The aim of this introductory paper is provide the background to the Fifth International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport, which was held in Leeds, UK, in May 1997 and was attended by around 120 delegates from 20 countries. This is done by reviewing past conferences in the series and summarizing the structure of the Leeds conference and the key emerging themes. Further details are given by the five workshop reports that accompany this introduction.

The regimes of regulation of the bus industries of ten Western European countries are reviewed. In each case the legal and institutional basis of regulation, the structure and performance of the industry under regulation, recent regulatory reform, and the potential for future reform, are discussed. An almost universal reluctance to accept British style open entry to the industry is observed. This is explained partly in terms of different perceptions of the effectiveness of controls on competitive pressures within the existing regimes, but mainly in terms of the greater emphasis placed on the use of local political control of the bus industry as an instrument of social and economic policy. -Authors