Increasing attention has been given to the role of leadership as an important determinant of growth at the regional or local scale (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), [2010]. Regions matter. Paris: OECD, [2012]. Growth in all regions. Paris: OECD). Scholarship on the leadership of places, however, remains an underdeveloped field, with much research either overly reliant upon perspectives drawn from management disciplines or limited to case study analysis of 'success' stories. While there have been significant exceptions (Stimson, Stough, with Salazar, [2009]. Leadership and institutions in regional endogenous development. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar), too little attention has been paid to developing a systematic approach to understanding place leadership. This paper reviews the literature on the leadership of places and argues there is now a sufficient body of scholarship to enable the development of more analytically rigorous approaches. It also posits that effective leadership is now more important for the success of places than in the past and that contemporary growth dynamics are likely to raise its significance further. The paper argues that governments and communities alike can encourage the development of local leadership and that the steps needed to achieve this objective are already well known.

This paper examines the leadership of placescities, regions, communitiesin Australia, Finland, Germany, Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom and explores the capacity of vignettes to generate new, theoretical and empirical insights. It uses vignettes to identify the features of place leadership evident in 12 case studies across six nations. The research finds significant commonalities in place leadership with respect to the importance attached to boundary spanning, the role of government officials in responding to the prospect of regional decline or growth and how the nature of the challenge confronting a locality determines the adequacy of the response.

This paper examines some effects of the pursuit of neoliberalism on regional development policy and practice in Australia, and in particular on the activities and effectiveness of regional development organisations. The paper interprets data from a survey of 505 regional development organisations across Australia through the framework of Jessop's contribution to state theory and his identification of four key trends in economic management under neoliberalism. Regional development policies are seen as a response of governments to electoral pressure from regions, but a response that is constrained by the dominance of neoliberal ideology. The objectives of regional development are predominantly economic, but are often limited to the role of facilitation and the provision of information. Some responsibility for regional development has been shifted downwards to regions, but the effectiveness of the organisations given this responsibility is reduced by the short‐term and competitive nature of much of their funding, the lack of coordination between regional development actors at the local level, the proliferation of agencies and the competition between them. The paper concludes that regional development agencies in Australia are in many ways a product of neoliberalism, since they represent one way in which governments can be seen to be responding to regional pressure for assistance but they can do so without incurring significant costs. Yet regional development bodies are also a victim of neoliberalist thinking, since it denies them the resources and the powers they need to be more successful in their work.

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This paper draws upon the 2001 census to examine the impact of national economic reform on the growth of regional cities. The paper argues that regional cities in Australia have taken on new roles within both their region and the national economy. It argues that deregulation of the economy has contributed to the growth of some regional cities and especially those that have been able to deepen their economies. Through the use of regression analysis, the paper suggests that regional centres that have witnessed an increase in the level of specialisation within their economy have, on average, grown more quickly than other cities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for our understanding of the evolution of urban systems.