Leveraging national opportunities for regional transformation: multi-scalar system-building and legitimation in a Swiss industrial town

ABSTRACT

European regions are currently confronted with significant challenges stemming from the green transition and technological disruption. These challenges impose growing pressure on regions to restructure their economies and transition towards more sustainable and innovative modes of production. While the existing literature extensively addresses regional transformation, less attention has been devoted to understanding how actors can effectively leverage opportunities available at different scales to facilitate regional transformation. This study focuses on the ongoing transformation of Biel/Bienne, an industrial town in Switzerland, to illustrate how regional actors have seized two institutional opportunities at the national level based on competitive calls to drive regional transformation. The study emphasizes the importance of multiscalar system-building and legitimation efforts undertaken by regional stakeholders in perceiving and leveraging these national opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Windows of opportunity
• competitive call
• legitimation
• system building
• Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Heike Mayer, Ottavia Cima, the team from the SNF Project on Industrial Towns, four anonymous referees and the journal editors for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 thanks to the introduction of the Cantonal law for innovation in 2016 (BELEX 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) (grant number: 192764).