URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW / September 1999Haughton, While / URBAN LEADERSHIP IN THE U.K. FROM CORPORATE CITY TO CITIZENS CITY? Urban Leadership After Local Entrepreneurialism in the United Kingdom

The authors reassess the recent history of U.K. urban politics. Following the local entrepreneur-ialism promoted by the Thatcher governments in the 1980s, they trace the gradual emergence of a more inclusive approach to urban policy. This shift, which began with the Major government in the early 1990s, marks a move toward a more community-orientated vision of social regenera-tion. Through a survey of the evolution of partnership styles and economic development in Leeds and informed by recent cross-national work on regime theory, the authors provide insights into the structural factors that have shaped the formation, composition, and actions of local coalitions in U.K. governance. During the 1980s, U.K. cities were increasingly drawn into entrepreneurial styles of governance, manifest in the emergence of U.S.-style coalitions and the dominance of local boosterism within policy agendas. The roots of this shift can be traced to a number of factors, not least a response to global eco-nomic restructuring and the pressures of interurban competition. Urban entrepreneurialism in the United Kingdom also was encouraged by succes-sive Conservative governments promoting policies directed at wealth crea-tion and interlocality competition while undermining the power of local gov-ernment to pursue alternative economic strategies. Entrepreneurial forms of governance had particular implications for urban policy making, with boosterism seeming to be inevitably linked to a focus on high-profile city center strategies, the politics of “trickle-down, ” a tendency to increase polari-zation within cities, and the privileging of private-sector interests over thos