Whatever happened to Régulation theory? The Régulation approach and local government revisited

Abstract

This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the causal source of policy change by considering whether the Régulation approach, which has been largely discarded since the 1990s, can help to explain change in economic development polices at the level of local government in the UK. First, the ‘decline’ of the approach is explained by interviewing key exponents of the approach from the 1990s. Second, the approach is applied to a narrative of local economic policy in the City of York 1980–2006. In applying the Régulation approach, a number of problems are encountered. Chiefly, as a macro-approach, it lacks the finer tools to be able to explain all aspects of local change. Moreover, the approach is open to the charge of over-determinism by over-privileging the role of economic crisis in change. In the case of York, the cause of change has not been any crisis of Fordism but instead an acceptance of neo-liberalism in national and international spheres of governance, the inevitability of which may be overstated by exponents of the crisis of Fordism. However, the application of the Régulation approach to the case study reaffirms the importance of broader hegemonic political struggles and economic change to the study of local institutions, and the insights that more holistic analysis can make to the study of institutional change. Without some linkage to the broader economic and political hegemonic struggles, that the Régulation approach provides, meso-level theories are inherently wanting. The approach may be worth revisiting in the light of the new crisis of capitalism.

Keywords:

• Régulation theory
• new institutionalism
• local government
• economic policy
• policy change
• local economic development

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Jonathan Davies and Neil Carter for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. However all the usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. In addition, at the local level, attention became more focused on regime theory. These, in the tradition of the critical pluralist tradition claimed that local leaders were structurally required to undertake collaborative projects with the private sector in order to generate the sufficient economic growth (Elkin 1987, Stone 1989). However it has also been subject to normative and empirical critique by Davies (2002). According to him: ‘it may be more fruitful, for regime theorists to re-engage critically with variants of Marxism, which unlike Structuralism, recognize the possibility of agency’ (Davies 2002).

2. Although for an empirical defence of the existence of a Fordist era in Britain see Painter and Goodwin (1993).

Notes on contributor

Toby S. James is at the Department of Politics and International Relations, Swansea Univeristy, UK.