Business, Government and the Business of Urban Governance

In the recent revival of interest in urban policy and politics in the UK, it has become almost axiomatic that there has been a shift from local government to local governance. In other words, a system of local policymaking ostensibly dominated by elected local authorities has been refashioned into one in which local government shares powers, responsibilities and resources with a wide range of non-elected statutory bodies and others operating in non-statutory sectors. As a result, local authorities exert less direct control over local policy agenda and other ‘players’ have assumed important roles in a much more complex and fragmented local policy environment. Central to such analyses is the argument that the private sector has played an increasingly important role in urban governance both directly, in respect of service delivery, and indirectly, through business involvement in various forms of public– private partnership and business ‘leadership’ of the growing number of governmentappointed agencies active, in particular, in local economic development and labour market initiatives (see, for example, Harding, 1991; Bailey et al., 1995; Imrie et al., 1995; Peck, 1995; Shaw, 1994; Strange, 1996, 1997; Wood et al., 1997). Despite growing academic interest in these trends, the literature on the private-sector role in urban governance is characterised by a number of explanatory weaknesses. The Ž rst, and most surprising, lacuna is that there have been relatively few studies which demonstrate, empirically, how private-sector involvement in, and in uence over, urban governance is manifested and with what effect. Secondly, and notwithstanding a few studies that have borrowed productively from North American urban political economy and the regulation school(s), relatively few connections have been made between the sorts of phenomena that are widely seen as denoting a growth in private-sector in uence in urban governance and the more promising, overarching theories which can contextualise and help to explain those phenomena and the way they have changed over time. Thirdly, debate has focused upon new institutional forms and policy-making/delivery arrangements and the role of the private sector within them, rather than on the less visible in uence that business interests have over local governing arrangements and practices. Fourthly, and as a direct consequence of the Ž rst three limitations, there are few methodological guidelines or innovations available to