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1999 6: 231European Urban and Regional StudiesGordon MacLeod

Place, Politics and 'Scale Dependence' : Exploring the Structuration of Euro-Regionalism

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PLACE, POLITICS AND ‘SCALE DEPENDENCE’:EXPLORING THE STRUCTURATION OF EURO-REGIONALISM

Gordon MacLeodUniversity of Wales, UK

AbstractIn analyzing the contemporary ‘recomposition ofpolitical space’ some researchers are drawing an in-ference between a putative ‘hollowing out’ of thestate or ‘multi-level’ governance, and the growth ofintegrated economic development programmes en-acted through closer articulation between local andregional political coalitions and the EuropeanCommission. This coupling of urban and regionalanalysis with state restructuring and re-scaling rep-resents a welcome direction. There is, never-theless, a real danger that such analysis simply‘reads off ’ emergent associationalist trends be-tween EU institutions and regional alliances, orEuro-regionalism, as some inevitable outcome of ahastening trajectory towards a globalizing andEuropeanizing economy and ‘hollowed out’ nationalstates. Such an approach would fail to uncover thekey social processes and ‘constituent relationships’(Sayer, 1989) that activate these trends in particularplaces.

This paper argues for added sensitivity towardsthe ‘politics of place’, and towards the contingentand the contextual when analyzing the recomposi-

tion and re-scaling of European urban and regionalgovernance. Not that this is to advocate the drifttowards a morass of descriptive and empirical‘mapping’ of Euro-regional partnerships. Rather, theauthor argues for appropriating suitable middle-range concepts with which to abstract fromempirical forms and engage in explanation. He drawsvariously on Jessop’s regulation-theoretic approachto state restructuring, Lipietz’s work on the socialrelations of space, and Cox and Mair’s writings on‘local dependence’ and the politics of scale, toanalyze the political structuration of one particularinstance of Euro-regionalism in the Objective 2region of West Central Scotland. Here, a generalappetite on the part of the European Commission topromote integrated, programmed regional initiativesmet with the embedded scale dependencies andstructurally situated strategic endeavor of a politicalalliance operating within a declining industrial space.The paper concludes with a call for European urbanand regional analysis to increasingly uncover these‘meeting places’ of the general and the particular.

The political, economic, cultural and social meaning ofspace is changing in contemporary Europe . . . new typesof regionalism and of region are the product of adecomposition and recomposition of the territorialframework of public life, consequent on changes in thestate, the market, and the international context

(Keating, 1997: 383)

Once our conception of scale is freed from the fixedcategories inherited from the past and our conception ofpolitics is similarly expanded and enlivened, the questionsmultiply and the analytic or interpretative problemsinvolved in relating scale to politics become moreobvious.

(Delaney and Leitner, 1997: 95)

Political economy as process: structuration,scale, and Euro-regionalism

Within a European context, it has become almost derigueur to imply that the largely national mode ofeconomic regulation, which helped to sustain thepostwar Fordist growth paradigm (Moulaert et al.,1988) is being reconfigured in the form of a‘hollowed out’ state ( Jessop, 1997a), ‘multi-level’governance (Marks, 1993), or a ‘three-tier system’ ofregulation (Tömmel, 1997). While thesemiscellaneous perspectives differ markedly in theirepistemological and methodological outlook, they allstress that national European states appear to berelinquishing governance capacity simultaneously toboth subnational levels and to the emergent

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supranational European Union (EU). In the midstof this ‘recomposition of political space’ (Keating,1997) one can detect a growing appeal to the regionas a key site for territorially embedding innovationand configuring socioeconomic prosperity (seeStorper, 1995, 1997; Morgan, 1997).

In European politics this has been evidentthrough the creation of regional governments in anumber of EU member states (Harvie, 1994).Parallel to this, the institutions of the EuropeanUnion have been foremost in promulgating anontological faith in the regional scale (CEC, 1991).This has been most conspicuous through theCommission’s invocation of a ‘Europe of theRegions’, whereupon, over the last decade, Europe’ssubnational spaces ‘have emerged as “new actors” inEuropean decision-making and policyimplementation’ (Tömmel, 1997: 413). Suchprocesses were provided with a clear impetus by theformer President of the European Commission,Jacques Delors, and his message that regions wouldbe ‘active partners’ (Leonardi, 1992) in theformulation and governance of European economicdevelopment and social cohesion. In the discussionbelow, I refer to this animation of networks andpartnership formation between EU and local andregional institutions as ‘Euro-regionalism’ or ‘Euro-regionalization’.

Stylistically, these emergent institutionalconfigurations appear to embody much of what isimplied in the ‘hollowing out’ of the state thesis( Jessop, 1997a, 1997b; and below). Not that thedebates on this have been either uncritical or sterile.Certainly, some commentators appear to envisagethe Europe of the Regions project as a highlyplausible near panacea (Murray, 1992). Others havethough, on various grounds, seriously questionedthe qualitative nature of this putative devolution oflocal and regional political power and institutionalcapacity (Dunford and Kafkalas, 1992; Amin andTomaney, 1995a, 1995b; Greenwood et al., 1995;Loughlin, 1996; S. Martin, 1998). And drawing onsome examples from contemporary Europe, Hudsonet al. (1997) have also pointed to the fact that‘successful’ regional economic governance is onlycontingent upon the co-presence of certaineconomic, institutional and political properties,many of which are neither easily transferable to norreproducible within Europe’s less successful regions(see also Dunford and Hudson, 1996).1 This has

obvious policy implications for the latter. But anadded conceptual consideration is that institutionalensembles per se, and the occupancy of particularlocal and regional institutional ‘thicknesses’ (Aminand Thrift, 1994, 1995), cannot be seen in isolationas an adequate explanation of particular celebratedsuccess stories in Southern Germany and NorthernItaly (see MacLeod and Goodwin, forthcoming).

All this raises critical questions for theoreticalanalysis of the political economy of the EuropeanUnion. For instance, some researchers have beenconcerned to interpret Euro-regional partnerships aspart of a (general) politico-spatial ‘hollowing out’ ofthe state, and to subsequently dismiss the latterthesis on the basis of the formers’ as yet ‘thin’substantive configurations in particular localities andregions (Lloyd and Meegan, 1996). However, asresearchers, we would be well advised to considerthat state hollowing out embodies merely anempirical trend rather than a theoretical explanationfounded upon necessary relations ( Jessop, 1995a).Moreover, hollowing out is only one of severalempirically interrelated trends and counter-trendswhich Bob Jessop refers to in his ‘reorganization ofthe state’ thesis ( Jessop, 1997a, 1997b; MacLeodand Goodwin, forthcoming; and below). To thusanalyze the structures, mechanisms and events thatconstitute these trends in particular places requires aresearch method that can account for theconjunctural, the complex, and the contextual (cf.Beynon and Hudson, 1993; Warf, 1993). This alsoconnects to Andrew Sayer’s (1989: 270) argumenton the need to unpack particular developments inpolitical economy and to demonstrate their‘constituent relationships’.

By implication, contemporary urban and regionalanalysis perhaps ought to engage in harvesting moreappropriate middle-range concepts with which torationally abstract from empirical concrete-complexforms. Not least might this help to uncover thespecific processes of state restructuring and politicaleconomic re-regulation, and associated structuresand agencies currently renovating regionalgovernance throughout Europe. In some respects,this quest for a process-based interpretation ofpolitical economy echoes Painter and Goodwin’s(1995) critique of the regulation approach, Harvey’swork on urbanization (1989), and Dicken et al.’smore recent (1997: 161) call to unpack the process ofglobalization as a ‘complex of interrelated tendencies

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European Urban and Regional Studies 1999 6 (3)



. . . [which] will interact with one another inunpredictable ways [resulting] in uneven effects’.

On a related theme, Erik Swyngedouw (1997) hasrecently espoused an ontological priority for aprocess-based approach to scale which, in effect, wouldtake the focus away from either the national, local orglobal as the starting point for analysis andexplanation (see also Brenner, 1998). ForSwyngedouw (1997: 141–2):

A process-based approach focuses attention on themechanisms of scale transformation and transgressionthrough social conflict and struggle . . . [and] does not initself assign greater validity to a global or localperspective, but alerts us to a series of sociospatialprocesses that changes the importance and role of certaingeographical scales, re-asserts the importance of others,and sometimes creates entirely new significant scales.Most importantly, however, these scale redefinitions alterand express changes in the geometry of social power bystrengthening the power and the control of some whiledisempowering others.

