Power and influence tactics in the promotion of regional development: An empirical analysis of the work of Finnish regional development officers

Increased complexity and rapid pace of change demand more from people responsible for regional development at various levels of activity. This paper has its roots in a belief that the more complex situations are, the more regional development is dependent on the leadership and network management capacity of key individuals. Studying more deeply the roles that various individuals, and the coalitions formed by them, have in institutionalisation, deinstitutionalisation and reinstitutionalisation processes might provide us with additional analytical leverage in regional development studies. This paper focuses on diffuse networks of dispersed powers from a Finnish regional development officer’s point of view. Regional development officers are those people whose job it is to boost the economic development of their respective regions in Finland.The research questions discussed here are: (a) What kind of power is exercised by Finnish regional development officers; and (b) how do regional development officers aim to gain influence for their efforts to promote regional development? The empirical research is based on data gathered (a) through 41 interviews with Finnish actors responsible for the promotion of economic development in city governments, technology centres, regional development agencies, and ministries and other national bodies, and (b) through internet survey of development officers at local, regional and national levels (531 respondents, response rate 51.8%). The survey was designed to solicit information about power and influence tactics in the context of regional development. The empirical analysis shows, for example, how interpretive power and network power are more important for regional development officers than institutional and resource power, and how indirect influence tactics surpass direct tactics.     

Protected geographical indications: Institutional roles in food systems governance and rural development

This paper examines the importance of national-level institutional arrangements for promoting the EU’s Protected Geographic Indication scheme (PGI). Taking the example of Ireland, for which PGI designations remain comparatively low, it explores whether the approach to providing institutional supports to the PGI scheme is influenced by top-down technocratic governance structures that pertain to food safety and quality certification that encompass the broader operating environment for food production in Ireland. Although the regulation of food safety and quality certification are distinct remits to the administration of the PGI scheme, in the Irish context the same institutional bodies are involved in governance of both. Using a discourse analysis interpretative framework, this paper draws on interviews with Irish producer group members and institutional representatives to examine how governance of the PGI scheme reflects management perspectives and practices more in keeping with a regulatory environment for food safety and quality than with development of place-based food product links. It suggests that incentives to avail of the PGI scheme as a means of realising value-added for producers are not well established because they require the development of more subjective, context-dependent processes and practices linked to geographical place and place identity. These are not easily accommodated under current institutional arrangements that also incorporate food safety and quality remits because these are in turn strongly established through nationally and internationally recognised systems of regulation and benchmarking. The findings point to the benefits to be gained from a more layered governance structure for PGI; devolving operation of the scheme to relevant regional and local development organisations that possess the expertise and relevant local knowledge to (a) incentivise the formation of producer groups, and (b) prioritise mentoring and support for PGI concept development as a clearer reflection of bottom-up rural sustainability policy.     

Investment and regional development in Post-Mao China

This paper investigates China's changing investment systems, investment patterns and their impact on regional development. It reveals that the reforms have brought profound changes to Mao's investment system and investment allocation. Investment decentralization has given localities considerable autonomy and incentives in economic development. Budgetary investment has declined dramatically while enterprise funds, bank loans and foreign investment have increased significantly in China. An increasing amount of these new sources of fixed investment have been channeled to more profitable non-state sectors. In terms of regional changes, China's coastal provinces, particularly Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang have recorded more rapid investment growth and have much higher per capita investment than many interior provinces. In addition, investment in the coastal provinces relies less on the state and is more profitable than that in the poorer interior. The sectoral and regional unevenness of fixed investment has significantly contributed to the uneven regional development in China. This research also has important theoretical implications, as it shows that regional investment is neither a cumulative causation process nor a convergent process, but influenced greatly by government policy, local states and local conditions, and foreign capital. An analysis of these factors should improve the understanding of investment allocation and regional development, especially for the transition economy in which the control and capacity of the central state has declined, while local and global forces have emerged as equally important forces shaping spatial change.     

