ABSTRACT
In this Chapter, the authors outline their own approach to the analysis of institutional capacity and institutional capacity building processes in urban governance, within a broadly 'constructivist' institutionalist frame of reference. They argue that creating the capacity for collective action in a dynamic, dispersed power context is a challenging enterprise. Socio-cultural changes have co-evolved with these economic developments, diversifying lifestyles and lifecycle dynamics, generating new material demands on urban governments and altering the configurations of values with which citizens judge their representatives. Instances of governance action, in this relational viewpoint, reveal the complex interplay of multiple forces, made active through micro-social relations which themselves generate processes of invention in response to the complexity of situations in which actors find themselves. In any interactive instance, maybe the development of a new policy, or the work of an urban regeneration partnership, a range of geographical and institutional referents may be called up as actions are designed which will impact on particular localities.
