Sabine Dörry

Contested ‘relational policy spaces’ in two European border regions

Cross-border cooperation to promote economic development and political integration has been among the EUs key themes since the 1990s, and contemporary policy networks are considered useful organisational solutions. Focusing on transport policies in the border regions of Basel and Luxembourg, we analyse the persistency of national preferences among policy actors, mapping their perceived ‘policy spaces of action’ and conceptualising these policy spaces as relational. We discuss that the networks’ various actors on either side of the border appear to perceive the actual ‘policy spaces’ very differently. Therefore, and due to the networks’ terminability, these policy spaces are highly contested and frequently negotiated between the actors. Based on a combination of in-depth interviews, sketch maps, and social network analysis, we show that large spatiocultural differences still prevail among network actors, potentially impacting on the decisions taken in cross-border policy networks.

Green financing, interrupted. Potential directions for sustainable finance in Luxembourg

ABSTRACT This paper has a quintessentially explorative character. It aims at identifying existing as well as potential (yet missing) links between the finance industry and local businesses that aspire to more sustainable economic practices. Building on the observation that green investments have been gaining weight in global investors’ strategies, we analyse how sustainable – in the most comprehensive sense of the word – green investments could ultimately be(come), when green assets are still managed according to the logic of “financialised finance”. This latter’s technologies of commodification, securitisation and derivatives-trading allegedly oppose alternative economic practices that pursue economic sustainability through social and environmental gains. In contrast, we investigate how the finance industry relates to alternative financial practices, products and organisations that offer sustainability-oriented financing services, – for example, regional banks, cooperatives and the like, – with a specific focus on green, social and solidarity businesses. Both approaches subscribe to apparently contradictory ideologies. We establish a beneficial dialogue between the opposing models of “green capitalism” and “alternative economies” so as to identify potential points of intersection. The context of Luxembourg’s local/regional economies provides a great opportunity to empirically access three levels of investigation: the private sector, the public sector and an international financial centre, a key facilitator for green finance, thus utilising insights from the concept of bricolage. Whilst supporters of Luxembourg’s emerging green finance profile recognise its positive impact on the small country’s national branding, in combination with economic stimuli, more critical commentators point to pure “green washing” effects.

The role of elites in the co-evolution of international financial markets and financial centres: The case of Luxembourg

This article investigates the co-evolution of Luxembourg’s financial centre with influential developments on a macro scale since the late 1950s and employs insights from the evolutionary approaches of regional path creation and dependence. Framing the narrative from a historical perspective, this case study illustrates how a unique conjuncture of local conditions and intentional decision making by a small group of influential individuals in Luxembourg embraced and exploited the new opportunities of the internationalizing financial markets, thus forming the birth of Luxembourg’s financial economy. The article argues that only the role of the elite during this time makes the creation of Luxembourg’s financial centre plausible, whilst Luxembourg’s continuing financial path has been accompanied by a changing composition of previously local and often individualistic elite. The changing conditions of globalization have brought a new type of elite to the fore, in particular the organized power of large banks, which continue to reshape Luxembourg’s institutional environment in different ways. The fundamental shift in power between Luxembourg’s financial and political interest groups has also spawned increasingly complex interlinkages between institutional architectures across different geographical scales. By strengthening the conceptualization of the particular role of agency, this article adds knowledge to the prevailing concepts of (regional) path dependence in general and to the contingent development in financial centres in particular.

Keys to the City: How Economics, Institutions, Social Interaction, and Politics Shape Development