Within this perspective, then, rather than beingontologically pre-given, geographical scales arepolitically constituted through social struggles andparticular ‘representational practices’ ( Jones, 1998).It is only upon this constitution that scales thencome to embody an active ‘progenitor’, containingsocial activity (albeit in and through struggle), and atthe same time providing an already partitionedgeographical matrix within which such activity takesplace (Smith, 1993: 101). From the standpoint ofpolitics and policy, scale can thereby be understoodas a ‘representational trope’ and as structured‘relationally within a community of producers andreaders who [themselves] give the practice of scalemeaning’ ( Jones, 1998: 27). This emphasis on the(re)production of scale could prove invaluable inconsidering the political structuration of theEuropean Union: from its early postwar origins,through its own inconstant re-scaling (this in itselfcontingent upon the membership of constituentstates), to the geometry of cross-border initiatives,and contemporary struggles over the scalar nestingof social and monetary regulation.

The discussion below seeks to concur with theseprocess-based approaches to the politics of scale andpolitical economy. The next section analyzes thecontemporary restructuring and re-scaling of thestate, drawing variously on regulation-theoreticwork on the state ( Jessop, 1997a), the social

relations of space (Lipietz, 1994a), and recentwritings on the ‘politics of scale’ (Cox and Mair,1991; Cox, 1998). I then deploy some of thesetheoretical ideas towards an empirically groundedstudy of West Central Scotland: an archetypaldeclining industrial region that was politically scaledas Strathclyde between 1974 and 1996 – before itselfbeing abolished by the Conservative government’srestructuring of local government. In thisdiscussion, I critically analyze the ‘becoming’ ofwhat eventually mutated into the StrathclydeEuropean Partnership as a concrete-complexinstance of what may be an emerging trend towardsa pan-European hollowed out and de-statized formof governance.

My paper thus makes no claim to document thediffusion of Euro-regional governance across theUK or Europe (see Bachtler and Turok, 1997; S.Martin, 1998). Neither is it a study of the industrialor sectoral changes that have emerged within theWest Central economy (see SEP, 1997a). Rather, myobject of enquiry2 is the evolving form of Euro-governance for economic development within oneempirically grounded case. And abstracting fromthis, one conceptual aim is to illustrate howphenomena such as the putative hollowing out ofthe state, Euro-regional governance, and theassociated re-scaling of political space, are (1) inter-connected and (2) constituted out of dynamicprocesses of structuration rather than throughprocesses of ‘contagion’ (Sayer, 1989) or as anoutcome of some ‘essentialist logic’ (Gibson-Graham, 1996).

In making this argument, I implicitly revisitcertain themes popularized in human geographythroughout the mid-1980s where Giddens’s (1984)structuration theory was integrated into elements ofwhat was an emerging ‘new regional geography’3

(Pred, 1984; Gilbert, 1988; Paasi, 1991; MacLeod,1998a; MacLeod and Jones, 1999). In accordancewith the search to establish a ‘non-functionalistsocial science’ (Thrift, 1983), the structuration ofsocietal forms refers to a ‘duality of structure’(Giddens, 1984) whose chief implication is that‘social structures are . . . both constituted by humanpractices, and yet at the same time they are the verymedium of this constitution’ (Thrift, 1983: 29).More specifically, the diffusion of the conceptualinnovations of structuration theory into regionalgeographical analysis arguably enables a more

MacLEOD: PLACE, POLITICS AND ‘SCALE DEPENDENCE’ 233




dialectical and transformative account of regions tothe extent that regions are seen to ‘develop fromregional social interaction while being both thecondition and the outcome of the social relationsbetween individuals, groups and institutions inregional space’ (Gilbert, 1988: 217).

In this paper, I suggest that a greater analyticalcognizance of these factors may help to uncover theextent to which emerging modes and scales ofgovernance are constituted out of a relationaldialectic among and between the ‘structurallysituated strategies of key social actors’ located atvarious spatial scales (Beynon and Hudson, 1993:179). On a more general tone, the paper seeks toprovide some critical commentary on thesubstantive form of the Strathclyde EuropeanPartnership, and to briefly reflect on the future ofEuro–regional partnerships.

Determining state restructuring and scalerelativization4

The hegemonic landscape of Western capitalismbetween 1945 and the early 1970s is often depictedas the Fordist regime of accumulation (Amin, 1994).This Golden Age (Dunford, 1994) represented aperiod of relatively rising prosperity and livingstandards, in large measure founded upon a‘virtuous circle’ of mass production and massconsumption. Although never fully resolving theeconomic and sociospatial contradictions ofcapitalism, this Fordist system was regulated byKeynesian macroeconomic policies, wherebynational growth was redistributed towards socialwelfare and regional policies to help integrate thethen more depressed spaces (Martin and Sunley,1997). In some key senses, the national state acted asthe pivot of Fordist regulation and the ‘preeminentscale at which both conflicts and tensions werenegotiated’ (Swyngedouw, 1997: 153; also Lipietz,1994a).

One effect of these integrated economic andpolitical forces was a convergence in growth andincomes among and between Europe’s regions(Dunford, 1994). Eventually, however, this Fordist‘institutional fix’ ran out of regulatory steam, and bythe late 1960s was less able to internalize thesharpening economic, sociopolitical and spatial

tensions (Peck and Tickell, 1994). These manifestedas crises in global, regional and national politicaleconomies vis-a-vis the breakdown of the BrettonWoods compromise, widespread deindustrialization,and the fiscal crisis of the state, respectively. Inshort, the virtuous circle of Fordism and itsnationally articulated compromise between capital,labor and the state had turned somewhat vicious(Tickell and Peck, 1992). It is also important tostress that this institutional meltdown was mutuallyconstituted alongside ‘a profound reworking ofgeographical scales’ in the regulation of production,money, consumption and welfare (Swyngedouw,1997: 153–4).

Jessop has raised similar themes when claimingthat in the globalizing postnational era, newgeographies of governance are emerging whereuponstate capacities are being reorganized bothterritorially and functionally. For Jessop, this isleading to ‘a continuing movement of state power’upwards to supranational regimes, downwards tolocal and regional levels, and sideways in the form oftrans-local and regional linkages ( Jessop, 1997a).The net effect of this is that – in contrast to thenational Fordist spatial and ‘scalar fix’ (cf. Harvey,1989; Brenner, 1998) – there appears to be norelatively privileged level in and through whichother scales are managed ( Jessop, 1998; Peck andJessop, 1998). This ‘relativization of scale’ (cf.Collinge, 1996) and re-territorialization of statepower and institutional capacity has seriousimplications for the ways in which Europe’s citiesand regions are to be governed, particularly asregional and local states are seen to have accrued anenhanced role in such governance (Mayer, 1994).Indeed for Jessop, there has been a ‘regionalizationof regional policy’ in so far as ‘the “ownership” ofthe regional problem has been transferred toregional “stakeholders” albeit in most cases withsome financial and institutional support fromnational and supranational bodies’ ( Jessop, 1995b:13).

However, Jessop emphasizes that this de-nationalization of the state or hollowing out of stateactivity represents only one of three interrelatedtrends in state restructuring. The second, the de-statization of the political system (sometimescharacterized as a shift from government togovernance) is associated with a relative decline inthe state’s direct management and sponsorship of





socio-economic projects, and an analogousengagement of quasi- and non-state actors in a rangeof public–private projects. And the third, theinternationalization of policy regimes, alludes to: (a)the heightened strategic significance of theinternational and global contexts within which stateactors now operate; (b) the more significant role ofinternational policy communities and networks; (c)‘fast’ international policy transfer, as in, forexample, ‘workfare’ (Peck, 1998; Peck and Jessop,1998). Much of this is discernible to the extent thatthe key objective of socio-economic interventionby the emergent state form has shifted from aconcern to secure balanced (national) domesticgrowth towards an imperative to attaininternational economic competitiveness ( Jessop,1997b).

In many respects Jessop’s thesis of staterestructuring and scale relativization provides someuseful insights to explore changes in contemporaryEU governance – not least in the move todecentralize certain functions (Tömmel, 1997), thestress on competitiveness (CEC, 1994) and thespread of multi-agency partnership (Lloyd andMeegan, 1996). However, two key points requireclose attention (for fuller discussion see MacLeodand Goodwin, forthcoming). First, Jessop (1997a:20–2) has recently stressed that counter-tendenciesand counter-trends to the above may be found. Forinstance, even amidst what may amount to a generalprocess of ‘denationalization’, in specificcircumstances such as the struggle over Europeanmonetary union, national states are endeavoring toretain or reassert some influence in global andsupranational space. Second, as mentioned in theIntroduction, it is important to stress that ratherthan representing some deep explanatoryfoundation, all these instances of political economicchange are ‘essentially descriptive, synthetic, andgeneralized’ ( Jessop, 1995a: 1619). It is this struggleto provide explanation (though he was not targetingJessop per se) that has provoked Erik Swyngedouw(1996: 1500) to recently lament that ‘[Although] thethesis of state re-scaling has been advanced by anumber of authors . . . the actual mechanismsthrough which this process takes place remain vagueand under theorized’.