Devolution, the governance of regional development and the Trade Union Congress in the North East region of England

The devolution and regionalisation of political and administrative structures following the election of New Labour in 1997 have changed the nature of the state and territorial development and governance in the UK. A regional and sub-national tier has opened up within the existing multi-layered governance system operating at the supra-national, national and local scales. This ‘new institutional space’ is increasingly open to the participation of social institutions--including trade unions--in economic and social governance. Drawing upon empirical analysis of the experience of the Northern Trade Union Congress (NTUC) in the North East region of England, the paper argues that the NTUC--in contrast to its national organisation--is beginning to engage with the emergent institutional structures but its role is inhibited by the centralised strategy and structure of the TUC nationally, its own need for upgrading, capacity building and greater financial resources and the interaction between the North East’s particular legacy of tripartite corporatism and the more pluralist modes of regional development governance emerging in the English regions. Unless such issues are addressed regional trade union centres--such as the NTUC--risk remaining relatively junior partners in the emergent regional governance structures.     

Public participation in policy making: the state-of-the-art in Canada

This paper critically reviews the current status of public participation in Canada. Postulating that public participation implies an open, democratic form of planning and policy making, the paper examines factors which have influenced the attainment of meaningful public input in practice. Public participation in Canada has evolved greatly in the past 15 years but several key issues remain unresolved: provisions for participation remain, in large part, discretionary; procedures for the funding of intervenors require further development; and the emphasis in many jurisdictions remains upon the operational level involvement of the lay public, with a public hearing as the final arbiter of public opinion. More attention to the formal evaluation of participatory exercises is essential to the resolution of these concerns. In particular, more attention should be given to the context within which participation occurs. Moreover, greater consideration should be given to public involvement at the normative and strategic levels of planning. The paper concludes by briefly exploring the implications for practice that the concept of ‘normative participation’ might have in Canada.     

Planning regional development: Promoting small settlements in a trans-frontier situation

Under communism local authorities tended to be largely passive bystanders in a regional development process which emerged through the central planning process through the spatial allocations of investment by government ministries. Attention was given to physical planning, but comparatively little material entered the public domain on location policy and spatial priorities generally, apart from the objective of greater equality between regions and a commitment to backward areas generally. Now that much investment is down to private enterprise and government has become more decentralised and accountable, there is a need for concepts and strategies to coordinate public sector investment and provide guidelines for the evaluation of private development proposals. At the same time, there is an open competition for investment which requires communities to promote themselves in terms of their identity and development potential. This paper offers an overview by taking two countries - Hungary and Romania - where progress can be compared and where the focus can be placed on a common frontier which is diverting attention from conventional regional planning to cross-border cooperation. In both contexts however, attention is given to the ways in which planning can divert investment away from the main centres to the peripheral areas, including action to strengthen the role of small towns and also to improve cohesion among functionally-related groups of settlements and communes. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Changing local finances in the Czech Republic — half way over?

Far-reaching changes launched in 1989, aimed mainly at establishing a democratic society and market economy have clearly brought many positive results. However, there is also a negative side to these progressive changes both in economic and social spheres. There are many difficult tasks ahead such as the reestablishment of a democratic and economically effective local government which will be able to fulfil contemporary needs and requirements. The aim of this report is not to describe all the changes occurring in local government or to review different opinions about what should be done, but rather to concentrate on one of the most important issues facing this body of government, that of financial reform. Special attention will be given to the economic performance of municipalities with regard to their population size. It will be argued that data from local budgets can reveal important features about the performance of local and regional economies which cannot be obtained in any other way.     

