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Crawford School of Public Policy · ANU College of Law, Governance and Policy
This course is available for on-campus & online learning. Students participate in interactive, real-time classes. 2025 classes: June 3, 10 & 17. While local governments have traditionally been thought of as relatively powerless and administrative in nature, this has been rapidly changing. In recent years, many local governments around the world have jumped headfirst into a range of complex and controversial policy debates that were previously reserved for national governments. In some notable instances, local governments, and the cities they represent, have even taken the lead in addressing some of today’s most pressing political, economic, and environmental challenges – from climate change, economic inequality, to political polarization. For many policy analysts and commentators, this change in local government ambition is not just the result of greater decentralization, but represents one key part of a larger ‘localist revolution’ that now holds the potential to transform contemporary urban governance, local citizenship, and community resilience for the better. This course introduces students to the emerging new localism that many local government leaders, representatives, and policymakers are embracing. Drawing on applied case studies from around the world, students will analyse and reflect on how local governments in different jurisdictions are working together with a range of governmental and non-governmental actors to influence and solve complex public policy challenges in their communities. In particular, students will examine how different models of local and hyperlocal governance, municipalism, place stewardship, local activism, and community wealth building can aid in reimagining politics at the bottom of the federal hierarchy and, in so doing, elevate local institutions and capabilities over centralised forms of power. Through this, the course aims to provide students with a nuanced understanding of the potential and limitations of contemporary local governance as well as a practical toolkit that they can use to engage local communities to solve their own problems and challenges.
Quiz (online, open book, 1 hour)
Learning outcomes 1
Class presentation (in class, approx 20 mins)
Learning outcomes 1, 2
Case analysis paper (1,500 words).
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3
The standard workload for a 3 unit course is 65 hours including class time and independent study.
None. Course readings will be uploaded onto Wattle. Preliminary Reading Mark Chou and Rachel Busbridge, How Local Governments Govern Culture War Conflicts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Bligh Grant and Joseph Drew, Local Government in Australia: History, Theory, and Public Policy (Singapore: Springer, 2017). Donald Haider-Markel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of State and Local Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Russell Hanson and Eric Zeemering (eds.), Cooperation and Conflict between State and Local Government (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021). Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak, The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2017). Richard Kerley, Joyce Liddle, and Pamela Dunning (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of International Local Government (New York: Routledge, 2020). John Loughlin and Mark Callanan, A Research Agenda for Regional and Local Government (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021). Filipe Teles (ed.), Handbook on Local and Regional Governance (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021). Jennifer Vey and Nate Storring (eds.), Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2022). Jane Wills, Locating Localism: Statecraft, Citizenship, and Democracy (Bristol: Policy Press, 2016).