Changing industrial production systems and regional development in the New Europe

The continuing expansion and deepening integration of the European Union is redefining the map of threats and opportunities for both companies and regions in Europe. In this paper I analyze the changing geography of the production system in three industries – automobiles, clothing and steel – as a product of the strategies and tactics of companies, states (at EU, national and regional levels) and trades unions, as they seek to shape geographies of production to favour their interests within this changing European political–economic space. It is argued that the end product of this process will be the creation of new and sharper forms of regional uneven development and qualitative differentiation between regions, as well as a renewed widening rather than further narrowing of regional differences in economic performance and well–being.     

Filling the Institutional Void in Rural Land Markets in Southern China: Is there Room for Spontaneous Change from Below?

Deng Xiaoping's market reforms have unleashed an irresistible drive towards urban expansion in China over the last three decades. Yet despite the relentless expansion of urban boundaries and the rapid growth of a property market in China, land transactions that involve the surrender of land leases by Chinese peasants are conducted in an unstable institutional setting. Increasingly, people are questioning the existing regulatory framework for rural land transactions, with the result that an institutional void is threatening to open up. This article focuses on one of the most important spontaneous efforts to fill this void in recent years: the Nanhai land‐based shareholding cooperative experiment in southern China. This is a story of institutional change at the grassroots level. The article identifies the source of institutional entrepreneurship, evaluates the dynamics of the insider‐driven process, and explains how and why the experiment is failing. An ineffective monitoring mechanism, growing conflict over the allocation of returns, a changing social landscape, and pecuniary temptation all play a role, while the ad hoc nature of the experiment also fails to instill the confidence and stability necessary for long‐term investment.     

Regional Devolution and Regional Economic Success: Myths and Illusions about Power

The proposition that regional devolution in and of itself will lead to economic success has become deeply embedded in beliefs and policy discourses about the determinants of regional prosperity, and in turn has led to political demands for such devolution. In this paper I seek critically to examine such claims, using the case of the north‐east of England as the setting for this examination. The paper begins with some introductory comments on concepts of power, regions, the reorganization of the state and of multi‐level governance, and governmentality, which help in understanding the issues surrounding regional devolution. I then examine the ways in which north‐east England was politically and socially constructed as a particular type of region, with specific problems, in the 1930s — a move that has had lasting significance up until the present day. Moving on some six decades, I then examine contemporary claims about the relationship between regional devolution and regional economic success, which find fertile ground in the north‐east precisely due to its long history of representation as a region with a unified regional interest. I then reflect on the processes of regional planning, regional strategies and regional devolution, and their relationship to regional economic regeneration. A brief conclusion follows, emphasizing that questions remain about the efficacy of the new governmentality and about who would be its main beneficiaries in the region. The extent to which devolution would actually involve transferring power to the region and the capacity of networked forms of power within the region to counter the structural power of capital and shape central state policies remains unclear.