The rise of indirectly elected institutions, such as the West Midlands Regional Assembly, has democratic implications for notions of accountability, legitimacy and representation. The representative function of these bodies must be explicitly fulfilled if they are to be considered democratic. The conceptual focus of this thesis is the representative function of members of the West Midlands Regional Assembly. The analysis applies a representative role framework based on Pitkin’s “Four Views of Representation” to explore the formalistic and substantive elements of representation through an appraisal of focus, style, role and scope. The results show that there are weak accountability structures in place, leading representatives to adopt a trustee conception of their roles. A grounded theory analysis is utilised to explore additional factors not covered in Pitkin’s framework. This surfaced the structural factors and role motivations that affect role choice. The thesis utilises Weick’s concept of sensemaking to explore the interpretation and enactment of different representative roles taking into account the importance of institutions in framing micro sensemaking processes. This new methodology permits an appraisal of the relative influence of institutional context, structure and individual agency and delivers a new model for understanding the logics of representative action in appointed bodies.

This thesis focuses on local economic development in developing countries and, on the basis of research conducted in Indonesia, it examines how local governments balance ‘public entrepreneurialism’ with ‘democratic values’. Through four case studies, the thesis explores how the values of innovation and development are matched by concern for democratic accountability and respect for local cultures and traditions. The case-studies provide complementary and contrasting perspectives on local leadership and its impacts on local economic development, focusing respectively on development of the informal economy, exploitation of the potential of technology and the creative industries, modernisation of agriculture, and the securing of increased foreign investment. The key finding from these case-studies is that effective leadership in local economic development does indeed call for the spirit of entrepreneurialism and innovation to be balanced by sensitivity towards local democratic values and principles. However, rather than it being necessary for the formal head of the local government personally to provide the required leadership in both respects, it may equally be feasible for two (or more) different individuals within the hierarchy of the organisation and with respective strengths in entrepreneurialism and democratic values to work together to ensure that the desired balance is indeed achieved.

This thesis investigates the governance of so-called regional innovation systems. It studies regional and sub-regional dynamics in building institutional environments conducive to innovation. The research employs a qualitative research methodology that comprises semi-structured interviews with 47 policy-makers, practitioners and academics in four case studies of city-regions within the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia: Aachen, Dortmund, Duisburg and Düsseldorf. It identifies factors influencing the systemic-ness of business and innovation support, particularly within the triple helix of university-industry-government relations. It argues that important sub-regional governance dynamics are neglected by many contemporary regional conceptualisations and proposes considering local innovation systems as an alternative. Hence, it scrutinises the appropriateness of the current academic conceptualisations and, in particular, criticises their value in terms of operational guidance. The thesis argues that certain regional innovation policies and governance dynamics fail to constitute a regional innovation system and calls for organisational innovation in the framework structure to revive or maintain inter-institutional dynamics and cooperative relationships towards achieving a coherent, holistic and strategic policy approach. This thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of how to make a regional innovation system work and what important aspects are to be considered for implementing innovation policy – including cluster policy – successfully.

This thesis examines the nature of ‘gaming’ in the police service and the extent to which it distorts policing priorities and performance measures. Performance Management, which formed an integral part of New Public Management, was introduced gradually to the police service in England and Wales during the 1990s. The Police and Magistrates Court Act 1994 gave Chief Officers of Police greater freedom on how they spent their budget allocation but there was an expectation that this would result in increased efficiency and improved performance. The Police Reform Act 2002 continued this trend by empowering the Home Secretary to set annual performance targets which the Police Service was expected to deliver. Performance management systems provided the means by which efficiency could be measured thus enabling central government to exert pressure on police forces to improve performance in the areas prioritised. However, for such improvements to be real, not just illusory, it was necessary to ensure the dysfunctional effects of ‘gaming’ behaviour were guarded against. Controlling such behaviour presents a challenge for those responsible for the regulation and governance of the service. This thesis examines the impact of Performance Management on ‘gaming’ behaviour and vice versa within the police service. It identifies and presents evidence on the nature and extent of ‘gaming’ and its impact on police behaviour. The limited effectiveness of the regulatory bodies in addressing ‘gaming’ are also reviewed and inadequacies, both strategic and operational, identified.

The focus of this PhD is on the way in which policy makers and practitioners ‘plan’ ‘community’ in the realisation of urban policies, particularly in housing and regeneration. The research underpinning this PhD took place against a policy backdrop of measures to increase the supply of (affordable) housing, to reduce social exclusion and to promote urban renaissance and sustainable communities. The common theme through all of the outputs has been focused on ‘community’ both as a entity which exists but which is difficult to define, and as an instrument of policy. The critical review presented here is in two distinct halves. The first half considers how community has been defined by policy makers and used as a tool in delivering better urban environments. As such it outlines how community has been commodified within policy, how through this commodification it is utilised through its active engagement in decision making, how it is physically planned via new housing developments and ultimately engages with questions as to whether community is lost through these moves. The second half of the review engages with discussions around mutualism. Drawing on research focused around co-operative and mutual housing it outlines how community exists organically and how this might be better understood if community is to be more successfully harnessed in urban and social policy. The review concludes by outlining areas for further research in taking this agenda forward.

