Second, quite distinct from its Conservative predecessor, the New Labour government has also embarked on an, at face value, ambitious political programme meant to revitalisa local government-for one, by revamping its traditional 'government by committee' system and providing for more effective variants of politically accountable political leadership. Among the three options that have been laid down in the local government legislation of 2000 the directly elected mayor constitutes the furthest deviation from the traditional model (see,e.g., Wilson and Game, 2002:350 ff.); it may be indicative that so far there are hardly a dozen local authorities where it has been put in place (see Cochrane,2004). Another more general conceptual move is directed at instilling some ' new localism' into local government and politics (see Stoker,2004).
In sum, the main directions which English local government reforms have taken in the past 25 years can be summarised like this: