Finally, governance through hierarchies still plays an important role in a surprisingly large number of national and institutional contexts. In Britain, state-local relationships remain contested and politicized and central government still exercises tight political control over local authorities (Goldsmith and Newton,1993); some ideas of the Labour government, for example the increasing use of audits (Power, 1997), are tending to centralize power even more. Similarly in Germany, although the federal government has with drawn some control over public services, allowing for greater regional and local control (Derlien, 1995), it is possible that the federal government, if it so chooses, can resume such delegated powers. In Japan, a growing interest in local government is considered ‘progressive’ and a ‘politics of participation’ (Muramatsu, 1997:6) because it challenges the hegemonic power of the central state. Even in the Scandinavian countries where local government and local autonomy have always been extensive and have indeed increased over the past decades, the state retains significant control through legislation and grants. Thus, hierarchies still play a very important role indeed in the political and institutional organization of the advanced western democracies. It could well be that horizontal networks are becoming more important but they are still less significant than the hierarchical relations between institutions and actors.