The sub-discipline of 'urban politics' has been constructed in opposition to a traditional version of 'institutional theory'-an approach that collapsed the political processes affecting urban communities with the workings of elected local government. Attention has shifted towards the broader influences on local decision-making and to the growing fragmentation of urban government and the rise of 'partnerships'. The article argues that recent developments, far from signifying the last gasp of 'institutionalism', call for a reformulated theory of the (diverse) institutional constraints within which urban political processes operate. Drawing on insights from the 'new institutionalism', the article discusses processes of institutional change and differentiation ; the underlying shift from strong to weak forms of institutional constraint; and the challenges involved in redesigning local political institutions.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Blair, T. (1998) Leading the Way: A New Vision for Local Government . London: IPPR.
2.
Brunsson, N. (1997) The Reforming Organisation. London: Routledge.
3.
Clarke, J. and Newman, J. (1997) The Managerial State. London : Sage.
4.
Clarke, S. (1995) Institutional logics and local economic development: a comparative analysis of eight American cities, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 19, pp. 513-533.
5.
Clarke, S., Staeheli, L. and Brunell, L. (1995) Women redefining local politics, in: D. Judge, G. Stoker and H. Wolman (Eds) Theories of Urban Politics, pp. 205-227. London: Sage.
6.
Clegg, S. (1990) Modern Organizations. London : Sage.
7.
Clegg, S. and Hardy, C. (1999) Studying Organization: Theory and Method. London: Sage.
8.
Cockburn, C. (1977) The Local State. London: Pluto.
9.
Cox, K. ( 1995) Globalisation, competition and the politics of local economic development, UrbanStudies, 32, pp. 213-224.
10.
Dahl, R. (1961) Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
11.
Detr (Department Of Environment, Transport And The Regions) (1998) Modern Local Government: In Touch with the People. London: DETR.
12.
Dimaggio, P. and Powell, W. (1983) The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rayionality in organizational fields, American Sociological Review, 48, pp. 147-160.
13.
Dudley, G. and Richardson, J. (1998) Arenas without rules and the policy. change process: outsider groups and British roads policy, Political Studies , 46, pp. 727-747.
14.
Duncan, S. and Goodwin, M. (1988) The Local State and Uneven Development. Cambridge: Polity.
15.
Dunleavy, P. (1980) Urban Political Analysis. London: Macmillan.
16.
Elkin, S. (1987) City and Regime in the American Republic. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
17.
Fainstein, N. and Fainstein S. (Eds) (1983) Restructuring the City. New York: Longman.
18.
Fainstein, S. and Hirst, C. (1995) Urban social movements, in: D. Judge, G. Stoker and H. Wolman (Eds) Theories of Urban Politics, pp. 181-204. London: Sage.
19.
Finer, H. (1932) The Theory and Practice of Modern Government, 2 vols. London: Methuen .
20.
Fox, C. and Miller, H. (1995) Postmodern Public Administration. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
21.
Goodin, R. (1996) Institutions and their design, in: R. Goodin (Ed.) The Theory of Institutional Design, pp. 1-53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
22.
Goodin, R. and Klingemann, H. (1996) Political siscience: the discipline, in: R. Goodin and H. Klingemann (Eds) A New Handbook of Political Science, pp. 3-49. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
23.
Goodwin, M. and Painter, J. (1997) Concrete research, urban regimes, and regulation theory, in: M. Lauria (Ed.) Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory, pp. 13-29. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
24.
Grafstein, R. (1988) The problem of institutional constraint, Journal of Politics, 50, pp. 577-599.
25.
Granovetter, M. (1973) The strength of weak ties, American Journal of Sociology, 78, pp. 1360-1380.
26.
Gyford, J. (1991) Citizens, Consumers and Councils. London: Macmillan.
27.
Hall, P. (1986) Governing the Economy. New York : Oxford University Press.
28.
Hall, P. and Taylor, R. (1996) Political science and the three new institutionalisms , Political Studies, 44, pp. 936-957.
29.
Harding, A. (1995) Elite theory and growth machines, in: D. Judge, G. Stoker and H. WoLman (Eds) Theories of Urban Politics, pp. 35-53. London: Sage.
30.
Harding, A. (2000) Regime formation in Manchester and Edinburgh, in: G. Stoker (Ed.) The New Politics of British Local Governance, pp. 54-71. London: Macmillan.
31.
Harvey, D. (1989a) The Urban Experience. Oxford : Blackwell.
32.
Harvey, D. (1989b) The Condition of Post-modernity. Oxford: Blackwell.
33.
