Il risveglio della local option nel Regno Unito

This article provides a brief analysis of UK developments in local option. It considers what Labour government sought to achieve by making consultation a central matter of its local government reform programme and how far those expectations have been met. The government indicated that it had a more pragmatic interest in consultation and public participation as ways to reinvigorate local government and enhance local democracy: indeed, it combined the expansion of consultation and the new forms of participatory democracy with the Best Value Regime and the local government management structure reform. Also the last events related to the continuing devolution experiments as the English regional assemblies and the Greater London Authority are dominated by a changing vision of public involvement. The article concludes by examining the contradictions and the tensions caused by the government’s modernisation programme.