Localism (politics)

Localism describes a range of political philosophies which prioritize the local. Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity. Localism can be contrasted with regionalism and centralized government, with its opposite being found in the unitary state.

Localism can also refer to a systematic approach to organizing a national government so that local autonomy is retained rather than following the usual pattern of government and political power becoming centralized over time. This view of Localism is defined in the work Localism, A Philosophy of Government. This work is available in the third edition as an ebook, while an earlier hardcover edition, circulated underground without an ISBN, is rather rare.

On a conceptual level, there are important affinities between localism and deliberative democracy. This concerns mainly the democratic goal of engaging citizens in decisions that affect them.

Localists assert that throughout the world's history, most social and economic institutions have been scaled at the local level, as opposed to regional, interregional, or global (basically until the late 19th to the early 20th centuries). Only with imperialism and the industrial revolution did local scales become denigrated. Most proponents of localism position themselves as defending aspects of this earlier way of life; the phrase "relocalization" is often used in this sense.

In the 20th century, localism drew heavily on the writings of Leopold Kohr, E.F. Schumacher, Wendell Berry, and Kirkpatrick Sale, among others. More generally, localism draws on a wide range of movements and concerns and it proposes that by re-localizing democratic and economic relationships to the local level, social, economic and environmental problems will be more definable and solutions more easily created. They include anarchism, bioregionalism, environmentalism, the Greens, and more specific concerns about food, monetary policy and education. Political parties of all persuasions have also occasionally favored the devolution of power to local authorities. In this vein Alan Milburn, a Labour Party MP, has spoken of "making services more locally accountable, devolving more power to local communities and, in the process, forging a modern relationship between the state, citizens and services"

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