local solar time: see solar time.

local government, political administration of the smallest subdivisions of a country's territory and population.

Characteristics and Types

Although there are special-purpose local government bodies (e.g., school boards in the United States), more important are those that carry out a broad range of public activities within a defined area and population. Almost all such local government bodies share certain characteristics: a continuing organization; the authority to undertake public activities; the ability to enter into contracts; the right to sue and be sued; and the ability to collect taxes and determine a budget. Areas of local government authority usually include public schools, local highways, municipal services, and some aspects of social welfare and public order. An important distinction among types of local government is that between representative bodies, which are elected locally and have decision-making authority, and nonrepresentative bodies, which are either appointed from above or, if elected locally, have no independent governing authority. While most countries have complex systems of local government, those of France and Great Britain have served as models for much of the rest of the world.

The French System

The French system is among the most nonrepresentative. Its basic structure, codified by Napoleon I, developed out of the need of revolutionary France to curtail the power of local notables, while hastening government reform. It stresses clear lines of authority, reaching from the central government's ministry of the interior through the centrally appointed prefect of the department to the municipality, which has a locally elected mayor and municipal council. The prefect, being both the chief executive of the department and the representative of the central bureaucracy, provides the channel of centralization, with wide authority to overrule local councils and supervise local expenditures. Variants of this system are found throughout Europe and in former French colonies.

The British System

The British system of local government, which has been the model for most of that country's former colonies, including the United States, is the most representative of the major types. Largely reformed in the 19th cent. and extensively restructured in the 1970s, the system stresses local government autonomy through elected councils on the county and subcounty levels. This system was marked by less central government interference and greater local budgetary authority than in other systems. However, in 1986, six major county governments were abolished by Parliament, while the powers of others were restricted. A special feature of the British system is its use of an extensive committee system, instead of a strong executive, for supervising the administration of public services.

Despite differences among states, local governments of the United States follow the general principles of the British system, except that a strong executive is common. The county remains the usual political subdivision, although it has retained more authority in rural than in urban areas, where incorporated municipalities (see city government) have most of the local power. In both rural and urban areas the local government's relationship to the state is a complex one of shared authority and carefully defined areas of legal competence. Local governments are pulled two ways, increasingly reliant on state and federal funding to carry out their expected duties, while fearful of losing their traditional degree of local control.

local area network (LAN), a computer network dedicated to sharing data among several single-user workstations or personal computers, each of which is called a node. A LAN can have from two to several hundred such nodes, each separated by distances of several feet to as much as a mile, and should be distinguished from connections among computers over public carriers, such as telephone circuits, that are used for other purposes. Because of the relatively small areas involved, the nodes in a LAN can be connected by special high-data-rate cables. A metropolitan area network (MAN) is defined as being restricted to a larger area (maximum distances of 50-60 miles) than a LAN but one still small enough so that dedicated links (such as microwave links) can be used. See also modem.

Local Group, in astronomy, loose cluster of at least 35 nearby galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Magellanic Clouds. The Local Group is spread over an ellipsoidal region of space with a major axis of approximately 3 million light-years. The Milky Way galaxy, near one end of the major axis, and the Andromeda Galaxy, near the other end, are the largest members of the group. Some of the galaxies in the group have been detected only by their infrared radiation; a dusty region in space obscures their visible light. There may be other galaxies in the Local Group that are as yet undetected. As shown by the work of G. de Vaucouleurs, the Local Group is part of a supercluster containing at least 50 separate clusters, each having from a few dozen to as many as a thousand galaxies. These groups appear to be concentrated in a plane, which indicates that the supercluster is rotating. Its center lies approximately 50 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Virgo.

Concentration of about 50 galaxies to which the Milky Way Galaxy belongs. Nearly one-third are dwarf elliptical galaxies, but the six largest are spiral or irregular galaxies. They are probably kept from separating by mutual gravitational attraction. The Milky Way system is near one end of the group; the great Andromeda Galaxy is near the other end, about two million light-years away.

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