From Territorial Cohesion to Regional Spatial Justice: The Well-Being of Future Generations Act in Wales

The European Union's flagship Cohesion Policy faces evidence of dubious economic effectiveness and growing political and philosophical critiques of the very ideals of furthering European integration. This article examines ambitions for territorial cohesion as they have been operationalized through regional development in Wales. We argue that a potential alternative to the failed realization of territorial cohesion lies in the principles of spatial justice. While territorial cohesion has typically emphasized the redistribution of funds to ‘lagging’ regions, spatial justice, as we define it, is premised upon enabling regions to assert their own capacity to act and pursue positive visions of regional futures, consider the implications of space and scale for the achievement of justice, and define well-being, development and the ‘good life’ in ways that reflect regional priorities. We examine three ways in which recent political discourses and policy mechanisms in Wales resonate with these ideals. We focus on attempts to envision a progressive Welsh future, develop alternative spaces and scales of governance, and redefine and pluralize understandings of progress and well-being. The article concludes by reflecting on the practical and conceptual implications of rescaling spatial justice to regional contexts.     

Economic cohesion and development of the European Union's regions and member states - A methodological proposal to measure and identify the degree of regional economic cohesion

The EU cohesion policy seeks to mitigate imbalances between countries and regions and enhance greater economic development of the whole Union. However, notwithstanding its efforts and certain progress on this issue, territorial disparities still represent an open challenge for the European Union, which requires improving the cohesion policy, particularly regarding its measurement, in order to allocate resources more efficiently.This article aims to propose an innovative methodology to measure and identify the degree of cohesion of both EU NUTS-2 regions and member states in economic terms. To this end we first selected the main indicators which would better explain GDP per capita growth by applying factor analysis; and second, we measure the degree of cohesion as the relationship between economic development and its potential attributable to the inequalities detected in the selected set of indicators. To ensure the robustness of this research, we compared the results obtained by applying the Gini, Atkinson, and Theil indexes. Finally, the Economic Cohesion Index (ECI) has been elaborated in order to identify regions that, regardless of their economic development, still present a very low level of cohesion within the group in which it is compared.The main findings indicate that the 27 EU countries are quite cohesive. On the contrary, from the regional perspective, the study shows important imbalances between economic development and its potential that mainly affect the regions of Greece, Spain, and Italy, where Greece is the leading country among less developed regions and Spain and Italy among more developed.     

Networks,Regional Development and Democratic Control

The networking literature has burgeoned in recent years within a complex cross‐disciplinary field and particularly in economic geography and regional planning. Networks have been analysed both as organizational expressions of globalization, linked to claims about the rise of the network society, and as territorial and cultural systems of exchange. Concepts of networks and networking have been accepted as positive, and sometimes also as progressive or radical within both social science and policy discourses. In this article we analyse regionally embedded economic networks and the EU’s urban and regional policy networks as a new mode of administration, at a variety of spatial scales. Little attention has been paid to the theoretical implications of using the concept of network as a social metaphor or to the operation of actually existing networks, as a result of conceptualizing networks in ways that deny their constitutive inequalities, asymmetries and democratic deficits. This darker side has been pushed into the shadows by the rhetorical emphasis on the benefits claimed for networked organizational forms.     

How Political Actors Co-Construct CSR and its Effect on Firms' Political Access: A Discursive Institutionalist View

This paper explores how corporate social responsibility (CSR) can incentivize political actors to increase firms' political access. Taking a discursive institutional perspective, I argue that the types of access negotiated depend on how political actors co-construct the multiplicity of CSR meanings. To study this process, I focus on the empirical case of the European Union (EU), offering a novel analysis of event observations, policy documents, and interviews with Commission officials, Euro-parliamentarians, and other stakeholders. I find that the value of CSR is highly contested in the EU political arena. I then elucidate four discursive strategies through which political actors interactively refined, reframed, and reinterpreted the meaning of CSR and its relevance for firm access in ways beneficial to their perceived interests. The findings highlight the importance for nonmarket strategy studies to conceptualize CSR as a co-constructed idea and access as negotiated, putting the micro-dynamic relationship between firms and political actors centre stage.     

FUNCTIONAL ECONOMIES OR ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS IN GREECE: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE FOR POLICY?

