indicate that there were growing numbers of people living on their own with little contact or engagement with community services and social activities. It was also suggested that older people at risk of social exclusion were living in poor housing conditions and experienced serious health issues. The ABS 2006 census data highlights that the North Sydney Council area has a significantly larger number of people living on their own (33%) compared to the rest of New South Wales (22%). This paper will present a number of different perspectives of social exclusion and consider why people in North Sydney become isolated. It will provide a brief analysis of existing programs designed to reduce social isolation and where they fit in the service system by using case studies of people who have been identified as at risk of becoming socially isolated in the North Sydney area. We will evaluate the case studies and provide several policy recommendations.

The article is based on a study of a local council in Australia where women representatives hold a majority of the seats. How do these representatives understand their role in this context? What is their preferred style of doing politics, and what can explain their political aims and behaviour? What we find is that these women representatives are oriented toward green politics and prefer deliberative decision-making. This case study of a local council in Queensland suggests that the political objectives and style of women representatives largely reflect the specific local context, the electoral system and the political composition of the council, and not just the fact that women hold more than 70% of the seats. However, women representatives do feel that “numbers matter” for their ability to be acting out “who they are” in politics.

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?