Hay, C. and Wincott, D. (1998) Structure, agency and historical institutionalism , Political Studies, 46, pp. 951-957.
34.
Hodge, M., Leach, S. and Stoker, G. (1997) More than a Flower Show: Elected Mayors and Local Democracy. London: Fabian Society .
35.
Hunter, F. (1953) Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
36.
Huntington, S. (1968) Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
37.
John, P. (1999) Analysing Public Policy. London : Pinter.
38.
Johnson, N. (1975) The place of institutions in the study of politics , Political Studies, 23, pp.271-283.
39.
Judge, D., Stoker, S. and Wolman, H. (1995) Urban politics and theory: an introduction, in: D. Judge, G. Stoker and H. Wolman (Eds) Theories of Urban Politics, pp. 1-12. London: Sage.
40.
King, D. (1995) Actively Seeking Work: The Politics of Unemployment Policy in the United States and Great Britain. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
41.
Kiser, L. and Ostrom, E. (1982) Three worlds of actions: a metatheoretical synthesis of institutional approaches, in: E. Ostrom (Ed.) Strategies of Political Enquiry, pp. 179-222. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage.
42.
Knight, J. (1992) Institutions and Social Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
43.
Kooiman, J. (1993) Findings, speculations and recommendations, in: J. Kooiman (Ed.) Modern Governance , pp. 249-262. London: Sage.
44.
Laffin, M. (1989) Managing under Pressure. London : Macmillan.
45.
Lauria M. (1997) Introduction, in: M. Lauria (Ed.) Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory, pp. 1-9. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
46.
Leach, S., Stewart, J. and Walsh, K. (1994) The Changing Organisation and Management of Local Government. London: Macmillan.
47.
Lowndes, V. (1995) Citizenship and urban politics, in: D. Judge, G. Stoker and Wolman (Eds) Theories of Urban Politics, pp. 160-180. London: Sage.
48.
Lowndes, V. (1996) Varieties of new institutionalism: a critical appraisal , Public Administration, 74, pp. 181-197.
49.
Lowndes, V. (1997) Change in public service management: new institutions and new managerial regimes, Local Government Studies, 23(2), pp. 42-66.
50.
Lowndes, V. (1999) Management change in local governance, in: G. Stoker (Ed.) The New Management of British Local Governance , pp. 22-39. London: Macmillan.
51.
Lowndes, V. (2001) The institutional approach, in: D. Marsh and G. Stoker (Eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science, 2nd edn. London: Macmillan (forthcoming).
52.
Lowndes, V. and Skelcher, C. (1998) The dynamics of multi-organizational partnerships: an analysis of changing modes of governance, Public Administration , 76, pp. 313-333.
53.
Lowndes, V., Nanton, P., Mccabe, A. and Skelcher, C. (1997) Networks, partnerships and urban regeneration, Local Economy, 11, pp. 333-342.
54.
Maloney, W., Smith, G. and Stoker, G. (2000) Social capital and urban governance, Political Studies, 48, pp. 802-820.
55.
March, J. and Olsen, J. (1984) The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political life, American Political Science Review, 78, pp.734-749.
56.
March, J. and Olsen, J. (1989) Rediscovering Institutions. New York: Free Press.
57.
Mulgan, G. (1994) Politics in an Anti-political Age. Cambridge: Polity.
58.
North, D. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
59.
Offe, C. (1996a) Political economy: sociological perspectives, in: R. Goodin and H. Klingemann (Eds) A New Handbook of Political Science , pp. 675-690. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
60.
Offe, C. (1996b) Designing institutions in East European Transitions , in: R. GooDIN (Ed.) The Theory of Institutional Design , pp. 199-226. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
61.
Osborne, D. and Gaebler, T. (1992) Reinventing Government. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
62.
Painter, J. and Goodwin, M. (2000) Local government after fordism: a regulationist perspective, in: G. Stoker (Ed.) The New Politics of Local Governance, pp. 33-53. London : Macmillan.
63.
Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (1994) Searching for a new institutional fix: the after-fordist crisis and the global-local disorder, in: A. Amin (Ed.) Post-Fordism: A Reader, pp. 280-315. Oxford : Blackwell.
64.
Peters, G. (1999) Institutional Theory in Political Science: The 'New Institutionalism'. London: Pinter.
65.
Phillips, A. (1996) Feminism and the attractions of the local, in: D. King and G. Stoker (Eds) Rethinking Local Democracy, pp. 111-129. London : Macmillan.
66.
Pickvance, C. (1995) Marxist theories of urban politics, in: D. Judge, G. Stoker and H. Wolman (Eds) Theories of Urban Politics, pp. 253-275. London: Sage.