This paper considers the 2001 income mosaic of Greece at the local level. It constructs a model based on occupational, territorial, and demographic factors to isolate their impact on declared income and study clusters of income at the disaggregated territorial level. The new cluster-based spatial specification provides a better econometric fit compared to the specification based on the existing official regional framework. This suggests that the economy does not operate according to the country's administrative divisions, but rather according to local-specific factors and transportation linkages, as is the case in a fragmented land united by its transportation network. Accordingly, if income disparities are larger within rather than between administrative regions, regional economic development policy might best be conducted within a functional-area framework rather than the current administrative-region framework. These findings entail important policy implications for EU regional development and resource allocation, and are also useful in additional tentative policy proposals.     

The EU policy for a plastic economy: Reflections on a sectoral implementation strategy

After reviewing the main EU policy documents on the plastic waste issue, this work conceptualises an analysis framework to investigate farmers' attitudes to market‐based tools (i.e., subsidies, tax‐credits, and payback mechanisms in extended producer responsibility schemes) through which the introduction of an operational scheme for a better management of their plastic waste can be incentivised in line with the 2018 European Strategy for Plastics in a Circular Economy. A total number of 1,783 farmers responded to a purpose‐built questionnaire. Results show that most of the plastic waste they produce is piping and packaging and that tax credit represents their most favoured incentivising tool.     

Moving beyond the tensions in open environmental innovation towards a holistic perspective

This paper analyses factors determining open environmental innovation (EI) and explores the possibility of embracing their tensions to achieve integrated environmental strategic goals. Building on recent literature linking open innovation and EI, the study assumes open EI strategic goals as a multidimensional construct based on the “synergistic and interwoven nature” of four identified enabling factors, that is, partners, knowledge, benefits, and motivations. A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) based on Boolean algebra is conducted to analyse a set of 186 European companies operating in the telecommunication and information and communication technology (ICT) service industries. Making important theoretical, managerial, and policy contributions, this paper offers insights into the key factors enabling open EI and the tensional relationships within and between them. In doing so, it captures the non‐linear effects among these factors and the strategic goals related to an open EI strategy. It also suggests how the paradox theory might help in addressing the tensional dilemma of open EI strategy.     

Scalar Narratives in Bilbao: A Cultural Politics of Scales Approach to the Study of Urban Policy

In this article I explore how theoretical metaphors about the contemporary rescaling of the capitalist economy are used by local policy actors to justify an entrepreneurial urban policy. I develop a new theoretical concept (scalar narrative), suggest an analytical approach (cultural politics of scales) and give evidence of a particular case (Bilbao). The article is structured in the following way. First, I briefly review the literature on politics of scales and contribute to the debate with an approach that incorporates elements from cultural political economy and interpretative policy analysis. Within this approach I mobilize the concept of ‘scalar narrative’ that has already been suggested in the literature but not fully explored. I then put this approach into practice with a particular case study, Bilbao, a city in the north of Spain, which has recently gone through extensive urban regeneration, where I describe the appropriation of three scalar narratives by the policymakers. To show this I draw from empirical work done in Bilbao that looks at statutory and strategic planning documents as well as urban marketing literature and interviews with key informants.     

Keeping sustainable innovation on a leash? Exploring incumbents’ institutional strategies

This research aims to identify the institutional strategies of incumbent firms with regard to sustainable energy innovations that threaten their interests. This exploratory study contributes to the multi‐level perspective by providing new insights into niche–regime interaction. The focus on actor behavior in transitions is informed by literature from institutional theory and strategic management. Based on semi‐structured interviews with actors and on documents related to LED lighting and biofuels in the Netherlands, this study identified a preliminary set of empirical strategies: providing information and arguments to policy makers and the general public, as well as strategically setting technical standards. Incumbents are in a position to significantly influence the innovation's development by employing these strategies; thus temporarily keeping sustainable innovation on a leash. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Spatial Spillovers Revisited: Innovation,Human Capital and Local Dynamics

