The City of Edinburgh's elected representative body, from 1900-1975 was the City of Edinburgh Corporation. This was succeeded in 1975 by Edinburgh District Council. In Scotland, decisions are, for the most part, delegated to specialist committees, which perform as sub-committees to the Full Council. This enables detailed consideration of complicated matters, which the Full Council would not have time to examine closely. Committee decisions have to be ratified by the Full Council. In addition working parties, consisting of non-elected experts and Council officials are frequently set up to report to the Council with advice on important but complicated issues. One such working party, the City of Edinburgh Working Party on Major Highway Planning (1963-1983), gathered information and formulated proposals concerning the city's, seemingly intractable roads problems.

The governing body of the University of Edinburgh is the University Court. Sub-committees of the Court are created to take responsibility for investigating and making recommendations to the Court on time-consuming issues. The Development Committee, constituted in 1954, as successor to the Post-war Development Committee, had responsibility for the physical development of the University. The Works and Buildings Committee was constituted in 1965, as a successor to the Major Buildings Committee, and had responsibility for individual building projects, dealing directly with the architects and user-group sub-committees.