Many view the shift from local government to local governance in negative terms. Vernon Bogdanor, for example, refers to a process of "steady attrition" leading to outcome in which elected local authorities become “merely residuary bodies ..the repository of those public services that no one else can be bothered to provide" (quoted in House of Lords, 1996:36). A great deal of criticism has been directed at the lack of accountability of local quangos (for a review see Skelcher 1998 and Stoker 1999a). The world of governance has been criticised because of its fragmentation and lack of integration (see Stewart and Stoker 1995). Above all the centralisation of the last two decades is seen as threatening, indeed undermining, the checks and balances that are essential to the British political system. To quote Martin Loughlin (1996:58) again: