Local agency for the public purpose? Dissecting and evaluating the emerging discourses of municipal entrepreneurship in the UK

This article explores the contested politics and interpretations of the new practices of municipal entrepreneurship across local government in the UK. Drawing on empirical evidence from six case studies of entrepreneurship in local councils, descriptions of income-generating projects by officers in thirty authorities, and a series of semi-structured interviews, we identify, name and characterise an emergent discourse of municipal entrepreneurship for the public purpose. We argue that this novel strand of discourse within the wider field of urban entrepreneurialism confers a degree of political agency to local authorities under austerity, while redescribing and attaching commercialism and entrepreneurship to the public good. In so doing, we challenge overly reductionist accounts of local state agency under austerity, and articulate and evaluate the potentials and obstacles for a progressive interventionism in this discursive space.