Although not making direct reference to thetheoretical writings above, Michael Keating (1997:386–90) has usefully traced the ongoing

recomposition of space within the EU to three setsof forces. First, functional restructuring, where, amidincreasing global constraints and territorialdependence upon (large) firms, national states are nolonger able to manage their space economies bytraditional redistributive regional policies and thestrategic placement of public investments. Rather,the emphasis has turned towards harvestingindigenous growth strategies, and for local andregional spaces to enact innovative ways to surviveand compete in the era of globalization andEuropean integration (also Amin and Tomaney,1995a).

The second force highlighted by Keating,institutional restructuring, is linked to the perceivedcrisis of the nation-state – sometimes referred to asthe ‘end of sovereignty’ (cf. Camilleri and Falk,1992). One result of this is that many Europeanstates have decentralized their institutions ofgovernment either in the name of ‘modernization’(cf. Tony Blair’s political presentation of the UKdevolution debates), or as a response to pressurefrom regionalist political movements; or,alternatively, as a means of enhancing national statepower by devolving certain responsibilities to local andregional stakeholders (cf. Lefebvre, 1976: 87; Peckand Tickell, 1994: 311). Finally, Keating cites thevarious political mobilizations – whether articulatedas ‘nationalism’ or ‘regionalism’ – as a key force instructuring Europe’s new regional scales ofgovernance (MacLeod, 1998b). Overall, Keatingusefully draws attention to the various forces thatmay be underpinning the formation of Euro-regional governance within specific spaces, and heprovides much food-for-thought in terms ofexploring the particular bottom-up processes andmechanisms of change. Nevertheless, Keating failsto provide the meso-level concepts with which onecan abstract from concrete-complex instances and tosubsequently penetrate these issues with theoreticalinsight.

It is in this context that the theoretical musings ofKevin Cox (Cox, 1993, 1995, 1998) and AndrewMair (Cox and Mair, 1991) on the politics of scalecould prove useful. According to Cox and Mair, thescale division of politics and, relatedly, themotivation activating particular territoriallyarticulated coalitions of interest, can be usefullyunderstood through the concept of ‘localdependence’,5 in particular, through an assessment





of the spaces and scales at which the relevant agentsare locally dependent.

Local dependence is seen to derive from threeaspects of contemporary sociospatiality (Cox andMair, 1991: 159). First, it emanates from thetendency for certain activities to be constrained tolocal-scale territories, as in the way that for a firm,the minimization of socially necessary labor timeimposes locational constraints. Similarly for people,the reproduction of labor power in time remainingafter work and sleep imposes tendencies towardsproximity of work and home. This territorialconstraint can also be recognized in the spatialstructure of the state, in, for example, the spatialpatterning of services such as policing and libraries.Second, a tendency to immobility on the part ofactors emerges as from a capitalist’s perspective,parts of the value form congeal as fixed capital (e.g.buildings) or ‘in place’ through locally embeddedinformational networks. Again, for people suchimmobilities emerge through ties to family or majorinvestments in housing or local knowledgestructures. And third, these tendencies towardsspatial constraint and immobility need to be seen asrelational to the geographical instability of widerscale social processes, whose mutual constitutioncondenses in the form of a particular scale division oflabor, defined as ‘the division of activities betweendifferent levels of the hierarchy of spatial scales’(Cox and Mair, 1991: 200).

Following on from these propositions, Cox andMair argue that, under contingent conditions, socialrelations of dependency interact to form a localizedsocial structure, or ‘a set of social relations at aparticular spatial scale, within which concreteinterests are defined’ (Cox and Mair, 1991: 197).The authors then claim that on analyticallyuncovering a ‘localized social structure’ –whereupon certain identities and local dependenciesare defined as ‘local’ and action is taken on this basis– it becomes conceptually viable to consider alocality as an agent. This is not to imply that for aspecific locality to become an agent, everyconstituent actor is to act in unison – as with mostother social structures, the locality internalizesconflict and contradiction. Rather, the key point tograsp is that mobilization must first be definedlocally (furnished with ‘local attachment’ andidentity, and involving locally allied members of a‘localized social structure’), whereupon such activity

occasions the emergent political capacity (i.e. thelocality as agent) to intervene in processes ofgeographical restructuring. The authors concludethat such an approach eludes spatial fetishism giventhat ‘locality’ has been defined in terms of socialrelations rather than physical properties (but seebelow). For Cox, such an approach also permits ourconception of local politics to be ‘critically linked toarguments about the territorial organization of thestate’ (Cox, 1993: 433).

More recently, Cox (1998) has sought to furtherenliven our conceptualization of local politics andthe fluid and contested nature of local dependence.As already indicated, actors – people, firms, stateagencies, etc. – attempt to secure the conditions forthe continued existence of their spaces ofdependence. However, certain agents onexperiencing a problematic relation to a particularspace of dependence, and when sufficientlymotivated and qualified to act, may – by way ofspecific enabling ‘networks of association’6 –construct what Cox terms a ‘space of engagement’through which to achieve some mitigation in theirconditions of existence. For Cox, it is in andthrough the articulation of such spaces ofengagement that the securing of spaces ofdependence and the related condensing of thepolitics of scale unfolds. One key implication of thisis that agents and the networks and associations thatthey form are not necessarily pre-defined byparticular ‘established’ spatially delimiting‘enclosures’. In other words, as outlined in thesection above, scales are not permanently fixed butare porous and contestable, all of which leads Cox(1998: 15, 17) to conclude that:

. . . the state’s scale division of labor is not an immovablehorizon. Organizations may have as their goal changingthat distribution of state powers and responsibilitiesrather than working within it. . . . In securing thoseconditions through which local interests and identitiescan be realized, organizations often have to constructnetworks with centers of social power that lie beyondtheir space of dependence.

This search to construct spatially more extensivenetworks of association and spaces of engagementresonates with earlier work on the ‘jumping ofscales’ – although these analyses tended to implythat such action was largely a prerogative of capital(Smith, 1984). Overall, I suggest that the theoretical





offerings of Cox and Mair could provide someinteresting angles with which to explore the politicalprocesses activating Euro-regional governance, thecontemporary hollowing out of the state, and theassociated relativization of scale. For instance, aconsideration of local dependence may help us toanalyze, relationally, the material conditions that, atleast in part, are serving to constitute scale,strategically, as a ‘representational trope/practice’( Jones, 1998), and structurally, as a partitionedgeographical matrix vis-a-vis the EU’s emergentscale division of labor. Similarly, the term space ofengagement may prove useful in interrogating thediverse ways in which localities and regions –anxious to compete in the era of globalization – areseeking to forge cross-border agreements and closerpartnership arrangements with the EuropeanCommission in order to secure funding.

And yet, this last sentence encapsulates perhapsthe key weakness in Cox and Mair’s approachtowards local and regional political economy – theirtendency to drift towards a fetishization of spacewhereby places are seen to take on a life of their own(cf. Duncan and Savage, 1989). However, incontrast to Cox and Mair, I argue that instead ofinterpreting cities like Glasgow itself acting withinEuropean political space, it is more appropriate toexplore the constitutive properties of particularplace-based and place-sensitive agents or coalitionsacting in the name of and on behalf of particularcities and regions. The case-study discussed below –the opening up of a space of engagement with theEuropean Commission by Strathclyde RegionalCouncil – provides a useful example of this. Inputting forward this argument, I argue for thedevelopment and deployment of middle-rangeconcepts which can more adequately analyzestrategic political economic action and which can, atthe same time, provide some analytical purchase onthe key agents concerned – a step that Cox and Mairfail to take.

It is in this context that I suggest an engagementwith Alain Lipietz’s work on ‘regional armatures’(1994a) and ‘territorial social blocs’ (1993). In his1994 essay on ‘The National and the Regional’(1994a), Lipietz draws a distinction between a space-in-itself and a space-for-itself. For Lipietz, the formerrefers to the purely objective and pre-reflectiveconditions determined by, among other things, themode of production, while the latter implies a

subjectively self-conscious region both in terms ofterritory and cognitive goal-oriented praxis. Toleave it at that would, however, leave us indulging ina spatial fetishism akin to that of Cox and Mair.Lipietz though draws on the ideas of Gramsci toconsider a regional armature as the spatiopoliticalexpression of a hegemonic social bloc. The latteritself is a term used to delineate ‘a stable system ofrelations of domination, alliances and concessionsbetween different social groups (dominant andsubordinate)’ (Lipietz, 1994b: 340; see also Jenson,1991). A regional armature thus represents aproactive space-for-itself only insofar as thehegemonic social bloc will seek to mobilize –through the construction of particular ‘spaces ofengagement’ (Cox, 1998) – certain ideological andpolitical apparatuses (for example, central-statebranches) on matters of socio-economic, political orcultural conflict. Similarly, a territorial social bloc canbe considered as a place-sensitive alliance of socialforces, granted, through political and social struggle,a legitimate capacity to act on behalf of a locality (cf.Cox and Mair, 1991).