This symposium focuses on understanding key territorial‐level innovation trends and processes by country, region and technology. It questions various widely accepted assumptions, offers fresh perspectives, both conceptually and methodologically, and challenges a paradigm shift in the field of innovation and spatial dynamics. It consists of three articles analysing at different scales (urban, regional and national) the territorial dynamics of innovation and their determinants. The innovation process, with local symbiosis and spatial spillovers at its core, is analysed within the conceptual framework of national and regional innovation systems and regional economic development. Based on a discussion of spatial spillovers and the way they shape the evolutionary and symbiotic relationships between local agents and actors, including university, industry and local development agencies, the symposium highlights the relevance of this framework for a better understanding of the transformation of local economic development processes. It investigates the differences in the geography of innovation regarding different institutional settings, different systems of innovation, and different national innovation strategies. While addressing mainly the EU, the US, and emerging countries such as China and India, the contributions also highlight the critical role of current innovation policies from a general perspective. In so doing, the symposium recognizes a contrarian perspective that argues that contemporary information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide a way to leapfrog the dominant role of proximity in innovation processes, creating a complimentary rather than a substitution effect for more remote and peripheral places. That said, this symposium focuses primarily on an urban network view of the innovation process and proximal effects in this context.     

Territorial dynamic,innovative milieus and regional policy

The change in the hierarchy of regions, observed during the past 20 years, is mainly due to development phenomena, which originated within these regions themselves. The concept of innovative milieu enables us to understand better these phenomena, because it is based on the assumption that there are specific territorial dynamics capable of setting up territorial development of innovation. This paper recalls the origin of the concept of innovative milieu, which is relatively new in the field of regional science, and it aims to give an accurate definition of this concept. Furthermore, the paper shows that the concept of innovative milieu allows regional policy to be considered from a new perspective. In fact, if the territory is not given a priori, but built thanks to the dynamics of the milieus, one can consider that regional collectives have the possibility of promoting and initiating real territorial development.     

International spillovers of (un)conventional monetary policy: The effect of the ECB and the US Fed on non-euro EU countries

We estimate a global vector autoregression model to examine the effects of euro area and US monetary policy stances, together with the effect of euro area consumer prices, on economic activity and prices in non-euro EU countries using monthly data from 2001-2016. Along with some standard macroeconomic variables, our model contains measures of the shadow monetary policy rate to address the zero lower bound and the implementation of unconventional monetary policy by the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve. We find that these monetary shocks have the expected qualitative effects but their magnitude differs across countries, with southeastern EU economies being less affected than their peers in Central Europe. Euro area monetary shocks have a greater effect than those that emanate from the US. We also find certain evidence that the effects of unconventional monetary policy measures are weaker than those of conventional measures. The spillovers of euro area price shocks to non-euro EU countries are limited, suggesting that the law of one price materializes slowly.     

The Eurozone and financial integration: the employment relations issues

Together the macroeconomic and financial attributes of monetary union are changing the rules governing the European economy. This paper assesses the consequences of these changes for employment relations in member states. The analysis focuses on three matters in particular. First, how labour market actors are responding to the fact that macroeconomic policies are not only out of their own control but may therefore fail to correspond to the needs of particular countries. Second, how employment relations are adapting to the new microeconomic challenges released by the move towards deeper financial integration inside the EU, which has its main impact on the structures of corporate finance and thus on corporate strategy. Finally the implications of both patterns of change for the EU employment policy are assessed to gauge the impact of monetary union on the European social model.     

European Regional Development Fund and pro-environmental behaviour. The case of Italian separate waste collection

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) regulations over two programming periods (2000–2006 and 2007–2013) in terms of separate waste collection rates of Italian regions. We analyse longitudinal data for 20 NUTS-2 Italian regions over two EU policy cycles (2000–2006 and 2007–2013), by means of a Difference-in-differences estimation method. The estimates suggest that ERDF regulations in both programming periods had no relevant impact on the achievement of cohesion policy goals for separate collection at the regional level. Subsequently, we analyse data for 103 NUTS-3 Italian provinces over 2000–2013 by means of two statistical tools: The Theil index (TI), and the Moran index (MI), and find that proximity effects at provincial scale cause positive social contagion of pro-environmental attitudes toward separate collection. Our results make a case for the relevance of ‘cultural’ policy measures fostering environmentally responsible attitudes as a possible pre-condition for effective implementation of ERDF-funded separate collection projects in low-performing regions.     

Does the Lisbon Treaty Effectively Limit the Power of the European Union?

Although the Lisbon Treaty recognises the necessity to limit the power of the European Union, some of its limitations are poorly expressed. As a result, the European Commission has the possibility to act arbitrarily by expanding Union power. The position of the Commission is pre‐eminent, notably with respect to the drafting of EU measures. Not only can the Commission expand Union power, but it may also favour certain actors at the expense of the principals (Member States and their citizens). Indeed, the Commission may apply definitions of the ‘common European interest’ that go beyond the preferences of the principals.     

