Elite discourses of regional identity in a new regionalism development scheme: The case of the ‘Mountain Region’ in Norway

Abstract

Norway's regional structure is under debate as questions about territorial boundaries, scale, scope of tasks and responsibilities, and decision-making structures have become an issue in Norwegian politics. This tendency of changing the scale of public action with regard to governmental structures, economic politics, welfare, and civic society has been termed ‘new regionalism’. New regionalism often comes under criticism of being too neo-liberalistic or too economically orientated, leaving in its wake debates of democratic accountability and the neglect of ‘soft factors’ (i.e. socio-culture, identity, consciousness, and participation). In this article the authors investigate whether new democratic or semi-democratic regional organisations as advocated by new regionalist schemes require identification amongst the local population in order to be successful and enduring governmental structures. Further, it is shown how too simplistic understandings of the social processes, and their inherent power aspects, involved in the implementation of the new regionalist development scheme ‘Mountain Region’ distort the undertaking. The authors find that a more complex relational and contextual understanding is in demand, one in which regionalisation is not only recognised as a process which diffuses across time-space, but also takes an asymmetrical place across society's social fabric, and one where ‘soft factors’ such as ‘regional identity’ are not sidestepped.

Keywords:

• institutionalisation
• new regionalism
• regional identity
• regionalisation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank two anonymous referees and Michael Jones for constructive input. We also acknowledge our former colleague Torill Meistad for her participation in the RESTRIM project team, Dr Carol Richards for her contribution to ensuring that the article's English is readable, and our colleagues at the Centre for Rural Research who, at one stage or another, have provided much appreciated comments on this article.