Introduction: The politics of local and regional development

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The author would like to thank the contributors and the Editor, Ronan Paddison, for making possible this Special Issue.

Notes

1. Something very similar has happened in the very different state form that is the UK. This has been the establishment of the Core Cities group by the cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. According to their mission statement their goal is “to work in partnership with Government and other key stakeholders to promote and strengthen Core Cities as drivers of regional and national competitiveness and prosperity with the aim of creating internationally competitive regions”. The fact that it is a more English than British list—where are Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow?—hints at yet other tensions, however.

2. But see Cox (2004), Cox and Townsend (2005) and Keating (1993) for comparisons of a more explicit character.

3. We should also note, however, how the pursuit of spatial monopoly can be with a view to protecting a home base, as in Pittsburgh Plus, or the position of labour unions on the Sunbelt issue or in Davis-Bacon, and so can have sharply territorialising consequences.

4. There is some implicit recognition of this in my paper on spaces of dependence and spaces of engagement (1998), but it is emphatically only implicit.

5. As Dunford (1994, p. 109) has written: “The removal of non-tariff barriers makes it easier to supply the whole of the European market from a smaller number of locations and reduces further the incentive to locate inside of national markets”.

6. Interestingly, this has been not nearly so much the case in the UK as in France and Germany. This may be partly due to the story of British economic renewal now prevalent in the country, a story which foregrounds its supposed commitment to neo-liberal reforms. This has gained some traction from the fact that unemployment rates are considerably lower than in France and Germany where supposedly much more restrictive labour legislation remains in force.

7. Another concern has been what has come to be known as ‘wage dumping’. This came into sharp focus with a proposal of the EU Commission in 2005 that would allow service providers to compete anywhere in the 25-member EU. A major concern has been the ‘country of origin principle’. This would allow a business to operate in another country under the laws of its own and so undercut local workers by ignoring the local minimum wage, health and safety standards. This has been vigorously opposed by labour unions in Germany and in France and was also challenged by some member-states with highly developed social welfare structures, including France, Germany, Belgium and Sweden.