Law and the Local State: Enforcement in Action

This paper considers the complex interplay between ideologies of the law and of the state with reference to the enforcement of the Shops Act (1950) by one district council. The complex and contradictory manner of law, when mediated by a spatially-specific state apparatus, is explored. Emphasis is placed on the complex organizational nature of the state, the form that conflict over the actions of the state can take, and the charged and potentially contradictory ideological context within which the state operates. It is argued that ideologies of the law and procedures of the state serve to simultaneously constrain and enable the local state.