In conclusion: localism in the present and the future

This two-part special issue on Understanding Localism indicates that this has become an increasingly important issue in a number of disciplines, although, as the introduction to the first issue highlighted, the focus on the ‘local’ is not new. It is perhaps unsurprising that Gentry, a Historian, and Clarke, a Geographer, particularly emphasise this point, although their concern is with locality and ‘the local’, rather than localism, which is a term that is much more recent and most closely associated with Public Policy research, and indeed practice. Here, we explore the disciplinary differences in approaches to the broad issues discussed here in a little more detail before turning to look specifically at developments in the public policy field in more detail. However, we begin by raising a question which is obvious on any reading of the articles in the two issues: the extent to which localism is a normative as well as an empirical issue.