Terms such as ‘regional armature’ and ‘territorialsocial bloc’ thus serve to abstract at a suitablymiddle-range the political and economic from thespatial (cf. Sayer, 1989). To this extent they can bedeployed to help uncover and centrally implicateinto the analysis the key agents occasioning thespecific ‘spaces of engagement’ referred to in Cox’swork. This conceptual route may also help toprovide additional political agency to regulationistwork on local and regional modes of regulation (Peckand Tickell, 1995; MacLeod, 1997), by drawingattention to which forces regulate (cf. Jenson, 1991),whether locally, regionally, or nationally, and inrelation to whom or what with regard to the wider-scale division of labor. Nevertheless, Lipietz’s ownstress on dominant classes as vanguards in theformation of regional armatures can itself obscurethe relative autonomy and constitutive agencies ofregional state politicians and bureaucrats (cf.Poulantzas, 1978), and the extent to which territorialblocs can often be constituted out of the actions ofsuch agents.

The discussion below seeks to deploy a synthesisof the above theoretical insights – Jessop on staterestructuring, Cox (and Mair) on scale dependenciesand networks of engagement, and Lipietz on thespatiopolitical determination of such social relations





– towards an analysis of the Strathclyde EuropeanPartnership. The latter’s sociospatiality is thuspartly explored in and through the shifting scaledivision of the (British) state (Duncan andGoodwin, 1988) and its representational practicesand ‘tropes’ – most notably, the scale-dependentactivities of local government. In this sense, I followJane Jenson’s (1993: 339) edict that ‘theconfiguration of the political opportunity structurecannot be analyzed without first inquiring aboutwho the actors are’, by seeking to unveil the agentswhose determinate social action was to becomematerially and symbolically active in constitutingStrathclyde’s own particular brand of Euro-regionalgovernance. The next section sets the scene for thisby briefly reviewing some recent changes in EUregional policy.

The ‘Regions of a Europe’: ‘treasurechests’, partnerships, and programmes

Although eluding precise definition, the ‘Europe ofthe Regions’ concept has generally come to imply –as in the case of the hollowing out and relativizationof scale thesis – a new distribution of functionalresponsibility between different levels ofgovernment within the EU (Teague, 1995). Asidefrom the more general arguments made by Keating(cited above), some key political moments in thisinclude the Single European Act which, on thesurface at least, reduced the role of the nation-stateas a ‘gatekeeper’ (Anderson, 1990), and reforms ofthe EU Structural Funds (SFs) (Marks, 1993).Following the origins of EU regional policy in 1975,7

the SFs – most notably the European RegionalDevelopment Fund (ERDF) and the EuropeanSocial Fund (ESF) – have assumed the mainresponsibility for tackling regional socio-economicdisparities. The successive reforms to the SFs (1989and 1993)8 were undertaken amid growingconsciousness of the need to tackle more effectivelythe sharp interregional inequalities in productivityand employment that had emerged throughout theEU since the onset of the Fordist crisis in the 1970s(Dunford, 1994).9 One notable qualitative shift inSF governance has been the emphasis placed on thenotion of partnership, defined as: ‘close consultationsbetween the Commission, the member states

concerned and the competent authorities and bodiesat national, regional, local or other level with allparties acting, as partners, in pursuit of a commongoal (Council Regulation 50552/88, Article 4; citedin Tömmel, 1997: 418). Such principles are viewedto have licensed a greater interaction between theregions and the EU. Not least in this regard hasbeen the Commission’s growing aspiration to deliverSF policies for engendering EU ‘cohesion’ asprogrammes – termed Single ProgrammeDocuments (Community Support Frameworksbefore 1993) – in close association with subnationalgovernments and institutions. As part of this drive,the Commission has encouraged into the decision-making process those from ‘outside the traditional[framework for] public administration’ alongside theindigenous regional social partners (Hall, 1998: 177).Parallel to this, a number of advisory structures haveemerged to help embed this fledgling ‘Europe of theRegions’ milieu, including the Consultative Councilof Regional and Local Authorities (instituted after1989), and the Committee of the Regions whichemerged in 1993 following ratification of theMaastricht Treaty. The Committee’s key role is toadvise the Council of Ministers and the Commissionon all matters involving regional interests (Tömmel,1997). In addition, various transnational local-authority networks have emerged centering onspecific industrial or geographical interests(Benington and Harvey, 1994), while the‘networking paradigm’ (Cooke and Morgan, 1993) isgiven further inflection through initiatives such as‘Eurocities’ and the Association of European regions(S. Martin, 1998). Some analysts see this relativelyyouthful institutional tissue as providingopportunities for local and regional authorities tochallenge the dominance of national governments inboth internal and global affairs (Marks, 1993;McAteer and Mitchell, 1996; cf. John, 1996).

This emergent Euro-regional form of governanceis interesting in a number of respects. Not least ofthese is that within certain local contexts, Europeanfunding has become conceived of as something of ‘atreasure chest of funds for development at a time ofsharp [national] fiscal stringency’ (Lloyd andMeegan, 1996: 78). In effect, we are seeing arelativization of the ‘scale division of labor’ and localand regional dependency with regard to publicfunding which had transpired in the Fordist era ofnationally governed spatial policy (see below).





Moreover, whereas the principles underlyingtraditional regional policy tended to conceive ofnational space as primarily an economic terrain forfirms to exploit, the EU has slowly come to perceiveof its regions as decentralized entities in their ownright: as constituted places or ‘relational assets’ (cf.Storper, 1997) playing host to an ensemble of vitalinstitutional forms and social atmospheres.10 Indeedmany of the Commission’s structural initiatives nowallude to the existence of some form of effective andintegrative regional body which can design anddeliver strategic Single Programme Documents(SPDs) to tackle economic development and fostersocial cohesion (CEC, 1994). In a sense, this can beread as a European-wide call to fashion robustterritorially based blocs and regional armatures tohelp constitute regions as active spaces-for-themselves. (The language of spatial fetishism oftenpermeates the Commission as well!)

However, unlike most EU member states,Britain does not as yet play host to a structurallycoherent form of regional governance with whichto condense such initiatives.11 This factor has beennoted in the Commission’s assessment that ‘in theUK there is still a need for greater participation byrepresentatives of local and regional authorities’(CEC, 1994: 65).12 On such themes, Greenwood etal. (1995) argue that within unitary states theabsence of significant regional ‘policycommunities’ can enable national governments toremain as ‘gatekeeper’, and to cynically substituteSF money for national regional spending, therebyskirting round the EU principles of ‘additionality’and ‘subsidiarity’ (see also Loughlin, 1996).Moreover, within the broader EU politicaluniverse, local authorities continue to be excludedfrom the key negotiations between theCommission and member-state governments (S.Martin, 1998), while much of what amounts to themost critical of EU policy formulation isundertaken within the Council of Ministers andthereby articulated via national member-staterepresentation (Amin and Tomaney, 1995a). It isin this context that the Strathclyde EuropeanPartnership is of interest – in particular themanner in which Strathclyde’s Euro-consciousterritorial bloc sought to assert itself within theEU’s political milieu, and to enact a fresh politicalspace of engagement.

Political structuration of the StrathclydeEuropean Partnership

Fashioning a political ‘space of engagement’

The Strathclyde European Partnership (SEP)represents an independent, integrated institutionalnexus for the governance and disbursement of EUStructural Funds, and the focal point for engagingover 180 different agencies in the promotion ofeconomic development in the West CentralScotland area. This area (Figure 1) accommodates2.3m people – 45 percent of Scotland’s total – andis described as one of the ‘cradles of the industrialrevolution’, experiencing a rapid growth of steel,shipbuilding, textiles and heavy engineeringduring the 19th century (Scottish Office, 1988).However, between the 1960s and 1980s, the regionsuffered a catastrophic deindustrialization of thesesectors; a process compounded by the fact thatrelative to some other West European spaces, theregion had failed to fully embark on the pathwayto a Fordist accumulation dynamic. As aconsequence, along with other older industrialspaces such as the UK’s North East, West CentralScotland became politically constituted as a‘problem region’ (see MacLeod, 1998a onScotland; and for general discussion Massey,1984; Hudson, 1989). It is this deindustrializationand the related impact of prolonged socio-economic disadvantage13 that has precipitatedsome major initiatives to regenerate the area14 andits eventual designation, following politicallobbying, as an EU Objective 2 area15 (ScottishOffice, 1988).

