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This paper examines the relationship between and the effects of resource allocation and levels of professionalism on local economic development policies and strategies. In short, it asks a basic question; do cities get what they pay for in terms of economic development? A value judgment is, of course, inherent in this question; "what you pay for" serves as a euphemism for "good" economic development programs and policies. That is, if a local government devotes more budget and staff resources toward economic development, is the city more likely to implement effective economic development policies? Thus, this research examines the relationship between the resources and the professionalism of the local economic development agency, and the corresponding economic development goals and techniques employed in those communities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of specific local development policies and partnerships for SME enterprises in Thessaloniki one of the metropolis of south Europe. The two main research questions are: first, what are the most important development policies for firms’ development? and second, in what level these policies receive different significance from firms belonging in different production sectors?

In order to achieve the aims of the paper and answer the research questions, the study uses an extensive use of bibliography, and field research that has been implemented by administering questionnaires on a representative sample of 227 enterprises. The study comes up to valuable conclusions for the firms and the city through the use of exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis and clustering.

The present research brings on important issues and questions about local economic development because it presents directly the estimations and views of a large number of local enterprises that reflect the image of local economy. Finally, this research gives a satisfactory overview of the inner growth of Thessaloniki and further the results could lead to an evaluation, planning, implementation, rejection or reconstruction of specific actions and policies locally.

The analysis is constrained by weakness since the sample of enterprises is rather small and the results concern only the enterprises located in Thessaloniki. Based on this fact, general conclusions can be drawed for other regions as well as for the whole Greece. This is subjected to more analysis.

The added value of this research is essential since there are only few similar researches in South-East Europe and in Greece. Especially, the relationship between local development policies and firms’ development competitiveness has not been studied enough in the area under consideration.

Enterprises understand and designate the importance of specific policies that affect their development while at the same time through their evaluations they outline the character and dynamics of these policies in a unique dynamic, geographical and productive city like this of Thessaloniki.

The analysis showed that enterprises recognize as positive factor the effort of the local authorities to set the area as a business pole in favour of enterprises and the broader area but policy problems of organization and planning arise that concern mainly the operation and support of local enterprises and specific those from the tourist and service sector. This image raises issues of competence on planning and organization of development polices by the local authorities focusing on specific productive sectors so as the effect of these policies to be effective with positive results for enterprises.

This article addresses the question of the determinants of public policy at the local level. It is particularly concerned with local political leaders' interpretations of given socioeconomic environments, and the bearing these have on public policy formation.

Entrepreneurship is argued to be a critical driver of economic growth for both individual communities and the nation. Regional scientists, economists, and policy makers underscore the importance of a diverse economy that supports recruitment of new firms, existing firms, and entrepreneurship efforts. However, there remains evidence that many states and localities prefer traditional industrial recruitment efforts and that local and state entrepreneurial efforts may be less coordinated. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This research explores the commitment and priorities of local and regional developers to entrepreneurial policy and other economic development policy efforts. This study uses a statewide survey to local economic developers and logistic regression to determine the likelihood of local entrepreneurial program efforts across South Carolina.

The model results reveal that the probability of local or regional entrepreneurial development programming is complex and dependent on the type of organization involved in economic development along with other community and state characteristics. However, results further confirm that barriers to entrepreneurship, like access to seed capital, and the influence of perceived alternative policies affect local and regional support of entrepreneurship.

The policy priorities of local economic developers appear to play a significant role in the probability of having local entrepreneurship policy and programs. This confirms that the signals local policymakers receive from the state may impact the programming choices and policy emphasis at the local and regional level. In conclusion, if states want entrepreneurial efforts to be a critical driver of economic growth and development, there must be a coordinated and focused state driver supporting these efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to implement a comparative analysis on the evolution of technology policies of central and local governments in China and to uncover the relationship of technology policies.

A quantitative method based on policy contents from policy power, policy goals and policy instruments was developed to build a policy database and, taking Jiangsu province's policy practice as an example, was used to comparatively analyze the evolutionary process and the relationship of technology policies issued by central and local governments in China.

Comparative analysis shows that technology policies of central government are focused on the strategy of “Market in Exchange for Technology”. However, technology absorption as the critical part to realize the strategy was neglected due to the competition of interests among different agents. Local government has gradually developed a different technology development strategy to promote independent innovation on the basis of its better economic and science and technology conditions. So, the correlation coefficients of technology policies between central and local (Jiangsu) governments on policy power, policy instruments and policy goals have decreased continually.

Because of the limitation of data and time, this paper adopted quantification criteria on the contents of policies. Also, it is necessary to explore the coordination of technology policies between central and local governments.

