Institutional capacity building in a strategic policy vacuum: the case

Abstract. In recent work on collaborative planning arguments have been made for the land-use planning system and local government to be considered within a broader context of local systems of governance and institutional capacity building. We consider the impact of the planning system upon a major inward-investment project within a system of governance in Wales which in unique in the sense that there is a vacuum of formal strategic planning. The investment by the Korean company LG, at Newport, South Wales, has prompted a degree of strategic collaboration between some of the institutions and organisations of local governance in South Wales. However, the LG case reveals some important limits to such strategic collaboration. The extreme flexibility required of the planning system by major inward investors promotes a rather impoverished form of strategic collaboration which is hierarchical in nature and select in its coverage both of the relevant institutions and organisations of governance and of the planning issues involved. In conclusion we identify some of the implications of the rather limited way in which the planning system currently impinges on inward investors through local systems of governance