Between 1975 and 1994, the region’smanufacturing employment fell by 209,700 (59.6percent). Current levels of managerial andadministrative employment (particularly private-sector) are very low, and over half of all women anda quarter of all men are classified as ‘economicallyinactive’ (SEP, 1997a). To help tackle thesestructural problems, a form of what Lipietz (1993)calls a ‘territorial social bloc’ coalesced to puttogether the Western Scotland Objective 2 RegionalPlan 1994–9. This was ‘produced by a team drawnfrom the principal economic and social developmentorganizations in Western Scotland’ (Scottish Office,1994: i), and subsequently ‘agreed between theEuropean Commission, the UK government






Figure 1 Western ScotlandObjective 2 areaSource: Scottish Office (1994).



[Scottish Office] and the regional partnership’ (SEP,1997a: 5). This Regional Plan is the strategyimplemented by the SEP, and embodies ‘a plan forpartnership actions to strengthen WesternScotland’s capacity to create and sustain wealth,[and] thereby achiev[e] convergence with otherEuropean regions’ (Scottish Office, 1994: 1).

On a number of levels, the Plan’s strategicorientation typifies Jessop’s ‘internationalization ofpolicy’ theme, not least in efforts to adopt aSchumpeterian offensive to: (a) enhance thecompetitiveness of the company base; and (b) ensurethe necessary conditions to sustain competitivenessand economic growth. It also recognizes theheightened strategic significance of the post-Keynesian, informational global context in terms ofits four key considerations (see also Figure 2):

• technological and corporate change• globalization and image• learning skills• environmental sustainability.

However, to comprehend the strategic moments and‘constituent relationships’ (cf. Sayer, 1989) in thepolitical structuration of this complex, indeed rathernebulous institutional form, we need to go back tothe early 1980s. In particular, we need to explore theendeavors of the Labour Party-controlledStrathclyde Regional Council to fashion a new spaceof engagement (Cox, 1998) in order to enact aparticular form of proactive Euro-regionalization.From the time it was created in 1975 – as part of anew two-tier scaling of local government featuringdistrict and regional authorities (the latter havingresponsibility for strategic planning) – theStrathclyde political bloc identified economicdevelopment as a key function (Danson et al., 1997:12). Nevertheless, in this policy sphere, localauthorities in urban Scotland as in the UK generallyhad throughout the postwar Fordist era becomeaccustomed to and in effect locally dependent uponregional aid or ‘spatial Keynesianism’ (R. Martin,1989). This was focused around a strategicallyselective and nationally administered regionalredistribution of industry.

Indeed, in general, throughout theFordist–Keynesian era, the scalar matrix of the UKstate saw local government primarily engaged –albeit not uniformly – in the expanded provision ofsocial services such as education, health and

housing, or ‘collective consumption’ (Saunders,1984), and physical infrastructure such as roads andtransport (Stoker, 1990). Within this prevailingwelfarist regime, scale division of the state (Cox,1993) and associated representational practices( Jones, 1998), local authorities were largelyunaccustomed to large-scale financing of industrialand economic renewal. They were therebysomewhat disinclined to shoulder what theyperceived to be the financial responsibility of centralgovernment (SRC officer, 1995).

However, after the election of the first Thatchergovernment in 1979, the political and economicclimate changed. The welfarist consensuscharacteristic of the postwar era was assaulted, andas part of the new Thatcherite Weltanschuung led by‘free enterprise’, regional aid was politically de-legitimized and targeted for reduction on thegrounds that it created economic ‘dependence’ onthe ‘nanny state’ (R. Martin, 1992). Of course, thisdid not alter the fact that the spatial effectivity ofparticular national state-led industrial policies –such as the concentration of high-tech defensewithin the UK’s South East – left some localitiesand regions being favored over others (Peck andTickell, 1995). And if we turn this round to theperspective of local government, however (and atthe same time apply Cox’s [1998: 2] schema), thisThatcherite national political strategy amounted to areal threat to the postwar Keynesian institutionaland scalar fix and its deeply embedded local ‘spacesof dependence’.

These changes in the national regime providedmuch of the context for what was to become a veryinteresting and experimental, if highly fraught,period in the history of UK local government andlocal politics (Boddy and Fudge, 1984; Duncan andGoodwin, 1988; Goodwin et al., 1993). Some left-wing Labour-controlled local councils in urbanEngland fashioned their own quite radical‘alternative economic strategies’ and, through acerebral new urban Left, sought to challenge theideological hegemony of Thatcherism. UrbanScotland, although predominantly Labour-controlled, did not experience this proliferation ofradical initiatives, perhaps in part owing to thepresence of the Scottish Office and the ScottishDevelopment Agency as consensus-inducingintermediaries (Keating and Boyle, 1986).Nonetheless, in the early 1980s, amid an atmosphere





of intensifying fiscal retrenchment, and consciousthat central government was relinquishingresponsibility for addressing inter- and intraregionalinequalities (all of which relates to Jessop’s staterestructuring thesis), many Scottish local authoritiesreconsidered their own institutional integrity toestablish departments and units dedicated toeconomic development (Glasgow District Councilofficer, 1994).

Drawing on the insights of the theoreticalliterature outlined above, these changes can beinterpreted as attempts by key political actors toreconfigure the British state’s scale division of labor(Cox and Mair, 1991). And, furthermore, suchpolitical endeavors can be seen to constitute much ofthe active ‘agency’ in the structuration of the Britishstate, and its own particular imprint of hollowingout throughout the 1980s and 1990s ( Jessop, 1995a).

Paralleling all this, Strathclyde Regional Council

(SRC) was to become increasingly frustrated withThatcherite hostility to regional aid. Conscious ofsome funding opportunities within the EU, SRCassumed the mantle of a ‘regional armature’(Lipietz, 1994a) to bypass the formal channels ofUK government (effectively ‘jumping scales’) inorder to articulate a new space of engagement (Cox,1998) with the European Commission in Brussels.Then, by harnessing informal ‘networks ofassociation’ within the Commission and with theadvantage of its size, resource, scale and scope, theSRC armature was able to initiate the secondment ofan official to Brussels. Fuelled with this additionalon-the-ground informational capacity, it obtained itsfirst £1m grant from the European Social Fundtowards an Employment Grants Scheme (EGS).16 Stillin operation in the mid-1990s and supporting 2500companies a year, the EGS is seen as virtually thefirst attempt to channel direct ‘soft’ input from EC



Figure 2 Strategic Objectives of SEPSource: Scottish Office (1994: 12).



funding into a business development scheme asopposed to ‘hard’ road and infrastructural schemes.The following quotation also helps to uncover thestrategic thinking underpinning these fledglingefforts on the part of the Strathclyde territorialsocial bloc to construct a new space of engagement inthe structuration of its own brand of Euro-regionalism:

The Conservative Government realized that theEuropean Regional Development Fund (ERDF) wasbeing used to do things which they did not believe wasright ideologically, so they managed to prevent that untilthe late 1980s. But they had made the mistake of puttinginto the realm of public expenditure . . . through WhitePapers . . . initiatives which allowed for local schemes,which were funded by the European Social Fund (ESF). . . The trick was that whilst the Government controlledthe ERDF, they had not really noticed the ESF, and sothey did not realize what we were doing. We applieddirectly and nobody stopped us. Nobody picked it up. Sowe got away with it long enough. It was also all to becomequite significant.

(Strathclyde Regional Council Officer, 1995)

However, there was also a symbiotic dimension tothis re-scaling of regional policy. As outlined in theprevious section, the Commission itself was keen toqualitatively reform its Structural Funds and torefashion them as an instrument for genuineCommunity policies. And while, initially, theseEuro-regional networks of association were largelyconcerned with resource procurement, as the 1980sprogressed such processes developed ‘an ideologicalforce’ being envisaged by the Commission (not leastDelors) as a way of cutting out member states (SRCofficer, 1995). In turn, the 1980s saw a rapidproliferation in the number of subnationalgovernmental lobbyists in Brussels, StrathclydeRegion itself being already ahead of the game in thissphere. Moreover, under the political leadership ofCharles Gray, (who was to become an energeticdelegate on both the Assembly of European Regionsand the Consultative Council of Local and RegionalAuthorities), the SRC’s political constitution ofStrathclyde as a ‘space-for-itself ’ earned itconsiderable credibility within EU politicalnetworks (McAleavey and Mitchell, 1994). And aspart of a pan-European social bloc (involving otherdeindustrializing areas like Nord Pas-de-Calais andWest Yorkshire), the Strathclyde regional armaturebecame an influential voice in articulating the

parameters of EU spatial policy, most notably in the‘defense’ of Objective 2 funding (McAleavey andMitchell, 1994).

The processes outlined above provide a usefulillustration of the ways in which the formation of akey site of Euro-regional governance can be tracedto changes in the structural form and strategiccapacity of the state – at both central and localscales. By drawing on Lipietz’s work it also becomespossible to situate the structuration of the SEPwithin the context of the political activity of astrategic territorial bloc or regional armaturerepresenting and acting on behalf of, and operatingin the name of a region enduring protracted socio-economic decline. The processes described abovealso provide an instance of Cox’s (1998) argumentthat the state’s scale division of labor (for instance,in relation to the functions of central and localgovernment) does not constitute an immovablehorizon, and, furthermore, that, in seeking newspaces of engagement, organizations often have toconstruct networks with centers lying beyond theirerstwhile spaces of dependence.

