Mike's main research interests are in the field of local governance. He led the national UK evaluation of Local Area Agreements and Local Strategic Partnerships for the Department for Communities and Local Government, and before that the national evaluation of Local Strategic Partnerships. Other recent work has been for the Commonwealth Local Government Forum and the OECD LEED (Territorial Development) programme concerned with the improvement of local governance in OECD member states. His work is published in journals such as International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Policy and Politics, Policy Studies, and Antipode.

Currently his focus is on comparative cross-national trends in the political economy of local governance and the local state. This includes a particular interest in Latin American local governance, and the contribution of actors at local level to the challenges to neoliberal policies and politics in a number of Latin American countries.