Central governments and their economic policies rarely help economic development at the local level, taking more out of communities than they put into their growth and health.

Traditional economic development and regeneration programmes have often failed to make any sustained impact on the problems of economic decline and social exclusion experienced in communities across the UK, including Bristol. Community based economic development approaches have emerged in response to the failure of prescriptive top down approaches. They emphasise the importance of encouraging local economic activity to ensure that investment can be drawn into priority areas and that the wealth generated from these activities can be retained within the community.

The Connecting Localism and Community Empowerment project sought to assess the merits of the assumption that localisms brings about community empowerment through a review of the existing academic and policy literatures.