In what sense a regional partnership?17

I am in no doubt that historically the only reason that thisstructure [the Strathclyde European Partnership] exists isbecause there was a well established regional authoritythat could take an overview of the regional economicissues, and negotiate and broker a collaborative solutionwith all the other authorities involved. And thensuccessfully broker that solution to the point where theycould forward a credible argument for European funds.Without strong regional government that would not havebeen possible.

(Strathclyde European Partnership officer, 1995)

The previous section sought to explore how theStrathclyde territorial bloc had begun to adjudge theEU scale as an increasingly germanerepresentational trope ( Jones, 1998) in and throughwhich to lobby for economic assistance –particularly given its vulnerable scale dependenceupon the UK state for financial aid. One spin-offfrom this new politics of place was that the SRCgained considerable informational and politicalcapital within the EU structures of politicalopportunity. Thus availed, in the mid-1980s the





SRC approached the Commission with regard to theNational Programme of Community Interest, whichran between 1984 and 1987 and had a range of sitesthroughout Europe where locally generated requestsfor European funds were considered. ThisProgramme agreed to commit £64m ERDF toinfrastructure projects in the Glasgow area (SEP,1997a). Encouraged by this, in late 1987 the SRCinitiated discussions with the Commission torequest the operation of one of the Structural FundProgrammes. This was subsequently approved inDecember 1988, adopting the name of theStrathclyde Integrated Development Operation, andrepresented the first instance within the UK of alocal implementation of Structural Fundsundertaken by public agencies (SEP officer, 1994).The model was also encouraged by the Commissionand the Scottish Office as a way of furtherintegrating the regional partners in the Programme’smanagement (SEP, 1997a).

Cognizant of this fledgling philosophy ofdecentralization, the Strathclyde territorial blocfurther lobbied the Commission to decree thatfuture funding would only continue in the form ofsuch locally governed Integrated DevelopmentOperations (IDOs) (SRC officer, 1995). With theCommission fully supportive of this, the UKgovernment, desperate to reap any availableEuropean funds, had little choice but to agree. Andalthough the IDO committees were to be chaired byScottish Office officials, the programme itself was tobe managed by an independent ‘ProgrammeExecutive’ situated in the indigenous area (ScottishOffice Education and Industry Department[SOEID] officer, 1995). With the StrathclydeRegional Council largely responsible for the designof the plan, it was agreed that one of its officials beseconded as Programme Director of the IDOexecutive. This structure – which has since beenapplied to three other regions of Scotland – is seento have enabled local decision making on both policyand project applications (Danson et al., 1997).

The Strathclyde IDO ran from 1988 to 1992,accumulating £232m ERDF and £42m ESF, withprojects concentrating on business development,industrial sites and premises, transport, water andsewerage, environmental improvements, tourism,vocational training facilities and training schemes(Scottish Office, 1994). There then followed asingle-year programme for 199318 before

submissions for the 1994–9 period, whereupon theIDO assumed the name Strathclyde EuropeanPartnership. It is also worth pointing out that the1994–9 Regional Plan submission is itself split intotwo: the 1994–6 programme (£215m) and 1997–9(£237m) (SEP, 1997a, 1997b).

Since 1989, the number of ‘partners’ (in effect,agencies eligible for funding) has risen from 45 toover 180 (SEP, 1997b). To accommodate this, in the1992–3 period, the SEP had to remodel its originalparticipative governance mode (whereby all theorganizations in receipt of funds19 would be onrelevant committees), towards a more representativeform of decision making (SEP officer, 1995). Thepartnership’s representational regime has thuscontinued to mutate not least as a consequence ofthe Conservative government’s controversialdecision to restructure Scottish local government in1996 to 32 single-tier authorities.

One effect of this was to abolish StrathclydeRegion. Of necessity, this has altered the originalarms-length relationship that existed between theSEP and Strathclyde Region in terms of staffing,physical location, and networking capacity (SEPofficial, 1996). The post-1996 regime sees a fullyindependent Board of Management withrepresentation from some new local councils, LocalEnterprise Companies, and further educationinstitutions. The Board of Management represents asubcommittee of the Monitoring Committee (itselfchaired by a senior Scottish Office official) whichhas overall responsibility for strategy and policydecisions. Under this lies the ManagementCommittee, which reflects the particular sectoraland spatial interests of the Partnership, and is thelevel for deciding on project policy. Feeding intothis are the Specific Advisory Groups whose job isto design strategies and recommend projects to befunded (SEP, 1997a). This structure requiresparticularly effective cohesion between theProgramme Director and the Chair of theMonitoring Committee: not least because theadministrative payment of all grants is made via theScottish Office Education and IndustryDepartment, which in 1994 assumed responsibilityfor disbursement of the Structural Funds (ScottishOffice, 1994). Moreover, it is the Scottish Officethat directly appoints the representatives on theMonitoring Committee, rendering the SEP in somekey respects characteristic of a quango, although one





very weightily skewed towards public-sectorappointees. This representational form has led oneScottish Office official to describe it as a ‘publicsector club’ (see also Lloyd and Meegan, 1996 onthe North of England).

In terms of the SEP’s broader representationalregime, the recruitment of local authorities, ‘third-sector’ local development agencies and the voluntarysector has been successfully accomplished, andmechanisms are also ‘in place to ensure that theMonitoring Committee is representative of differentconstituencies of interest’ (SOEID official, 1995). Insome significant senses then, this capacity for at leastsome local institutional input, alongside therelatively devolved nature of the SEP’s mode ofgovernance, provides some degree of what Dunfordand Hudson (1996) term ‘decentralization of“choice” ’, whereby policy goals can be decided atthe local and regional level. Dunford and Hudsoncontrast this with ‘decentralization ofadministration’ whereby ‘some central governmentfunctions are devolved to local or regionalgovernment [merely] in pursuit of more cost-effective administration and the implementation ofcentral government policies’ (1996: 161).Nevertheless, this ‘choice’ is bridled somewhat inthat the formal control over the SEP’s governance isorganized through a devolved bureaucratic realm,and beyond the parameters of electedrepresentatives. Analytically, it is also worthstressing that, given the strong hand of the ScottishOffice in the institutional shaping of the SEP, anynotable shift towards governance is only occurring inthe shadow of the UK government (cf. Jessop,1997a; and, on the UK generally, MacLeod andGoodwin, forthcoming).

Moreover, the SEP’s representational geometryexcludes the social partners, which althoughultimately a decision internal to particular memberstates, does not comply with the recommendationsof the Commission (CEC, 1994: 128). While suchinstitutional ‘thinness’ may permit a more strategicform of executive management, it may on the otherhand be self-limiting particularly when oneconsiders the important role traditionallyundertaken within Central Scotland by the tradeunions, CBI Scotland, trade associations andChambers of Commerce (Danson et al., 1997). AsDanson et al. (1997: 14) outline, ‘involving suchgroups would contribute valuable knowledge, widen

ownership of the programme and give it a greatercredibility and legitimacy’. Indeed, as outlined inmuch recent commentary (Amin and Thrift, 1994;Morgan, 1997; Storper, 1997), the presence of adynamic collective representation, a wide knowledgebase, and relations of local institutional mutualityand trust, are viewed to be increasingly vital inanimating strategies for effective regional-scalesocio-economic development and governance.

Not that the strategic policy direction of the SEPhas remained static. In line with the Commission’sendeavor to raise the innovative capacity of Europe’sless-favored regions (Morgan, 1997, and below), thePartnership has seen a move away from the earlierphysical infrastructural projects, such as roadbuilding, towards ‘softer’ infostructure (Morgan,1998) measures, now focused around five priorities(SEP, 1997a):

1. Small and Medium Enterprises and LocalServices2. Applied Research, Technological Developmentand Innovation, which includes a RegionalInnovation Strategy (under Article 10 of the ERDFRegulations) initiated early in 19973. Strategic Spatial Development, centering on thedevelopment of certain key locations across WesternScotland4. Tourism and Culture, with a new emphasis onthe arts, culture, film and media sectors5. Community Economic Development, gearedtowards reducing unemployment and increasingeconomic activity in 23 designated areas withinWestern Scotland.