Indigenous regional systems and Rural Development in Southern India

As a result of critism of the industrial-urban biased paradigm of development, a new social development approach is beginning to emerge. According to this strategy, development must be fitted to ecological constraints, priority attention must be given to rural development, and planning for rural development must be decentralized, participatory, and deeply immersed in the particulars of local settings. Agropolitan districts, or networks of socio-economic and political interaction, have been suggested as a suitable territorial basis for this paradigm. In India, where local planning has not been successful, indigenous regional systems, which correspond closely to criteria suggested to delineate agropolitan districts, have existed for hundreds of years. This is especially true in Tamil Nadu where a hierarchy of nesting socio-spatial units is firmly established in peasant tradition. Information is presented on the positive and negative aspects of the use of such regions for rural planning. It is suggested that these regions may better fulfil the objectives of agropolitan development than sets of functional regions derived from the urban hierarchy.     

Indigenous regional systems and Rural Development in Southern India

As a result of critism of the industrial-urban biased paradigm of development, a new social development approach is beginning to emerge. According to this strategy, development must be fitted to ecological constraints, priority attention must be given to rural development, and planning for rural development must be decentralized, participatory, and deeply immersed in the particulars of local settings. Agropolitan districts, or networks of socio-economic and political interaction, have been suggested as a suitable territorial basis for this paradigm. In India, where local planning has not been successful, indigenous regional systems, which correspond closely to criteria suggested to delineate agropolitan districts, have existed for hundreds of years. This is especially true in Tamil Nadu where a hierarchy of nesting socio-spatial units is firmly established in peasant tradition. Information is presented on the positive and negative aspects of the use of such regions for rural planning. It is suggested that these regions may better fulfil the objectives of agropolitan development than sets of functional regions derived from the urban hierarchy.     

Situating regional advantage in geographical political economy: Transformation of the state-owned enterprises in Guangzhou, China

Drawing upon insights from geographical political economy, this study examines the causal processes and mechanisms that underlined the growth and adaptation of state-owned enterprises in mechanical and electrical sectors (SOMEEs) in a leading Chinese city since market reforms. It reveals that the geographically specific and historically contingent political economy in which SOMEEs in Guangzhou were situated before economic reforms was the fundamental force underlying their successful adaptation in the post-reform period. SOMEEs in Guangzhou prior to market reforms were placed in a geographical political economy characterized by a special market orientation toward the production of low-end machinery for local needs and a loosely-coupled political linkage with the state apparatus. While such place-specific market and institutional relations were not favorable to the growth and survival of SOMEEs in Guangzhou in the Mao era, they have constituted an important source of regional advantage to enforce both market competitive pressure and hardened budget constraints on SOMEEs in Guangzhou and propel them to adopt efficient market-adaptation strategies and practices during the post-reform period. There is a need for ‘scaling up’ the theorization of regional advantage to go beyond the exclusive emphasis placed on the institutional dynamics endogenous to regional economies and take more seriously the unequal positions of regions within the extra-local structural relations of actually existing political-economic regimes. The paper advocates a place-contingent treatment of soft budget constraints in future studies on state-owned enterprises in China and other transitional economies.     

Between social and spatial convergence and divergence: an exploration into the political geography of European contact areas

The European continent, the motherland of nationalism, and the part of the world where political borders and different territorial and cultural identities are mostly interrelated, is now facing new challenges regarding how best to represent its numerous interests within one system. With the increase of international integration European countries began to devote greater attention to the development problems of their border areas that had to be helped to undertake certain functions in the international integration process. The fostering of a more balanced regional development also resulted in a strengthening of regional characteristics, which the new model could no longer ignore. Regional characteristics in turn have always been preserved in Europe by persistent historical and cultural elements of ethnic and linguistic variety. Therefore, it is not surprising that the process of European integration based on the new regional development model was accompanied by a parallel process of ethnic or regional awakening of minorities and other local communities. The key question for contemporary European (though of course this is not limited to Europe) political geography is, then, how the process summarised under the twin labels of social convergence and deterritorialisation will effect the persistent maintenance of regional identities and the corresponding divergence of regional spaces. Or, in other words: is the ‘unity in diversity’ European programme ever practicable and exportable on a world-wide scale or are we to be absorbed by a new global ‘melting pot’?     

