This is the long-awaited third edition of Dearlove and Saunders' highly acclaimed, best-selling, textbook on British politics. The book has been completely rewritten, reorganized and updated, while retaining the distinctive style and approach of the earlier editions. At root, this book is about political power - how it is organized formally within the State and how it is exercised and influenced informally from outside. Written in lively and provocative prose, the volume presents the most systematic and penetrating analysis of who really runs Britain, to what end, and to whose advantage.

This is the long-awaited third edition of Dearlove and Saunders' highly acclaimed, best-selling, textbook on British politics. The book has been compl...

John Dearlove's aim is to make sense of the changes brought about by the Local Government Act of 1972 and the discussion they generated.

This book was originally published in 1973, at a time when most writers on local government saw local authorities as agents of central government. The few studies which recognised local authorities as policy-shaping bodies explained their activity by regarding them as responsible servants of the local electorate. In the first part of this book, John Dearlove presents a review of the established literature of the time on local government and the mainstream studies of public policy in political science. He argues that both traditions of literature are mistaken, local governments are seen as...