The growing popularity of the concept of world-class universities raises the question of whether investing in such universities is a worthwhile use of public resources. Does concentrating public resources on the most excellent universities improve the overall quality of a higher education system, especially if definitions of excellence and worldclass are made by external ranking organizations? This paper addresses that question by developing a framework for weighing up trade-offs between institutional and system performance, focusing on the potential system-wide improvements which world-class university programmes (WCUPs) may bring. Because WCUPs are in a relatively early stage of their development, systemic effects are not yet clear. We therefore analyse the ex ante reasons that policy makers have for adopting WCUPs to see if they at least seek to create these systemic benefits.

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The capacity-building benefits for urban governance of unsuccessfully bidding for large events are often asserted, but much more rarely demonstrated. With the cost of bidding for an Olympics now running at US $25 million, we seek to address this gulf by asking whether the trend for`festivalisation' amongst urban managers is rationally underpinned. Drawing on Lyon's bid for the 1968 Summer Games, we look at the role playedömaterially, politically, and symbolicallyöby the Olympics bidding process, and its influence on Lyon's later trajectory. The Lyon bid put forward proposals for its position within a pan-European urban hierarchy which have become influential in European spatial planning. Yet, this situation is not a consequence solely of the Olympics bid, but also of a critical urban governance moment in which the bid played a complicated role. By reflecting on the dimensions of influence within which the bidding process became involved we seek to provide a greater depth to the way that international festivals are regarded in contemporary conceptualistions of metropolitan development and governance.

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