Regional development involves the creation, enhancement, and capture of value for the benefit of communities as well as nation-wide economies. Successful programs promote economic growth, reduce poverty levels, and foster social cohesion. These benefits are important to citizens in multiple democratic contexts, and it is therefore not surprising that governments across the globe invest large amounts of public resources in regional development.
Despite processes of globalization, patterns of regional development remain highly diverse both between and within countries. This diversity is due to a variety of factors, including natural resource endowments, productive capacity and quality of labor, capital availability and accessibility, sectoral structures, entrepreneurial culture and attitude, physical infrastructures, openness for investment, technological progress, and the degree of government support systems.
The research community is currently engaged in a debate over how best to understand these diverse regional development processes. Two dominant perspectives are competing for prominence. One, referred to as EEG, emphasizes the role of firms in shaping new development paths, while another, RIS, takes a broader view by examining the interplay between different types of institutions and agents that shape the overall system.
An additional challenge is the need to recognize and reflect on power relationships that are embedded in the regional development process. This can be done by analyzing the ways in which narratives of regional development are told. By registering who tells these stories, how they are told and for what purpose, narrative analysis can reveal a number of invisible forms of domination that play an important role in shaping different regional development paths.
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