Rural industrialization in China's lower Yangzi delta: Institutionalizing transactional networks

Understanding the nature of spatial economic change in China's most rapidly developing regions requires a conceptual and methodological shift away from the conventional macro-perspectives. An analysis of the processes and mechanisms which underlie the unique patterns of transformation in China's lower Yangzi delta is undertaken. The paper focuses on the emergence of small scale institutional and transactional activities as they relate to the location of nonagricultural enterprises in the countryside. The way in which networks of interactions and interrelationships are embedded within specific local exigencies and opportunities for development reveals much about the wider regional spatial economic patterns and trends. The historical, administrative, and territorial contexts and some detailed examples of the resulting institutional frameworks are also highlighted. The paper proposes a framework whereby spatial economic transformation in China is reconceptualized in relation to intensely localized place-based institutional structures. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Black Country Geological Society

Britain has been noted for its local geological societies since the great amateur geology boom of the 19th century. Many such societies (old, new or re-formed) still exist. But what is their role in the 1980s? We asked Paul Shilston to describe the history and current activities of The Black Country Geological Society, of which he is Honorary Secretary.     

Network configurations and R&D activities of the ICT industry in Suzhou municipality, China

This paper analyzes the network structure and R&D activities of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in Suzhou municipality, known previously for its local state-directed Sunan model of development. Suzhou, however, has been undergoing dramatic restructuring to remake itself into a globalizing production center. We highlight the significance of the Chinese state and local/regional assets in shaping the trajectories of globalization and regional development, and the increasing importance of domestic markets and regional clusters/agglomeration for foreign ventures. We have found that Suzhou’s development path, heavily dependent on external forces, has made Suzhou a TNC (transnational corporation) satellite district. We also find that the ICT industry in Suzhou has a dual-structure, segmented between foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) and domestic firms. TNCs tend to network among themselves and their interfirm networks are increasingly domestic and regionally embedded in the Yangtze River Delta, while the linkages between TNCs and local firms are weak. We argue that there is a series of technological, structural, spatial, and institutional “mismatches” that limits the establishment of “global pipelines” of knowledge exchange. We hold that the nature of global-local networks is contingent upon regional endogenous capacities and the specific ways in which global capital interacts with local institutions. Therefore, perspectives on TNCs’ local embeddedness must be positioned in their regional/external networks. We also analyze the constraints placed on Suzhou’s development into an innovative city and promote the integration of global and local/regional assets through development of indigenous capacities.     

Urban land transformation for pro-poor economies

The transformation of land into a setting for clustering local economies can become an important cornerstone of poverty policy. This transformation has several functional aspects, which in turn have important institutional and political aspects. Underlying both the functional and institutional factors is the role of local government and local democracy. Such a conceptualization puts to center stage several paradoxes: A terrain that seems “slum-like” turns out to be highly productive and employment generating. Complex tenure forms and mixed land use seen as “unplanned” turn out to be pre-requisites for economic development. There are institutional paradoxes that contrast efforts at “transparency” and managerial “best practices”. Here, the messiness of local bureaucracies in municipal government turns out to be critical for poor groups to influence interventions in their favor. Influencing the public process may be more effective in stealth-like ways rather taking a more visible approach. Most fundamentally these issues remind us that the potential of cities to reinforce or reduce poverty moved far beyond projects and programs and the normative frameworks used by planners and administrators. Instead, it is the transformative process of turning land into economic settings that might be at the center stage. This is a stage where poor groups are the central actors who stealth-like draw on complex alliances across ethnic and class lines to shapes cities in their interests.     