Chinese technology policies should balance administrative rights reasonably between central and local governments and promote the coordination among the central authority, ministries, commissions, local governments and enterprises.

This paper has made a novel quantitative and comparative analysis about the relationship of technology policies between central and local (Jiangsu) governments.

Purpose – Many cities have taken action in order to reduce their carbon footprints. Moreover, the European city has historically been the home of democratic institutions, which have proven to be crucial for successful policy. The leading question of this chapter is whether or not this traditional link between democracy and active citizen participation also holds with respect to local climate policy.

Design/methodology/approach – In our chapter, we take a comparative look at two cities – Muenster in Rhineland Westphalia and Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg next to Berlin. We have a look at the track records of both cities’ carbon footprint and analyze the role of civil society in local climate policy. We develop a set of qualitative indicators, measuring local climate policy outcomes on the one hand and local climate policy performance on the other. We base our analysis on documents and on stakeholder interviews in both cities.

Findings – The findings show that Muenster has performed better in urban climate protection than Potsdam. Also the level of civil society engagement is higher in Muenster. Thus, the hypothesis that cities with a higher level of civil society engagement also perform better in urban climate policy can be confirmed. However, Muenster performs just slightly better than Potsdam. Both cities have failed to meet their climate goals. A closer look to the local climate policy performance leads us to the final conclusion that cities should be more active in supporting and including citizens in their local climate policies in all areas of life – including lifestyle politics and political consumerism.

This article aims to explore whether and how economic, political and demographic municipal conditions shape citizens' attitudes regarding decentralised social policies.

The authors analysed the 2018 wave of the Dutch Local Election Studies, which includes a novel survey item asking respondents whether they prefer local social policies to be primarily: (1) protection-based, (2) cohesion-building or (3) activation-based. The authors appended context indicators to that survey and performed multilevel logistic regression analyses (1,913 respondents nested in 336 municipalities).

At the individual level, these preferences are affected by gender, age, income, education and political inclination, as expected. However, preferences towards local social policies are not shaped by local economic, demographic or political conditions. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research.

By using unique data, including a newly developed survey item, this study is the first to explore whether and how municipal conditions shape preferences regarding local welfare. Understanding those preferences is increasingly important as many Western European countries have decentralised swathes of social policies from the national to the local level in recent decades.

This paper aims to examine the factors affecting the implementation of affordable housing policies in two Chinese municipal governments. Since 2010, the Chinese government has enforced an ambitious plan to adopt affordable housing provisions accompanying a series of urbanization programs. Furthermore, the policy implementation at the local level has led to various outcomes but has been scarcely investigated. The views of policy implementation from local officials are crucial in the context of intergovernmental relations. Therefore, it is important to examine the views of local public officials on the development status and challenges in the context of Chinese intergovernmental relations.

This paper verifies which factors exert significant impacts on the willingness of local officials to adapt affordable housing policies by using the logistic regression model and marginal effect estimation. With original data from the fieldwork surveys of city administrators, the measures incorporated local characteristics as well as the intergovernmental support from the central government in two selected megacities, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

There are significant differences in local investment between the selected cities. Intergovernmental support from the central government, city development strategies, implementation perceptions of local governments and land supply, all significantly impact the selection of an affordable housing program and its overall implementation.

To the best of the authors’ understanding, this study would be one of the first to empirically explore the view of municipal public officials on affordable housing policy in China. This paper provides an empirical analysis from municipal public officials on the local implementation of affordable housing policies in China. As the outcome of housing policies actually depends on the implementation willingness of public officials and the overall performance of local governments, this explorative study would benefit the future development of China’s affordable housing policy.

Explores two interesting areas for understanding the changing roles of principals. Describes, first, some changes in the political structure and in the educational policy which make clear that primary and secondary school principals are confronted with a turbulent policy environment; second, during the last 20 years, schools and principals have been involved in so‐called large‐scale improvement projects. Using research data illustrates what the consequences are for principals, and how they restructure their activities. From these analyses, it is obvious that in the coming years principals are expected to legitimate their local policy.

This research explores the role of political ideology in local policy formation by assessing the impact of the city manager's ideology on local expenditures. While previous studies have identified nuanced and overlapping roles between administration and politics, here we extend those investigations by positing that ideology may influence a manager's role in the policy formation of the budget. Although some conceptualizations of city managers assume them to be largely apolitical in a partisan sense, we find a significant effect of ideology on local expenditures among city managers. This adds to the literature that suggests that city managers may not merely passively implement policies created by elected officials; rather city managers may influence policy in multifaceted ways, thereby driving a need to further investigate individual influences upon policy formation.