ABSTRACT
In recent years the concept and development strategy of Local Economic Development (LED) has gained widespread acceptance around the world as a locality-based response to the challenges posed by globalization, devolution, and local-level opportunities and crises (Glasmeier, 2000). In addition to locality-based actions and initiatives, at a higher level, LED support is now firmly on the agenda of many national governments and key international agencies, such as the World Bank (2001,2002) and the OECD (2003) which have endorsed its role in urban development and business promotion. Internationally, LED currently finds expression in a variety of forms, including aggressive place promotion, endogenous development, urban entrepreneurialism and community-based interventions, all of which have become hallmarks of locality based economic strategies over the last twenty years around the world. LED tends to manifests itself either as direct, community-based, pro-poor interventions and/or as pro-market endeavours to participate in a neo-liberal, global market. The assertion of local initiative has helped create and reinforce the bi-polar logic of “localism and globalism” as being hallmarks of contemporary society, economy, and politics (Hambleton et al., 2002). Within this context, issues of local leadership, the emergence of local champions, social capital, and the importance of partnership formation emerge as critical elements in the promotion of the “local” as an emerging arena for development action, leadership, and intervention.
