‘Institutional Thickness’: Local Governance and Economic Development in Birmingham, England

Abstract

This article uses the concept of institutional thickness to describe key features of the local governance of economic development. For this purpose, a methodology for the empirical assessment of institutional thickness is developed and applied to the case of Birmingham, England. The results from this empirical analysis are threefold. First, they make it possible to draw some conclusions on the role that local governments can play to promote local economic development. Second, they suggest that institutional thickness is a useful organizing concept for analyses of the local governance of economic development. Finally, they demonstrate the value of a verifiable and replicable methodology for the detection and measurement of local institutional conditions and of governance arrangements.In 1994 Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift edited a collection of essays under the title Globalisation, Institutions and Regional Development in Europe. The foundation article, 'Living in the global', introduced the concept of institutional thickness.This article is a reassessment of that concept. It does this, first, by examining why the original authors defined it as they did, how the concept relates to local economic development, and the extent to which it is consistent with recent contributions to institutional theory and local development. The second part of the article shows how a quantitative frame can be put onto the concept to enhance its explanatory power in analyses of local economic development. For this purpose the article develops a case study of one city, Birmingham, England, between 1984 and 2004. The article concludes by reassessing the concept and the derived quantitative methodology in the light of the case study.

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