The Scottish development agency: Market consensus, public planning and local enterprise

Abstract

The absence of a coherent industrial strategy embracing sectoral enterprise development at the level of national government in the UK has meant a shift to regional and local levels as far as concerted intervention is concerned. But whilst there has been considerable interest in the activities of the local authority enterprise boards there has not been the same attention given to the regional development agencies like the SDA. The ideologies of intervention of this agency and GLEB, for example, are in theory very different, yet each confronts a series of opportunities and constraints at the level of economic sectors.