I had begun to take an interest in the existence of the European Charter of Local Self-Government in the years before the United Kingdom's signature and ratification of the treaty in 1997 and 1998 but it was in the years following, as the British member of the Group of Independent Experts of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, that I had the opportunity, under conditions of near anonymity, to draft Charter-based monitoring reports and other Charter-related documents. And it had seemed to me at that time that, in the absence of any other published account, a general description and analysis of the Charter was required.

This short book is the result. Drawing on sources entirely in the public domain, it provides a personal view of the Charter's history, its text, the way it has been interpreted and applied, its broader significance and, more tentatively, its future. At some points, the book has a specifically United Kingdom focus but, for the most part, the coverage is Europe-wide.

In the course of the book's preparation, I have accumulated a number of debts. The most important is to my Edinburgh colleague, Dr James Harrison, whose support, especially in reading and commenting on draft material, was enormously valuable. And then to the Edinburgh University Press readers (they know who they were but I do not) who reported sufficiently favourably on the complete draft. I should also mention the staff of the Council of Europe's archives. Their help in tracing some of the historical sources for Chapter 2 was invaluable.