The stress on regional innovation and technology isgiven grounds for legitimacy by the fact that at 0.4percent, corporate expenditure on R&D in Scotlandis only a quarter of that in England. Furthermore,within the West Central region, much remainingmanufacturing activity is low value-added, lackingfirst-tier suppliers and innovative medium-sizedcompanies with growth potential (SEP, 1997a).However, the gradual remission of policy measuresfor land and physical renewal cannot mask thelegacy of physical scars in the form of over 5700 haof vacant and derelict land, 40 percent of which hasbeen untreated since 1981 (Scottish Office, 1994).On top of this, there is a real lack of qualitycommunications services compounded by theregion’s peripherality in light of the centripetal





effects of the Single European Market (SEP officer,1995; for a general discussion see Amin andTomaney, 1995a). These examples illustrate thestrategic dilemmas faced by public and quasi-publicagencies when tackling economic governance inreconversion spaces amid the contemporary era ofinstitutional complexity, economic uncertainty, andsocio-environmental risk (Storper, 1997).

In no sphere of policy formulation are these risksand complexities more manifest than in the effort torevitalize areas of multiple deprivation. As generalconcern mounts over ‘social fragmentation andsocial exclusion’ throughout the EU, somecommentators have begun to speculate about a‘Victorian nightmare of a large and highlydifferentiated “displaced” section of society [that]has returned to haunt the whole of Europe’ (Aminand Tomaney, 1995b: 35; also Lovering, 1998).Such concerns are acutely pertinent for WestCentral Scotland and other deindustrialized and lessfavored regions ‘locked into’ an institutional milieubetter disposed to earlier phases of economicdevelopment (Hudson et al., 1997). The SEP’s own1997–9 Programme has established the additionalintroduction of a targeted priority, which aims toachieve ‘economic and social cohesion’ (itself neverdefined) in 20 of the communities with the highestrates of unemployment. This is certainly a laudablestrategic initiative, but represents a mammoth task.Alongside the economic frailties just mentioned,Western Scotland contains 90 percent of Scotland’sworst 10 percent of enumeration districts, and 23percent of the region’s population are dependent onincome support (compared to 10 percent for the restof Scotland) (SEP, 1997a). And, as with the UKgenerally, the gap between wealthy and poorlocalities and neighborhoods has widened. Forinstance:

In 1971, male unemployment in the peripheral housingestate of Castlemilk was 10 per cent higher than in theneighboring affluent suburb of Eastwood. By 1991, thegap had grown to 35 per cent. Substantial numbers ofpeople in the poorer communities are now effectivelyexcluded from the labor market. This exclusion haslocked many individuals and families into a cycle ofunemployment, poverty and social deprivation that isextremely difficult to break out of. (SEP, 1997a: 14)

Clearly, the whole question of social exclusion andsociospatial polarization between and within

Europe’s cities and regions will continue to be apolicy priority not just for local, regional andnational actors, but also for any emerging Europeanpolitical economic settlement (see Brown andCrompton, 1994).

Euro-regionalism: reconfiguring the scalesof dependence?

The points raised in the preceding discussion –when considered alongside the geographicalperipherality of Scotland – highlight the extent towhich the securing of EU funds represents ‘a task ofprimary importance’ (McAteer and Mitchell, 1996).And in many respects this European ‘treasure chest’has undoubtedly provided vital support in easingWest Central Scotland’s uncomfortable economictransition beyond traditionalist decline anddependent Fordism. Substantively – in terms of thephysical, socio-economic and environmental renewalof places like West Central Scotland – this new orbitof regional assistance has proven to be invaluable.Without it, deindustrialization would have beeneven more widespread and poverty andunemployment even more entrenched. In turn,though, one significant outcome of this emergingpolicy milieu is that these localities and regions havebecome increasingly dependent on EU programmesand, reciprocally, have ‘provide[d] the EuropeanCommission with greater influence overregeneration strategies’ (S. Martin, 1998: 237).

It is in these regards that the above accountdemonstrates a requirement to pay attention to thequestion of political agency. Like representativesfrom a number of declining industrial spaces,Strathclyde’s regional armature has sought toestablish what Cox (1998) terms a new ‘space ofengagement’ with the EU for added and/oralternative assistance, particularly when oneconsiders the broader context whereby national(UK) regional aid has been downsized. But theseplace-political practices also have two importantimplications with regard to the theories outlined inthe early part of this paper. First, by opening upnew spaces of engagement in the securing of EUfunds, regional armatures (Lipietz, 1994a) arehelping to actively construct new scales of dependence(Cox, 1998), both in terms of regional aid and





informational flows. And second, this process ofEU-regional associationalism, or Euro-regionalism,is itself an active ingredient in the contemporaryrelativization of scale ( Jessop, 1998), and in thegeometrical reconfiguration of the governance ofspatial policy between localities, regions, states, andsupranational regimes. In turn, it becomes possibleto understand these processes of Euro-regionalismas in themselves active ingredients in the hollowingout of the state or in the establishment of ‘multi-level’ governance.

In policy terms, however, some serious questionsneed to be raised about the sustainability of thisemergent Euro-regionalism. Quite simply, one canno longer suspend the notion that in the longer-term, any deeper entrenchment of this tangled scalardivision of state policies becomes increasinglyfraught with its own insecurities. Much of this ismade transparent from a reading of the EuropeanCommission’s Agenda 2000. With the many-sidedtransformations in the political economic map ofEurope to consider – not least the future‘enlargement’ of the EU through the accession ofthe poorer Eastern member states – the ‘established’status of the Structural Funds (particularlyObjective 2) has already become a political space ofcontestation (Fothergill, 1998). And here, in anumber of arenas, the political struggle over space,scale and existing boundaries will undoubtedlyprove to be critical. Perhaps it is with growingcognizance of these now quite firmly entrenchedEuro-regional scale dependencies and associateddangers of ‘subsidy lock-in’ (Storper, 1997) that theSEP partners are finding themselves ‘at the startingline for the many meetings, discussions andpresentations which will take place on the future ofthe EU funding in the region’ (SEP, 1997c: 4).

As indicated several times in the precedingdiscussion, however, much recent academicdiscourse on regional renewal has seen an intensifiedappeal for and entrustment of regions – or theirassociated representatives – to harness moreindigenously constituted innovation strategies (seeMorgan, 1997). However, the interactivenetworking, trust, and other such forms ofcollaborative economic behavior which are seen tounderpin regional innovation, are neither easilytransported from their ‘home’ base (e.g. Baden-Wurttemberg), nor likely to emerge throughpolitical fiat. Efforts to raise the innovative capacity

of reconversion regions represent a long-termprocess with no guarantees (Morgan, 1998).

But in the shorter to medium term, the danger isthat EU enlargement and any associated reworkingof the Structural Funds will impact most starklyupon Europe’s less favored spaces and furtherintensify a depressing map of inequality, featuringsome ‘winners’ and (many more) ‘losers’ (seeDunford, 1994). All of which links into aninteresting issue concerning the overall strength of aCommunity-wide collective will to actively enforceequitable social policies in line with the EU cohesionmeasures. As the EU faces enlargement and relatedstruggles over its own scale, alongside efforts to‘deepen’ its economic and political fabric, EUregional policy, if not necessarily facing imminent‘death’ (Fothergill, 1998), would certainly appear tobe arriving at a ‘crossroads’ of critical proportions(cf. Albrechts et al., 1989).

Conclusions: placing politics in thestructuration of new scalar fix

Abstract theories cannot be imposed on a fluid contingentreality, forcing social life to conform to the rigidexpectations of the theorist . . . . Variations of social lifeare held to be central to the understanding of regions, notepiphenomenal products of overarching structures.

(Warf, 1993: 166–7)

The Strathclyde European Partnership (SEP)provides an interesting case-study of an emergingtrend in the governance of regional developmentwithin the European Union. On the surface, with itsdecentralized and relatively plural institutionalconfiguration, it would certainly appear to symbolizesome of the key features of the denationalized,hollowed out form of the state discussed by Jessopamong others. However, the argument in this paperis that to merely assert the SEP as an outcome ofsome ineluctable structural transition to a post-Fordist economy and hollowed out state will tell uslittle about the political structuration or institutionalshaping of any emerging map of Euro-regionalgovernance. To understand the eccentric anduneven contours of the latter, we would be well-advised to explore the determinate social relationsand ‘politics of place’ and ‘scale’ that serve to





activate particular instances of Euro-regionalism. Inother words, in accordance with a structurationistreading, and as similarly stressed in the discourse-regulation approach of Jenson (1991: 47) (adaptingMarx), ‘only in specific places and times is itpossible to observe the meeting of the general andthe particular, with politics being an historicalconstruction, of people making their own historyalbeit never under conditions of their ownchoosing’.

