The global structure of local strategy: Institutional embeddedness and global cities’ strategic urban governance

Cities worldwide have turned to publishing strategies that articulate their plans for the future to their peers and stakeholders. How do a city’s interlinkages influence whether and when cities publish such a plan? Informed by political economy and institutional perspectives on organizations, we posit that a combination of competitive and cultural pressures influences a city’s adoption of strategic planning. Institutional theory suggests that strategic planning is adopted as a signal of legitimacy, particularly by entities enmeshed in global culture. Conversely, political economy perspectives hold that strategic planning is vital for competing for international capital and maintaining one’s economic status. Although both a city’s cultural embeddedness and economic status may increase its propensity to strategize, these influences arguably operate through and are shaped by its administration’s centrality in an emerging network of intercity associations. To show this, we tracked the adoption of strategic plans across the 360 largest cities worldwide from 2000 to 2019, uncovering the influence of cities’ network affiliations on the spread and nature of strategic planning. The event history analysis reveals that institutional factors outweigh the influence of economic status in predicting strategic planning. However, the effect of a city’s administrative centrality in inter-city networks diminishes with its economic status. This indicates that network dynamics propagated by higher-status cities more directly influence lower-status cities. The study sheds light on the impact of inter-city networks on cities’ strategic approaches to challenges like climate change, providing a macro-level foundation for understanding city strategy. It also shows how institutions and the political economy jointly influence cities, integrating two literatures that have long existed concurrently but without much interaction.