10 PS • January 2020 © American Political Science Association, 2020 doi:10.1017/S1049096519001379 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ POLITICS SYMPOSIUM Comparative Approaches to Development Politics and the Quest for a More Robust Theory: New Institutions of Governance in Chicago and Berlin Annika Marlen Hinze, Fordham University James M. Smith, Indiana University, South Bend ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ H ow do cities get things done? Do large- scale urban-development projects—including entertainment complexes, shopping malls, sports stadiums, and multiuse, multipurpose developments—require broad, long-term coa- litions from the public and private sectors, as they once did? Have protests, squatter movements, and citizen referenda gained political capacity? Does the size of a development pro- ject determine the complexity of the decision-making process? In the twenty-first century, as cities once again become impor- tant sites for capital ventures and development and the price of (some) urban real estate is drastically on the rise, the mecha- nisms of urban governance have changed profoundly from the relatively stable governing coalitions of the twentieth century. In this context, urban governance is an increasingly com- plex enterprise involving multiple institutional layers, not the actions of city governments alone. Empirical evidence supports this in several national contexts; however, scholarly approaches to studying cities tend to focus exclusively on the “urban,” omit- ting many of the critical institutions involved in contemporary governance—especially in the case of development politics. This is due in large part to the over-reliance, for many years, on conceptual approaches such as regime theory—a theory of gov- ernance focused on the informal collaboration between public institutions and private interests in the context of urban devel- opment. In the current era, it is becoming necessary to incorpo- rate more institutionally focused approaches that highlight new complexities in the diverse array of political and institutional actors involved in contemporary urban governance. This article is particularly concerned with the presence of institutions of governance including special-purpose authorities created by regional and state governments to finance and govern large-scale urban development. To emphasize their importance, this article examines these authorities in two national contexts. Many studies focus on single cities while underemphasizing the larger context of national-governmental systems and the effects of different democratic structural and social contexts on urban-development coalitions. Similarities across countries, despite differences in national-government structures, may be overlooked if not for a comparative approach. To understand urban governance, therefore, we must consider two opposi- tional trends: (1) continuing variance in the structure of local government between nation-states, depending on the nature of their governing structures, their social contract, and their civil society; and (2) processes occurring with regard to building and financing large urban infrastructure projects showing signs of convergence. Although local variation is still a part of the story, global cities studies tend to paint with too broad a brush. Comparative work on urban policy processes highlights local variation in development processes, and, at the same time, a convergence of the components of urban governance. In discussing these trends, this article uses examples of the institutionalization of private influence in the public realm occurring in Chicago and Berlin. Within the confines of this short symposium contribution, we demonstrate how institutional structures affect political access for public and private actors at the city level as well as at the grassroots. The cases demonstrate that interactions have changed signifi- cantly since the “regime era” and are increasingly complex and case-specific, and that existing theory must address such variance and complexity. Because the complexity of these two cases does not fit regime theory, we turn to the literature on comparative public policy—especially the idea of institutional access—to analyze development processes and outcomes. We find that in distinct but comparably federalized and decen- tralized national-governmental settings, local patterns of development trend toward similar governing arrangements for completing large-scale infrastructure: essentially, a formal- ized incorporation of private interests and increasing instability among development coalitions. INSTITUTIONAL APPROACHES TO COMPARATIVE URBAN GOVERNANCE Although urban-regime theory (Stone 1989; 2001) effectively merges structural- and agency-based approaches to explain- ing local outcomes, it does not adequately explain the growth