Commencing with a survey of international approaches to making local government more effective at a time of limited resources, this book explains how new performance measures allow communities and state governments to be much more critical of local action. Practical forward planning techniques based on key social and economic trends are demonstrated with community participation, competition and choice as their goals. Quality customer service techniques are clearly presented. Compulsory competitive tendering is now being introduced into Victoria and this new culture will probably spread to all states. This revolutionary development has been tried overseas and the practical implications are summarized. To solve economic problems requires a much more aggressive approach to the local economy and will require new partnerships with industries. Local boundaries will become more flexible as distinct communities demand self-determination. Numerous methods to assess the suitability of boundaries are discussed and a new regionalism is suggested. Social science researchers and students alike should find this book important reading, while its blend of theory and practice also makes it suitable for public sector practitioners.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Competition, community and leadership: transforming leadership; the inevitability of centralization; the legitimacy of institutions; competition and monopoly; a local monopoly; status or performance. Part 2 Stronger local government: local government or local administration; functions; local government in the federal system; self-governing communities; communitarianism; effective lobbying. Part 3 The troubled Australian future: economic decline; the age of diminished expectations; continuing economic crisis; greater regional disparities; the motor car is here to stay; the rich and the poor; large-scale immigration. Part 4 Administrators: managers and leaders; the end of the town clerk; management and leadership; are leadership and local government contradictory?; the American city manager as model leader. Part 5 Organizational structures: restructuring; organizational structures; structure follows values; policy and administration; from corporate to strategic plans; policy and administration revisited; culture change. Part 6 Contracting in the enabling authority: competitive pricing; contracting professional services; the British and American experiences; coping with contracting; new structures and processes. Part 7 Quality customer service: the need for new frameworks; the customer; forces driving change. Part 8 Size and sovereignty: elusive criteria; economies of scale; spillovers; illegitimate boundaries?. Part 9 Amalgamation wars and alternatives: the long battle to amalgamate; the changing structure of Australian local government; regional planning and cooperation. Part 10 A plan for action: community rediscovered; local management and local government; local political choices; strategies; a local fiscal crisis?