Statecraft, scalecraft and local government reorganisation in Wales

Since the inception of local government in the UK, there have been continuous attempts to reorganise and revise its distinctive characteristics, with successive reforms differing in their intended effects. In Wales, a further round of local government reorganisation is now being proposed following the Williams Commission Report (2014) on Public Service Governance and Delivery. Through drawing on the concepts of statecraft and scalecraft, this paper provides a theoretically informative account of the contradictions of the ‘layering’ process associated with the rescaling of local government in Wales. This helps to (i) enhance our understanding of contemporary proposals for reform; and (ii) develop a tighter specifying of the process of state rescaling.