Based on comparative case studies drawn from rural communities in both northern Thailand and southern Yunnan, China, this study associates institutional transformation during the transition period with reformed resource management practices at the local level. Evidence from this study shows that accountable, adaptive and inclusive local institutions equipped with good social capital, clear property rights and strong enforcement, have great potential in establishing locally-adopted resource governance mechanisms. With an ambiguous definition of property rights and weak local institutional capability to claim and practise these rights, the local actors in the rural Chinese communities were hardly able to negotiate with other stakeholders and involve themselves in market-oriented NRM practices as significant players. In Thailand, although local institutions enjoyed a better degree of autonomy and more negotiation power in terms of locally-based NRM practices, customary tenure without official legal protection undermined the local actor’s ability to better benefit from the extension of the market economy and globalization. In both of the two countries, the extension of individualism and opportunism brought forth by market-oriented values and privatization policies threatened the functioning of the local institutions. Rekindling local institutions and integrating with formal decentralized institutional innovations in order to build up a pluralist institutional framework, were critical

This dissertation offers a new account of New York City's politics and government in the 1930s and 1940s. Focusing on the development of the functions and capacities of the municipal state, it examines three sets of interrelated political changes: the triumph of "municipal reform" over the institutions and practices of the Tammany Hall political machine and its outer-borough counterparts; the incorporation of hundreds of thousands of new voters into the electorate and into urban political life more broadly; and the development of an ambitious and capacious public sector--what Joshua Freeman has recently described as a "social democratic polity." It places these developments within the context of the national New Deal, showing how national officials, responding to the limitations of the American central state, utilized the planning and operational capacities of local governments to meet their own imperatives; and how national initiatives fed back into subnational politics, redrawing the bounds of what was possible in local government as well as altering the strength and orientation of local political organizations. The dissertation thus seeks not only to provide a more robust account of this crucial passage in the political history of America's largest city, but also to shed new light on the history of the national New Deal--in particular, its relation to the urban social reform movements of the Progressive Era, the long-term effects of short-lived programs such as work relief and price control, and the roles of federalism and localism in New Deal statecraft.

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This thesis examines the influence of local and regional governments in investment growth and productivity in Mexico. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis is used with the aim of assessing their influence and tools. Mexican municipalities and states have gained major participation in policy making, investment fostering and infrastructure building. The decentralised resources to meet these goals have increased considerably; as a consequence, it becomes imperative to measure the actual effects of such resources as well as to identify the opportunity areas to develop. The first part of the empirical analysis, attempts to measure the influence of local governments’ expenditures on private investment growth, as well as to identify the most important investment drivers. Likewise, given the increasing foreign investments landing in Mexico, there is a potential regional competition between cities, this is also evaluated. A panel data analysis consistent with cross section dependence is carried out for 63 Metropolitan Areas (MA)/cities for the period 1993-2008. The econometric analysis shows that, municipal governments’ expenditures have had a substantial effect on private capital. In addition, competition strategies matters. More importantly, public infrastructure stock is revealed as a central determinant for investment, especially for manufacturing firms. The second empirical chapter evaluates whether municipal and state expenditures in economic policies have boosted productivity of firms. Firms and regional features are also included in the estimation models. Panel data analysis consistent to cross section dependence is used, for 63 MA/cities and 29 states. The results showed that the policies implemented in municipalities have had little or even negative effects over firms’ productivity. Meanwhile, the policies implemented by states have had larger influence on productivity increases. In order to dig deeper into the role of local and regional governments in economic policies, two case studies –Hermosillo and Mexicali- are presented in the last part. Empirical models cannot tell about the local processes, as the data used is only expenditures. The fieldwork undertaken helped to identify the most significant policies followed in each city, as well as the leadership and organisation of stakeholders. The main finding suggests that local participation and overcoming political cycle is essential for the long-term success; and easing doing business for firms, rather than incentives, is more effective to spur private investment.

Contemporary policy developments have signalled a shift in emphasis for Local Authorities from service delivery to service commissioning. The Every Child Matters policy agenda identified joint commissioning as an important mechanism for delivering integrated services and better outcomes for children. Taking a case study approach and drawing on literature from the fields of policy implementation and evidence-based policy making this thesis explores the implementation of joint commissioning in one local authority. It examines how different policy actors conceptualise and practice commissioning within a particular organisational and political context. In so doing it illustrates that policy is interpreted and reformulated at a local level, existing as the outcome of a complex set of interactions and ‘negotiated settlements’ between actors that are in part contingent upon the local political and organisational context and in part upon actors’ value systems, epistemological positions and goal interests. Different ways in which commissioning is understood or ‘framed’ are orientated around alternative value systems with respect to accountability and its perceived acceptability as a mechanism of governance for public services. This in turn means that policy actors assign different roles to the forms of evidence with which they identify and construct responses to policy problems. Hence evidence for upwards accountability, principally framed as managerial targets and outputs, prefigures in the priority setting and evaluative ‘stages’ of the commissioning ‘cycle’, whilst appeal to a values base and experiential knowledge take centre stage in formulating local responses to identified priorities. Achieving the rhetorical ideal of evidence-based commissioning is thus compromised not only by the political and institutional context in which this takes place but also by the conceptual challenges this presents to differently situated policy actors.