1 Changing the guard or moving the deckchairs: political change and performance change in English local government 1 Paper presented to UK Political Studies Association 2008 Annual Conference Panel ‘The Politics of Public Service Performance: Findings from the ESRC Public Services Programme’ George A. Boyne, Cardiff University Boyne@cardiff.ac.uk Oliver James, University of Exeter O.James@exeter.ac.uk (contact author) Peter John, University of Manchester Peter.John@manchester.ac.uk Nicolai Petrovsky, Cardiff University PetrovskyN@cardiff.ac.uk Abstract A large body of literature has emerged on the determinants of public service performance in recent years, but so far this has concentrated on managerial factors. By contrast, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the impact of political systems in general or political parties in particular. While party effects on expenditure and taxation have been tested extensively, the relationship between party control and public service performance has not been examined. With this paper we make a contribution to both literatures by assessing whether politics matters for the service performance of local authorities in England. Does the party in control of the council make any difference to the quality of public services and citizen satisfaction, and does performance improve or deteriorate when one ruling party replaces another? We develop three theoretical models: (i) the ‘ideological parties’ model which conventionally suggests that ‘left’ parties will be associated with better public services (ii) the ‘instrumental’ model which implies that all parties are vote maximisers, and (iii) the ‘mixed’ model which suggests that party ideologies come into play only if the majority on the council is sufficiently large as to make the next election appear uncompetitive. We test hypotheses about control and changes in control against a five-year panel of all English upper-tier local authorities. Our findings provide partial support for the mixed model, but with the twist that ‘right’ party control is linked with better public services. Conservative control and change to Conservative control tend to be associated with higher performance and satisfaction, but only if the Conservative majority is sufficiently small to pose a threat of loss of office at the next council election. 1 Author order is alphabetical: all make an equal contribution to the paper. We thank the ESRC Public Services Programme for support. Copyright PSA 2008