Surviving the EU? The future for national employment models in Europe

The claim by the European Union (EU) to be both the moderniser and the effective saviour of distinctive European ways of doing things is challenged by this review of the multi‐tiered influence of the EU on change in national models. Competition and macroeconomic policy is argued to be more significant than soft law in reshaping national models and in constraining innovation and change to meet new conditions. Lip service is paid by the EU to different paths of development, but the contradictions and synergies across institutional and policy approaches that underpin the notion of varieties of capitalism go unrecognised. European employment models are seen as primarily contributing to social protection, but the potential role for distinctive models to promote comparative advantage, as under varieties of capitalism analysis, is not on the policy agenda.     

Traces of the Iron Curtain: A multivariate analysis of regional cohesion in Europe

The present study aims to test relative welfare differences among regions in Europe, so as to examine whether the post-communist era has led to more socio-economic cohesion in Europe. The performance of European regions is analysed, compared, and assessed by using the Regional Competitiveness Index (RCI) and stylised fixed nominal categories. The current status of regional cohesion is tested on the basis of detailed data on 268 NUTS 2 European regions by using a robust methodology oriented towards univariate comparison of location parameters, multivariate classification by the decision tree and CHAID algorithm, and comparison of nominal variables with four values based on density plots.Multivariate classification appears to offer statistically excellent results with an overall correct prediction rate for post-socialist and capitalist regions in Europe of 99.6%. The research results from the Higher education and Innovation pillars, reveal a convergence of capitalist and post-socialist regions with capital cities and a divergence of regions with administrative capitals and other regions. Relatively, the two groups which perform best are both groups with capitals, while the group of capitalist regions with a capital city is significantly better in almost all pillars.The key message is that the transition of post-socialist regions is not yet over. Capitalist regions in Europe perform better than post-socialist regions in eight of the nine pillars of regional competitiveness. Our research results also reveal that the group of post-socialist regions without capital cities are significantly lagging behind the rest of the regions in Europe, and thus form the most vulnerable group of European regions. As there is data continuity in the official RCI classification and measurement, policy makers will be able to compare the performance of their own regions over time and to design appropriate concerted strategies accordingly. From this perspective, our study draws several interesting lessons and results for policy makers at various levels. Place-based regional planning and policy based on our analysis framework may be helpful in developing effective measures to cope with the socio-economic legacy of the “Iron Curtain” and get closer to regional cohesion in Europe.     

Slowing down Social Europe? The struggle over work and employment regulation

The present article discusses whether the strengthening of the regulation‐sceptical actors during the 2000s has affected the scope and content of EU‐level regulation in two work‐and‐employment‐related areas, and the role coalitions have played in the decision‐making processes. In the employee involvement area, the pro‐regulation forces still appeared able to get new regulation adopted and to prevent unwanted regulation from being adopted. In the employment policy area, a few examples of successful attempts by the regulation‐sceptical actors to slow down Social Europe were found, but these were fewer than could be expected. One explanation for this relatively weak impact might be that the Commission's search for legitimacy in order to be re‐elected functions as an ‘automatic stabiliser’. Contrary to studies of previous processes, no solid coalitions were found in any of the cases analysed, although several actors took positions as expected.     

The Structural Origins of Territorial Stigma: Water and Racial Politics in Metropolitan Detroit, 1950s–2010s

This article develops the concept of territorial stigma by analyzing how it can be cultivated at the level of political institutions across administrative divides. I consider the case of Detroit's regional water department, which until 2016 was owned and operated by the city and served over 120 suburban regional municipalities. I start by examining the cooperative city–suburban water system expansion in the 1950s and then analyze the rise of Detroit's first black‐led administration in 1974, after which the water authority became a key regional institution that provided an opportunity for white suburban leaders to organize against the city. I find that suburban leaders advanced their immediate goal of mitigating rate hikes by declaring the city to be greedy and inept, instead of acknowledging structural conditions that increased operational costs. This had the effect of reproducing racialized stereotypes at the political level, which had enduring effects. The argument builds on the existing literature on territorial stigma by (1) identifying state institutions as sites for the propagation of stigma and (2) considering stigmatized places in relation to their non‐stigmatized neighbors. The analysis integrates material‐structural and cultural‐symbolic factors in order to understand the perpetuation of regional urban inequalities.