The Centre for Local Economic Development (CENLED) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) is celebrating its 10th year since it was founded in 2008. As part of this celebration, this special issue of the Journal of Public Administration (JOPA) was conceptualised as a way of further contributing to scholarly discourse regarding the nature and modalities of Local Economic Development (LED) dynamics and its institutionalisation. Essentially, it is generally believed that municipalities are the foot-soldiers of Local Economic Development (LED), (Venter, 2014). Both internationally and in South Africa, there have been vigorous debates on how best to promote local and regional economic development as a way to fight poverty.