67.
Pierre, J. (1999) Models of urban governance: the institutional dimension of urban politics, Urban Affairs Review, 34, pp. 372-396.
68.
Pierson, P. (1996) The path to European integration: a historical institutionalist perspective, Comparative Political Studies , 29, pp. 123-163.
69.
Polanyi, K. ( 1992) The economy as instituted process, in: M. Granovetter and R. Swed-Berg (Eds) The Sociology of Economic Life, pp. 29-52. Boulder : Westview Press (first published in 1957).
70.
Pollitt, C., Birchall, J. and Putnam, K. (1998) Decentralising Public Service Management. London: Macmillan.
71.
Pratchett, L. and Wilson, D. (Eds) (1996) Local Democracy and Local Government . London: Macmillan.
72.
Prior, D., Stewart, J. and Walsh, K. (1995) Citizenship: Rights, Community and Democracy. London: Pitman.
73.
Putnam, R. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
74.
Rhodes, R. (1988) Beyond Westminster and Whitehall. London: Unwin-Hyman.
75.
Rhodes, R. (1995) The institutional approach, in: D. Marsh and G. Stoker (Eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science, pp. 42-57. London : Macmillan.
76.
Rhodes, R. (1997) Understanding Governance. Buckingham : Open University Press.
77.
Rhodes, R. (1999) Foreword: governance and networks, in: G. Stoker (Ed.) The New Management of British Local Governance, pp. xiixxvi. London: Macmillan.
78.
Rhodes, R. and Marsh, D. (Eds) (1992) Policy Networks in British Government . Oxford: Oxford University Press .
79.
Rothstein, B. (1996) Political institutions: an overview, in: R. GooDIN and H. Klingemann (Eds) A New Handbook of Political Science, pp. 133-166. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
80.
Rothstein, B. (1998) Just Institutions Matter. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
81.
Saunders, P. (1979) Urban Politics: A Sociological Interpretation. London: Hutchinson.
82.
Sharpe, L. (1970) Theories and values of local government, Political Studies, 18, pp. 153-174.
83.
Shepsle, K. (1989) Studying institutions: some lessons from the rational choice approach, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1, pp. 131-147.
84.
Stewart, J. (1993) The Characteristics of Services. Luton: Local Government Management Board.
85.
Stewart, J. and Stoker, G. (Eds) (1989) The Future of Local Government . London: Macmillan.
86.
Stewart, J. and Stoker, G. (Eds) (1994) Local Government in the 1990s . London: Macmillan.
87.
Stoker, G. (1991) The Politics of Local Government. London: Macmillan.
88.
Stoker, G. (1995) Regime theory and urban politics, in: D. Judge , G. Stoker and H. WoLman (Eds) Theories of Urban Politics, pp. 54-71. London : Sage.
89.
Stoker, G. (1996) Redefining local democracy, in: L. Pratchett and D. Wilson (Eds) ( 1996) Local Democracy and Local Government , pp. 188-209. London : Macmillan.
90.
Stoker, G. (1998a) Theory and urban politics, International Political Science Review, 19, pp.119-129.
91.
Stoker, G. (1998b) Governance as theory: five propositions, International Social Science Journal, 155, pp. 17-28.
92.
Stoker, G. (1999) Introduction: the unintended costs and benefits of new management reform for British local government, in: G. Stoker (Ed.) The New Management of British Local Governance, pp. 1-21. London: Macmillan .
93.
De Tocqueville, A. (1835/1946) Democracy in America. London: Oxford University Press.
94.
Walsh, K. (1995) Public Services and Market Mechanisms. London: Macmillan.
95.
Walsh, K., Deakin, N., Smith, P. ET AL. (1997) Contracting for Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
96.
Walsh, K., Lowndes V., Riley, K. and Wool-Lam, J. (1996) Management in the public sector: a content analysis of journals, Public Administration, 74, pp. 315-324.
97.
Ward, H. (1996) Green arguments for local democracy, in: D. King and G. Stoker (Eds) Rethinking Local Democracy, pp. 130-157. London : Macmillan.
98.
Warf, B. (1991) Power, politics, and locality, Urban Geography, 12, pp. 563-569.
99.
Weingast, B. (1996) Political institutions: rational choice perspectives , in: R. Goodin and H. Klingemann (Eds) A New Handbook of Political Science , pp. 167-190. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
100.
Wilson, D. (1998) From local government to local governance: re-casting British local democracy, Democratization,5, pp. 90-115.
101.
Wilson, D. and Game, C. (1998) Local Government in the United Kingdom. London: Macmillan.
