Mark Goodwin

Space, scale and state strategy: rethinking urban and regional governance

The last decade has seen a proliferation of theoretical approaches, which have sought to uncover the changing form and governance of cities and regions following the dissolution of the Fordist ‘sociospatial fix’. This article provides a critical review of some of the more influential of these debates that have sought to analyse: the central–local relations of government; the growing influence of ‘regimes’ and ‘growth coalitions’ in energizing urban economies; and the rise of the ‘learning’ or ‘institutionally thick’ region. The authors argue that, although providing valuable insights, these theories suffer from: 1) a failure to integrate analytically into their inquiries a relational account of the state, and thereby to neglect the states influence in actively shaping the urban and regional fabric; and 2) a similar failure to problematize the issue of scale, often taking for granted the spatial context of their own particular inquiry. Thus, terms like urban regimes, urban coalitions and learning regions are deployed as if they were ontological and epistemological givens. Drawing on neo-Gramscian state theory and recent work on the ‘politics of scale’, this article seeks to open up urban and regional research towards a multiscaled analysis, and to consider political economic activity as a series of situated, context-specific and politically constructed processes. These arguments are then briefly deployed to demonstrate the multifarious and multiscalar changes that characterize Londons governance in the late 1990s.

Local governance, the crises of Fordism and the changing geographies of regulation.

During the last fifteen years the local government system in Britain has been transformed into one of local governance in which a multitude of unelected agencies (public, private and voluntary) have become involved in attempting to influence the fortunes of local areas. In this paper, we locate the roots of this shift in the crisis of the Fordist mode of regulation and political responses to it, suggest that a reworked regulation theory can provide a useful perspective from which to interpret current changes and outline the research framework that such a perspective involves. Although a key role for local government in Fordist processes of regulation may be identified, it is doubtful that new forms of local governance are contributing to the emergence of stable regulation in the 1990s. One reason for this is the geographical differentiation of contemporary regulatory processes.

The governance of rural areas: some emerging research issues and agendas

Abstract There has been an increasingly noticeable silence at the centre of contemporary rural studies concerning the ways in which rural areas are governed. This is in sharp contrast to other areas of the social sciences, where issues of governance have recently assumed major prominence. This paper sets out to explore this rather curious neglect, initially by examining the governance literatures now found across the social sciences, and then through using these to identify and delineate some important research questions for those concerned with understanding contemporary rural change.

Devolution, constitutional change and economic development: Explaining and understanding the new institutional geographies of the British state

Goodwin M., Jones M. and Jones R. (2005) Devolution, constitutional change and economic development: explaining and understanding the new institutional geographies of the British state, Regional Studies 39 , 421–436. This paper is concerned with the new institutional geographies of devolution and state restructuring, particularly in the UK. As part of perhaps the biggest change to the UK state since the Acts of Union, the Labour Party has established the Scottish Parliament, elected Assemblies for Wales, Northern Ireland, and London, and Regional Development Agencies within Englands regions. The paper offers a conceptual framework through which to explore these new institutional geographies. It extends Jessops strategic‐relational approach to the state by arguing that it is no longer enough simply to refer to a multivariate ‘hollowing out’ of the nation state in an era of economic and political restructuring. The paper suggests that devolution represents a geographically uneven ‘filling‐in’ of the states institutional and scalar matrix, which is leading to an increasingly complex spatial division of the state. This appears to be creating uneven capacities to act and the implications of this are discussed.

Partnerships, power, and scale in rural governance

Partnerships have become established as a significant vehicle for the implementation of rural development policy in Britain. In promoting new working relationships between different state agencies and between the public, private, and voluntary sectors, partnerships have arguably contributed to a reconfiguration of the scalar hierarchy of the state. In this paper we draw on recent debates about the ‘politics of scale’ and on empirical examples from Mid Wales and Shropshire to explore the scalar implications of partnerships. We investigate how discursive constructs of partnership are translated into practice, how official discourses are mediated by local actors, the relationship between partnerships and existing scales of governance, and the particular ‘geometry of power’ being constructed through partnerships. We argue that the existing scalar hierarchy of the state has been influential in structuring the scales and territories of partnerships, and that, despite an apparent devolution of the public face of governance, the state remains crucial in governing the process of governance through partnerships.