Palaeoseismic Events in Karst Terrains along the Northern Bulgarian Black Sea Coast

The study of the palaoseismic events in the karst terrains of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast is a very important up-to-date problem. The investigated region is one of the highest-energy regions in Bulgaria with established and recorded catastrophic historic and contemporary earthquakes. The terrain is subjected to the influence not only of its own earthquake foci but also of those in Romania and Russia. The palaeoearthquakes that caused considerable disturbances in the karst terrains along the Northern Bulgarian Black Sea coast have left significant traces. They caused disturbances in the environment and the relief (rearrangement of the surface and ground water karst basins, partially or entirely collapsed caves, deformed caves, oil, gas and salt intrusions and gravitationally formed caves). The ecological consequences in historic and contemporary aspects were catastrophic. The palaeoseismic dislocations were formed as a result of global, regional and local geodynamic events related with the destruction     

Institutional forces and retail change: a case study of Metropolitan Toronto

There is a growing interest in the development of purpose-built shopping centres, which now dominate the retail environments of many cities. Much of the past research has been directed at the impact of shopping centres on more traditional retail structures. More recently, however, there has been a recognition of the importance of those institutional forces that shape the internal character of shopping centres and ultimately determine their economic impact. This paper draws attention to these factors and discusses the control that leasing agreements and corporate policy have on shopping centre development. The whole discussion is set within the framework of metropolitan Toronto, which has for some time experienced the full impact of these institutional forces.     

Economic reforms and the New Master Plan of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: Implementation issues and policy recommendations

The economic reforms or `doi moi' introduced in 1986 have transformed Vietnam's planned economy to a more market-oriented one. Rise in international capital, market liberalisation and greater population mobility have contributed towards a greater concentration of squatters in the city centre, and extended metropolitan development in the fringes of Ho Chi Minh City. Rapid urbanisation and, to a lesser extent, industrialisation have converted large tracts of farmlands to urban use, and greater rural exodus. Such dramatic changes have drawn the city government's attention to face the new challenges. As a very important political and economic centre in the south, Ho Chi Minh City has prepared for itself a new Master Plan, approved in 1997, to provide a legitimate and institutional framework to guide its future spatial development. This paper introduces the background and explains the rationale behind the drafting of the Master Plan, and highlights the constraints that are expected in implementing it. The administrative framework in planning is also examined in terms of its advantages and disadvantages in a planning system with four levels: national, provincial, district and local. Land availability in the city centre, source of funding and technical expertise are all parts and parcels of the challenges in the process of modernising HCMC to accommodate the need of its residents and rapid global change. Ho Chi Minh City's strong relationships with its hinterlands have equally required the planners to look at the planning field using the whole national and regional scenarios. Policy recommendations aimed at improving the implementation capability are finally presented. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

地球系统科学时代的区域地质调查应更加重视古生物资源调查

地球科学研究已进入地球系统科学时代,地球系统科学逐渐成为地球科学各分支学科重要的指导思想。本文论述了古生物资料在地质学诞生和发展中的重要作用及地球系统科学时代古生物资源调查的重要意义,分析了我国目前区域地质调查中存在的问题及其影响,对我国在区域地质调查中加强古生物资源调查提出了具体建议。     

Market-based conservation of the Amazonian forests: Revisiting win–win expectations

Governments and development organisations consider the involvement of poor forest managers in global value chains and markets as a most promising approach for resolving the social and environmental challenges of the Amazon. This paper intends to provide a clearer picture about opportunities and potentials of this market-approach, by analysing integrated forest based development initiatives in the Bolivian, Brazilian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon. Findings suggest that the externally promoted initiatives seldom correspond to local realities and that they suffer from limited financial viability due to competitive disadvantages of locals in comparison to more capitalized actors. Success stories remain isolated without replication, and depend on external support for continuation. Only a limited number of families provided with privileged support have been able to overcome the technical, institutional and financial hurdles and to benefit from existing market opportunities. In some cases, interventions have generated conflicts and even weakened social organisation. Instead of simply copying the mistakes of the past regarding the emerging markets for environmental services, it is deemed essential to question the current market focus and search for alternatives placing greater emphasis on the interests, cultures and capacities of local people.