Does Politics Matter? Redistributive Policies in English Cities 1949–74

The importance of political parties for inter-governmental differences in public policies has long been the subject of dispute. Given their comparative intentions and their concern with end-products rather than decision processes, statistical analyses of policy outputs should provide a valuable tool in evaluating this question. This they have seemingly failed to do, largely because they have devoted insufficient attention to the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of their investigations. However, with Sharpe and Newton's Does Politics Matter? a theoretical approach has been introduced into the local outputs literature which should herald a new era in comparative statistical investigations and the welcome emergence of conceptual and theoretical advances. In addition, their efforts raise the promise of forging a closer alliance between the outputs literature and more detailed, qualitative investigations of policy-making processes in individual local authorities.