ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors show how a master rationality that they have called the rationality of competitiveness is at work in regional development. They highlight how it is linked to the production of three major and interlinked additional rationalities – the rationality of strategos, the rationality of triage, and the rationality of intelligence. In the keynotes and the workshops, during the lunches, coffee breaks and dinners as well as in the hotel lobbies, the bars, and the taxis, political rationalities become visible. One of the primary and the most salient political rationalities that are formed in relation to competition and competitiveness concerns leadership. In relation to political objectives and ambitions the rationality of triage highlights this aspect. Thus, it is often so that the rationality of competitiveness intertwines with the rationality of triage and the rationality of strategos to legitimize how certain political objectives, even if desirable, are not feasible, while others are.
