literatures oVers some valuable insights but all struggle to meet the challenge of a
comparative politics where the number of democracies has increased dramatically
in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The formal study of the institutions of
local governance needs to become more global in its reach and less focused on
Europe and North America.
The second half of the chapter shows how the study of comparative local
governance has taken on the ‘‘new’’ institutional slant and examines how systems
of governance are constructed through a complex interplay between formal and
informal institutional forces. The key area of investigation in comparative local
governance has been the study of regimes—ways of organizing power in complex
societies in order to ensure outcomes in tune with particular interests.
The institutions of local governance from this perspective are seen as less
handed down by history, legislation, or constitutional framing and more made by
actors creating informal networks through which direction over formal institutions,
resources, and capacities are then exercised. The informal networks are institutions
in the sense that they are sustained over time and are driven by a set of rules. The
second half of the chapter explores work on urban regimes as an exemplar of a more
‘‘new’’ institutionalist understanding of comparative local governance.
Again the main diYculties surround comparative rather than institutional under-
standing.
The concluding section explores the idea that comparative institutional analysis
may be prone to a particular set of problems. Our understanding of formal
institutions is dogged by the complexity of institutional arrangements and a focus
on more informal arrangements is constrained by their embeddedness in particular
settings. Both these factors make the establishment of frameworks for eVective
comparison very problematic. Future directions for the institutional investigation
of comparative local governance are identiWed.
1 The Challenge of Classification
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
A starting point for exploring comparative local government is to describe the
variety of diVerent arrangements adequately. This section of the chapter looks
Wrst at the challenge of classiWcation before moving on to what have been the
substantive questions addressed by the institutional analysis of comparative local
governance, namely why systems are diVerent and whether any shared reform
trends can be identiWed.
496 gerry stoker