The Rise and Fall of European Municipal Power Since 1800

Abstract

The papers in this special issue are largely derived from a major panel session held at the 2010 European Association of Urban Historians' Conference in Ghent, Belgium, itself the culmination of a collaborative transnational project on 'Municipal Politics and Civic Cultures' inaugurated in 2006.1 The aim of the panel was to draw together scholars working on European cities in the high period (or 'golden age') of municipal power (and beyond) to explore how, why and where municipal powers were exercised and to examine the political, cultural and historical constraints on the development and delivery of services. The papers ranged across seven countries from the British Isles, western and southern Europe and a comparative piece which drew on urban planning in contemporary China and the plans of Albert Speer for mid twentieth-century Berlin. The papers included here touch on both broad themes of long term change and close studies of individual power and single city governance which demonstrate the many influences shaping the rise and fall of the power of municipalities and their leaders since the first era of local government reform in the early nineteenth century. This introduction will provide some thoughts on the broad trajectory of power and authority at the local level over the past two centuries focusing on how central government has sought to encourage, define and limit local autonomy and the tensions experienced by municipal governors as they sought to