In drawing this paper to a close, and withreference to the above case-study, I wish to raisethree key themes that may be useful to considerwhen conducting future research in European urbanand regional studies. First, in analyzing local andregional governance in general, as outlined byGoodwin et al. (1993: 83) ‘we cannot speak of someundifferentiated movement away from one type ofregulation towards another . . . [but instead] need toconceive of a whole series of movements betweenthe differing structures and strategies of regulationoperating at overlapping scales’ (see also Peck andTickell, 1995). In the case-study here, it isimportant to stress that the European Commission’sgeneral and growing appetite for locally constituted‘programme’ delivery, was to articulate with: (1) thepolitical energy of Strathclyde Region’s social bloc –and its anxiety about existing structures ofdependence vis-a-vis the UK state; (2) the UKstate’s own awareness of the need to facilitate ratherthan constrain additional European financial aid. Allof this can be seen to have formed a ‘politicallydriven fix’ (SRC officer, 1995), and in some keyrespects it represents part and parcel of an ongoingendeavor to construct a post-Keynesian and post-national, multi-scalar fix (see Jessop, 1998).

Second, the SEP case-study highlights the valueof considering the political structuration of scalessuch as ‘city’, ‘region’, Britain or Europe. In otherwords, urban and regional analysis ought toincreasingly sensitize itself to the ‘processes’ ofpolitical economic change. To this extent, it isuseful to comprehend particular scales (such as theurban or regional) as relational, as politicalconstructions, and that, furthermore, any erstwhilegeographies of scale are only constitutive andreflective of the political practices of strategicagents, and their own respective scale dependencies(Cox, 1993). Indeed, to seriously explore thesestruggles over the scaling of institutions could help

us to uncover the social, economic, political, andideological forces that appear to be constitutingspecific scales such as the ‘region’ (Storper, 1997)and multi-scalar matrices such as Euro-regionalismas the hegemonic scalar fixes of late capitalism.

In turn, this would get us away from focusingsynchronically on hollowing out and associatedinstitutional reconfigurations, and to begin toestablish a diachronic historical, geographic andsociological reading of institutional formation. Allthis is also of vital importance in helping to seriouslyexplore the ideology of place and region in thestructuration of regional governance (cf. Amin andThrift, 1994; MacLeod and Jones, 1999). In theexample above, spatially uneven development wasbeing discursively constructed as a political problemfor state action, and the Strathclyde social blocsought to engage new listeners and new spaces ofengagement. As these Euro-regional politicalpractices have spread across the European Union (inpart facilitated by the Commission’s strategy formore closely engaging regional ‘partners’), they havemade their own contribution towards a generalrestructuring of the territorial organization of thestate ( Jessop, 1998), and a re-scaling of its divisionof labor (Cox, 1993). And all of this has effectivelyserved to constitute a re-scaling of dependence.

Third, this paper also responds to calls to paymore respect to the ‘uniqueness’ of places.20 Whilethis call can, in part, be traced to human geography’sarticulation with the postmodern challenge21 (Dear,1988), political and economic geography in generalhas become noticeably more attentive to questions ofcontingency, contextuality, and cultural complexitywhen analyzing space, place and locality (Beynonand Hudson, 1993; Warf, 1993). One key point tostress, however, is that none of this respect forcontingency or contextuality implies that the ‘local’or the ‘regional’ is any more concrete or any lessworthy of theorizing than the ‘national’ or the‘global’ (Cox and Mair, 1989; Massey, 1991; Sayer,1991). One implication of this is that not only do thechanging structures of the EU have implications forlocalities and regions, but research projectsconducted on those localities and regions of Europecan, in themselves, provide useful information on thestructuration of the emerging European Union. Thedynamics of this structure–agency relationship couldprove a fertile terrain to plough for analysts of thechanging political economy of the European Union.





Finally, all these processes help to provide aglimpse of the complex sociospatial networks ofpower and association (Murdoch, 1995) currentlypermeating the political and institutional spaces ofthe EU. They also serve as a cautionary reminder tothe more optimistic regionalists that any transitiontowards a ‘Europe of the regions’ will not besmooth, but articulated out of a series of struggles inand around politics, economics and geography.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at thesecond European Urban and Regional Studiesconference, ‘Culture, Place and Space inContemporary Europe’, held at the University ofDurham in September 1998. I wish to thank KathyWood, David Sadler, and the other conferenceorganizers and participants for helping to make itsuch an enjoyable and stimulating event. I am alsograteful to Mike Danson, Mark Goodwin, BobJessop, Martin Jones, Jamie Peck, David Sadler,Andrew Sayer and an anonymous referee for adviceand comments on the themes discussed in thispaper. In addition, I would like to thank the manyofficials and policymakers within Lowland Scotlandwho agreed to be interviewed during 1994 and 1995,especially those at the Strathclyde EuropeanPartnership, and the then Strathclyde RegionalCouncil. More formally, I wish to acknowledge theESRC (award R000429234190) for funding the PhDout of which this article emerges. Of course, Iassume full responsibility for remaining errors offact or interpretation.

Notes

01 One additional point to make is that nearly all the leadingregional economies in Europe are centered onmetropolitan cities (Dunford, 1994).

02 On the question of ‘objects’ of enquiry in social scienceresearch, see Jessop (1995a).

03 It is perhaps worth pointing out that the concept of‘region’ inheres many of the ontological andepistemological pitfalls that ensnared the concept of‘locality’ when it was subjected to critique in the late

1980s (Cox and Mair, 1989, 1991; Duncan and Savage,1989).

04 The title of this section is in some measure inspired byNigel Thrift’s (1983) classic paper on geography, socialtheory, and approaches to structuration.

05 Interestingly, Cox and Mair (1991: 198) make the pointthat unlike ‘time-geography’ (Pred, 1977), the concept of‘local dependence’ is formulated in a way to ‘mesh closelywith analyses of wider scale institutions’. I would wish toadd to this that although specified as ‘local’, the use of theterm here – in accordance with a process-based approachto scale – is considered in relational terms rather thanimplying some fixed areal unit.

06 Cox is here drawing very loosely on the actor–networkapproach to social change as modified by Murdoch andMarsden (1995) among others.

07 Its establishment was in large part to facilitate theaccession of the UK to the European Community(Fothergill, 1998). On the history of EU regional policygenerally, see Tömmel (1997).

08 The funds, which were doubled in 1989, and furtherincreased in 1993 when they amounted to ECU21b, are torise to ECU30b in 1999. This includes a new CohesionFund to provide additional assistance to the poorestmember states such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland andGreece (CEC, 1994: 125).

09 Dunford (1994) points out that productivity and GDPper head in the Fordist ‘golden’ years of 1960–73 werealmost twice those of the years 1973–89.

10 In thinking about this, it may also be useful to considerthe arguments of Beynon and Hudson (1993: 182) whoconsider it apposite to ‘understand space as the domain ofcapital – a domain across which capital is constantlysearching in pursuit of greater profits – and place as themeaningful situations established by labor’.

11 This is well-reflected in the way that the moreregionalized countries such as Belgium, Germany, Spainand Italy have sent half their places on the Committee ofthe Regions to elected regional representatives, while themore centralized countries like the UK have sent mostlylocal councillors (in Britain’s case, 2 regional and 22local).

12 While it may appear that the New Labour government ofthe UK appears to have more ‘appetite’ for the Europeanproject than its predecessor, the structures for governingEuropean regional initiatives have not been altered as yet.

13 This was confirmed by the European Community’scentrality index – a measure of an area’s peripheralitycalculated by the Statistical Office of the EuropeanCommission. This demonstrated that the Strathclyde andDumfries and Galloway regions had a combined index of70.9%, as compared to the EC average of 100% (ScottishOffice, 1988: 2).

14 Some notable initiatives have included The West CentralScotland Plan of the early 1970s and the Glasgow Eastern





Area Renewal (GEAR) programme which ran from 1976to 1987 (Boyle, 1993).

15 Council Regulation 281/93 defines Objective 2 of theStructural Funds as ‘converting’ regions or parts ofregions seriously affected by industrial decline.

16 The ‘winning’ of £1m of European Commission fundswas dependent on Strathclyde Regional Council itselfcommitting £1m; basically a system of ‘matching’ funds.

17 This subheading is a play on Massey’s (1979) classiccritique of locational theory approaches to regional policy.

18 In keeping with the complex nature of the IDO,Strathclyde received its 1988–92 programme under theold regulations which ceased in 1987, just as theprogramme was being approved. New regulations cameinto force in 1988, and this left Strathclyde needing to ‘fillin’ a year, before falling into line in 1994 (SEP officer,1994).

19 It is worth reminding ourselves that the allocation offunds from such European projects is conducted bypublic or quasi-public sector bodies, who in turn thendisburse such funds for business development, training orwhatever.

20 Not that their ‘uniqueness’ should imply that places aresomehow independent of each other (Sayer, 1989: 264).

21 The connections between the ‘local’ and ‘postmodern’turns respectively are, however, only contingent (cf.Lyotard, 1984; Harvey, 1989; Massey, 1991).

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Correspondence to:

Gordon MacLeod, Institute of Geography andEarth Sciences, University of Wales, AberystwythSY23 3DB, UK [email:[email protected]]





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