Liberalism and local government in late nineteenth-century Germany and England

In the second half of the nineteenth century, local government was intrinsic to the nature of liberalism in theory and practice, beyond the specific national contexts of England or Germany. At an ideological and practical level, local government was integral to the liberals' concern for efficient and representative government. As long as liberals were unwilling to contemplate more redistributive state measures, local government became their central arena for social policy. Local involvement in primary education provided them with the ability to enable individual progress and self-fulfilment, while control of local income and taxation provided a further tangible yardstick against which liberal politics could be measured. The liberals' popularity in the urban sphere was enhanced through a distinctive rhetoric of civic pride. However, the appeal to community and belonging which this entailed remained illusory as long as liberals remained wedded to granting special political rights to property. Ultimately, the liberals' success and innovativeness in local government led to a ‘nationalization’ of their policies and concerns. In this way, local government contributed to the liberals' popularity from the 1870s, and underlined their ultimate failure