This book examines patterns of economic governance in three specific, contrasting, contexts: machinery-producing districts; declining steel cities; and clusters of high-technology activities. Building on the work of their previous book (Local Production Systems in Europe: Rise or Demise? OUP 2001), which charted the recent development of local clusters of specialized manufacturing among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in France, Germany, Italy, andthe United Kingdom, the authors find patterns of economic governance far more complex and dynamic than usually described in a literature which insists on identifying simple national approaches. The machinery industries were often identified in the literature of the 1980s as prominent cases of industrial district formation, which were then considerably weakened by the crises of the mid-1990s. Did clustering help these industries and their associated districts to respond to challenge, or only weaken them further? The case studies focus on the Bologna and Modena area of Emilia-Romagna, Stuttgart in Baden-W