Product Description: Across Europe, regional development agencies (RDAs) have become a central feature of regional policy, both as innovative policy-makers and as the implementers of programmes and initiatives originating from the national or European level...read more

Product Description: Across the Nordic countries movements are taking place towards new political and administrative government structures at the regional level. The book presents an analysis of this development, in order to figure out both similarities and differences in the content of the reform and the reform process...read more

Why are some regional development strategies adopted and others rejected? Only limited systematic attention has been paid to the politics of regional policy, including the role of institutions, discourse, and political debate in shaping this major area of public policy. The book develops an institutionalist approach to the study of regional policy, capable of spanning major European development paradigms and accounting for the dynamic relationship between organisations, policies and political discourse. This conceptual framework is then applied to the Scottish Development Agency, a development body famed across Europe for its innovative policies but surrounded by political controversy in Scotland. A detailed study of corporate strategies, policy implementation, and the wider British environment questions existing interpretations of the organisation which tend to vilify anti-interventionist Thatcherites or glorify shrewd development professionals. Instead the author proposes an alternative synthesis which highlights the interplay between institutions, discourse and regional development in the politics of regional policy.

Product Description: As we move further into the 21st century, the prominence of regions can no longer be taken for granted. A certain skepticism has developed with regard to the feasibility of marginal regions achieving self-sustained growth and states have maintained their role as regulators of economic and social activities...read more

Product Description: "The Nordic Regions and the European Union" is an authoritative book on the influences of European integration on the regional level in the Nordic countries. It provides both factual insight into the Nordic regions and the Europeanization of the four Nordic countries, offering theoretical contributions to the theory of regionalism in a European context built on systematic comparison...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This volume addresses the prominent role given to institution-building, institutional change and governance in the regional development strategies and policies. The establishment of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, and the arrival of regional development agencies in England highlighted the need to put the initiatives into some context, drawing on experience from across Europe on the critical factors in the determination of the potential and success of regions...read more