This paper focuses on the agency exhibited by municipal governments in modifying or resisting neoliberal policies, by investigating their efforts to manufacture favorable competitive urban identities. In particular, this paper emphasizes how national ideologies are (re)articulated at a local level by medium-sized cities placed within different national contexts and, thus, exposed to different orientations toward neoliberal principles. By performing historical urban research in Leicester (UK) and Reims (France), this study identifies different expressions of local agency through which cities present their identities on a global scenario, by responding to similar pressure of deindustrialization and urban competition from mid-1970s. If the discursive strategies of both cities reproduce signs of respective national ideologies, findings highlight two trajectories whereby cities negotiate and rework the main narratives underpinning those national ideologies. The concepts of active and passive deflection are offered in order to capture the role of local agency and conceptualize how national ideologies are appropriated locally by medium-sized cities in the attempt to engage with perceived increasing world-level forces.

本文通过调查市政当局制造有利的竞争性城市身份的努力，着重于市政府在修改或抵制新自由主义政策方面所发挥的作用。特别是，本文强调了位于不同国家背景下的中型城市如何在地方一级（重新）表达国家意识形态，从而面临着对新自由主义原则的不同取向。通过在莱斯特（英国）和兰斯（法国）进行历史城市研究，这项研究通过应对1970年代中期以来类似的去工业化和城市竞争压力，确定了城市在全球场景中展示其身份的地方机构的不同表达方式。如果两个城市的话语策略都再现了各自国家意识形态的标志，调查结果突出了两条轨迹，城市通过这些轨迹来谈判和修改支撑这些民族意识形态的主要叙述。提供主动和被动偏转的概念是为了抓住地方机构的作用，并概念化中型城市如何在本地适应国家意识形态，以试图与日益增长的国际水平的势力打交道。