Assessing ‘Institutional Thickness’ in the Local Context: A Comparison of Cardiff and Sheffield

Urban managers have been faced by growing problems in recent decades. Social and economic inequalities within cities have steadily grown, whereas shifting global economic relations have led to the polarisation of more and less successful local (urban) economies. At the same time many nation-states, such as Britain, have opted for greater deregulation and a resurgence of neoliberal strategies of governance, which have had the effect of disempowering local communities and managers just at the time when they would appear to be most vulnerable to the forces of change. In this context a range of authors have argued that the way forward for city authorities is through developing an institutionally based set of local networks and alliances in which a range of interests are represented politically and through which wider global economic forces can be better ‘held down’ at the local level. This ‘institutional thickness’ varies from city to city and this paper, in comparing Cardiff and Sheffield as two case studies, addresses the ways in which institutional relations have developed in those cities and the degree to which they represent effective forms of inclusive local political mobilisation and wider economic leverage. I argue that processes of ‘institutional thickness’ in cities does not necessarily create inclusive forms of local political representation and that institutional presence and interaction and the local policymaking processes they are part of, may in fact reinforce existing local social, economic, and political relations and divisions rather than leading to the encouragement of local corporatist relations.