Keys to the City has a twofold focus: urbanization; and cities as growth poles for the future. Fundamentally, it questions why city-regions win or lose and why they develop unevenly. This book challenges established thinking on what it takes to initiate and foster economic development in city-regions. Undeniably, urban development is highly complex with no sure-fire recipe for success. The book tackles this complexity in an innovative way and is a thought-provoking tour de force through the broad field of economic geography, resourcefully linking epistemologies from geographical economics, economic sociology and other related disciplines. The book consists of four main parts, each subdivided into a number of specifically themed chapters. The book’s introductory chapter vividly illustrates current challenges: sorting and resorting of the global economy whose fundamental spatial categories and contexts for interaction are city-regions. Although vague in defining the term ‘development’, Michael Storper builds on a strong economic and growth-oriented definition. ‘[C]hanges in technology and trade costs’ (p. 6) generate particular, spatially uneven dynamics and end up ‘producing’ winning and losing regions, ultimately linked to a society’s welfare. The first and undoubtedly strongest part of the book, ‘The Economic Context of City and Regional Development’, is compelling and dense. It provides key prerequisites to understanding major economic causal relations and complexities, and particularly deals with the question: ‘People or Jobs: Chicken or Egg?’ (p. 14). The main argument covers the underlying processes of urban specialization and the subsequent changes in urban systems, contesting four key avenues of investigation. Each chapter dissects and critically examines one major thematic contribution: New Neoclassical Urban Economics (Chapter 2), the economic literature on agglomeration and spatial concentration, and particularly New Economic Geography (NEG) (Chapter 3), the role of Marshall–Arrow–Romer (MAR) externalities adding an innovative twist to the localization of the respective M-A-R sources (p. 57) (Chapter 4), and individuals’ preferences and mobility choices (Chapter 5). The explication of the prominent Dixit–Stiglitz–Krugman model exemplifies how insightful Storper is in formulating his criticism of established concepts and how well he is able to bridge the different languages of the disciplines. The essential explanations of the processes of urban specialization and skilled labour concentration in Part I tend to be somewhat selective and thus rather fragmented. Hence, Part II is particularly concerned with ‘The Institutional Context of Cities and Regions’. It explores the ‘idea that specialization could originate from the region’s institutions’ (p. 97; Chapter 6) and investigates ‘the dual nature of informal institutions – groups or communities [Chapter 7], and their bridges to one another [Chapter 8]’ (p. 103) to support or hinder choices for a city’s economic development, as illustrated in the examples of Los Angeles, the Third Italy and Silicon Valley. People group together based on common interests; but those interests, comprising bundles of altering preferences, can shift. Accordingly, group membership is unstable, influencing the costs of negotiation and decision-making within groups. Coalitions – based on bonding and bridging to lock in ‘agglomeration generated specialization’ (p. 138) – are key to development as they provide the necessary context for idea building, policy implementation and conflict resolution. Storper’s economic notion of informal institutions details the resulting formation of interest groups and highlights processes of inclusion and exclusion of group membership and, thus, political ideas. However, his approach mirrors a causal model that neglects the contingency of conditions determined by rules and regulations for economic change processes as recently suggested by BATHELT and GLÜCKLER (2013). They argue from an explicit relational perspective that it is this contingency that defines the premises ‘for the emergence and transformation of socio-economic institutions in spatial perspective’ (BATHELT and GLÜCKLER, 2013, p. 18). Clearly, recent scholarship has questioned the narrow economic lens of institutional conceptualization, specifically highlighting the interaction of institutions and agents to learn and develop new, highly specific knowledge and technology within different geographical spaces (e.g. Regional Studies, 2014

The Transformative Powers of the Co-Evolution between International Financial Markets and Offshore Financial Centres

This paper investigates the determinants and impact of the co-evolution between the international financial markets and the offshore financial centre Luxembourg since the late 1950s. It argues for a historic understanding of decisive, time-sensitive environments that helped Luxembourg to emerge, transform and upgrade over time. This paper links explanations like the shaping power of international political decisions, ‘historical accidents’ and national key actors’ visionary intentionality and professional networks that have resulted in the creation of a specific developmental path in finance and the rapid internationalisation and sophistication of its financial eco-system.

Relational policy spaces in border regions

In European border regions, policy networks steer processes of politico-economic integration and de-bordering. Policy networks integrate actors belonging to different decisional levels and countries. Actors tend to coordinate actions and communications in policy networks to formulate common policies; however, this is subject to a long process, aggravated by the actors? distinct policy cultures. They further have to agree on a common network space to efficiently enforce policy measures. An overrepresentation of certain network spaces due to some actors? dominant network positions may lead to imbalanced policy decisions. By focussing on transport policies in the border regions of Basel and Luxembourg, we analyse measures of persistency of national preferences among policy actors, mapping their perceived ?policy spaces of action? and conceptualising these ?policy spaces? as relational. Based on a combination of in-depth interviews, cognitive maps, and social network analysis, we show that large spatio-cultural differences are still prevailing among network actors, thus potentially impacting decisions taken in policy networks.