Deprivation, poverty and marginalization in rural lifestyles in England and Wales

Abstract Research studies of the problems of rural life in Britain have often been based on concepts such as ‘deprivation’ or ‘disadvantage’. In this paper we explore the basis of these conceptualizations and note claims that they have been appropriated by government at local and central levels, suggesting that criticism of such appropriation should not lead to a neglect of material privation of opportunities caused by changes to the structure of rural life, brought about by economic restructuring, social recomposition and the political-economy of deregulation. Rather, we draw on studies of rural poverty to suggest that the changing material base of rural life has been accompanied by a range of discursive strategies which obscure rural problems and even filter them out altogether in the various constructions of idyll-ized rural life as the spatial expression of self-supporting, self-sufficient, happy, healthy and problem-free existence in a market place economy. Using some of the findings from the Rural Lifestyles research programme in England and Wales we discuss some of the different experiences of opportunity privation in rural areas, and some of the different ways in which cultural constructions of rural life can lead to a range of expectations from imagined rural geographies which are variously met and not met in day-to-day rural lifestyles. We suggest that rural problems are associated with a wide range of experiences of marginalization — economic, political, social, cultural — which cannot be mapped out according to normative or cultural expectations, but which occur differently at the intersection of material and experiential elements of rural lifestyles.

Devolution, State Personnel, and the Production of New Territories of Governance in the United Kingdom

As a result of the creation of a Scottish Parliament, Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies, and the devolution of power to various regional bodies in England, there has been a substantial territorial refocusing of governance within the United Kingdom. Much has been written in the social and political sciences concerning this change, especially with regard to the formation of new institutions of governance. Less is known concerning the connections between state personnel and this institutional and territorial transformation. In this paper we seek to remedy this deficiency. Drawing on empirical evidence from the English regions, we suggest that devolution is shaped by, and also shapes, the actions and strategies of a variety of state personnel in the different territories. Developing the idea of the state as a ‘peopled organisation’, we thus emphasise the significance of state personnel in actively producing the United Kingdoms new territories and scales of governance. This allows for an examination of the ways in which state personnel, working within different territorial branches and scales of the state, are able to accommodate, revise, or resist broader political

Regulation theory and rural research: theorising contemporary rural change

In this paper we have tried to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for analysing contemporary rural change. Initial results from a recent research project on changing lifestyles in rural Wales are used to investigate the potential contribution of regulation theory in rural research. The paper consists of four main sections. In the first and second sections, the main theoretical characteristics presented by a regulationist analysis of contemporary capitalist change are discussed in detail, stressing that regulation is a continuous but highly variable process. In the third section, some key findings from recent work on rural Wales—which highlights the cultural, social, and economic elements of change–are presented. In the fourth and concluding section we discuss the potential contribution which regulation theory might make to rural research, but in addition outline the ways in which an analysis of contemporary rural change might contribute to the continuing development of regulation theory. In particular, attention is drawn to several key issues which a regulationist account of rural change will have to consider.

Filling in’ the State: Economic Governance and the Evolution of Devolution in Wales

We examine the unfolding dynamics of devolution and economic governance in the United Kingdom. We maintain that devolution has set in train a series of far-reaching organisational and institutional changes in the various UK territories. Although devolution in the United Kingdom can be described, following Jessop, as an aspect of the ‘hollowing out’ of the state, we argue conversely that the various UK territories are being ‘filled in’ in a number of important ways. The notion of ‘filling in’, we argue, draws attention to the spatially contingent impact of devolution on the various UK territories. We examine this process of ‘filling in’ specifically in the context of the economic governance of Wales. In particular, we focus on the creation of Education and Learning Wales (ELWa) the body charged with improving the education and skills of the Welsh workforce, as well as with encouraging entrepreneurship within Wales. It highlights the need to consider: in an organisational context, the territorial and scalar structure of ELWa and its role in collaborating with other organisations of economic governance; and in an institutional context, the development of a new working culture within the organisation. Given the close associations between devolution and economic governance, we suggest that the success or otherwise of ELWa in overcoming these challenges has the potential to affect the future trajectories, and public and political evaluations, of devolution in Wales.

Neoliberalism, Big Society, and Progressive Localism

In the UK the current Coalition government has introduced an unprecedented set of reforms to welfare, public services, and local governance under the rubric of ‘localism’. Conventional analytics of neoliberalism have commonly portrayed the impacts of these changes in the architectures of governance in blanket terms: as an utterly regressive dilution of local democracy; as an extension of conservative political technology by which state welfare is denuded in favour of market-led individualism; and as a further politicised subjectification of the charitable self. Such seemingly hegemonic grammars of critique can ignore or underestimate the progressive possibilities for creating new ethical and political spaces in amongst the neoliberal canvas. In this paper we investigate the localism agenda using alternative interpretative grammars that are more open to the recognition of interstitial politics of resistance and experimentation that are springing up within, across, and beyond formations of the neoliberal. We analyse the broad framework of intentional localisms laid down by the Coalition government, and then point to four significant pathways by which more progressive articulations of localism have been emerging in amongst the neoliberal infrastructure. In so doing we seek to endorse and expand imaginations of political activism that accentuate an interstitial political sensibility that works strategically, and even subversively, with the tools at hand.