Abstract Last decades have witnessed a dramatic proliferation of regional development policies based on regional clusters of firms and industries. So the local governments make policies gear toward support for localized agglomerations of firms in the same industries. This article focuses on the dynamic roles of local governments in the development of different industrial clusters, utilizing the methods including typical case studies and in-depth interview. The analysis proceeds in three stages. First, this article theoretically discusses motivations and performances of the local governments when they make the local economic policies to support the developing of industrial clusters. Second, we select two representative types of clusters to conduct the case studies, which are Organic Cluster and Transplant Cluster. The former is the handbags and leather industry cluster in Shiling town, and the latter is the electronic information industry cluster in Shilong town. It illustrates how the governments promote the developing of industrial clusters in different phases. Third, by comparing the two cases, the author figures out that the roles of local governments are corresponding with the origins and characteristics of industrial clusters. For Organic Cluster, its development mostly depends on a mass of locally embedded facilities and firms. Some efforts would be made to increase the interaction among local firms, like constituting the public institution, offering the public information. For Transplant cluster, the primary focus is to attract the facilities of external companies' and their suppliers' and related firms', as well as to enhance the link between clusters and local economy for reducing the risk of poor embeddedness. Finally, it draws the conclusion with outlining the performances of local governments in different stages. In the beginning, they provide initial conditions for industrial cluster, like accumulating local firms in Organic Cluster and attracting the external firms in Transplant Cluster. Then, they make effort to enhance the agglomeration of the firms, like developing local markets for Organic Cluster and improving the investment environment for Transplant Cluster. In the mature phase, they try to improve the innovative capacity of the clusters From practical perspective, this research can provide some implications for local governments on making policies to promote the development of cluster.
2010, Vol. 25 
