A centennial review of the English regional question: Whose policy space is it?

ABSTRACT

The Regional Authority Index emphasizes the emergence of sub-national regions in Europe at the expense of central government but this does not chime with dynamics of regional governance in England. Seeing governance as a construct of the central state for masked steering of sub-national democratic establishments whose ‘side-effects’ (new political identities) are then addressed by the central state through a cyclical rescaling of governance, we explore this inconsistency. Our centennial review of sub-national governance in England challenges the concept of networked polity whereby the unconditional role of the state is to empower stakeholders and facilitate cooperation amongst them. Although sub-regional governance currently seems to have become a cross-party approach to local management, the central state may continue to promote alternative governance scales in the future to (I) break down resultant sub-regional political identities threatening central policy; and (II) maintain its influence on local governments in relation to economic objectives.

KEYWORDS:

• Regional question
• governance
• the (central) state
• manage
• local government
• political identities
• England

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the Editors and anonymous reviewers for their time devotion, effective communication and helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).