ABSTRACT
The dynamics of economic, social, political and cultural change in the contemporary world are increasingly shaped by the pursuit and promotion of global competitiveness. Indeed, competitiveness has become a ‘hegemonic discourse’ within public policy circles in developed countries (Schoenberger, 1998). International organizations ranging from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), theWorld Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are all busy urging governments everywhere to reform the business climate, promote investment and stimulate competitiveness. Furthermore, the pursuit of competitiveness has been elevated to primary strategic importance in the Lisbon strategy of the European Union (EU) which explicitly states its aim as being ‘to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ (CEC, 2000: p. 2). This preoccupation with competitiveness is premised on certain pervasive
beliefs, most notably that globalization has drastically changed the structural properties of the global economy and that best practice governance is secured through neoliberalism. Neoliberalism can be defined as ‘a distinctive politicaleconomic philosophy that took meaningful shape for the first time during the 1970s, dedicated to the extension of the market (and market-like) forms of governance, rule and control across – tendentially at least – all spheres of social life’ (Peck and Tickell, 2007: p. 28). Neoliberalism’s assertion that economic policies favouring supply-side innovation, competitiveness, decentralization, deregulation, privatization and the promotion of the active, ‘workfare’ state make for good governance has become widely accepted across all scales of governance and across all parts of the world, albeit in slightly different forms. It has, in short, become the hegemonic contemporary form of liberal society (Leitner et al., 2007). Neoliberalism has entailed a ‘reshuffling of the hierarchy of spaces’ associated
with Fordist-Keynesian national forms of regulation and, concomitantly, to the mobilization of new institutional arenas such as regions and cities which
are deemed to be the ‘breeding grounds’ for the development of new productive forces (Lipietz, 1994: p. 36). Indeed, by the 1990s the ‘region’ quickly emerged as a determinate ‘space of competitiveness’ (Brenner, 2000), meaning it had widely been identified as a key territorial zone and institutional arena for the promotion and pursuit of competitiveness strategies. The pursuit of regional competitiveness as a policy goal has been adopted with particular enthusiasm by the EU and by national governments across the developed world. It has risen to particular prominence in the UK, where the pursuit of regional competitiveness has moved to centre stage in the policy statements of national government, and where Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) have been explicitly tasked with the responsibility for making their regions ‘more competitive’ and akin to benchmark competitive places such as Silicon Valley (HM Treasury, 2001). Similarly in Germany, the debate around regional competitiveness has produced what Hickel (1998) refers to as a kind of ‘locational hysteria’ in which regional political and economic actors have become obsessed with the structural competitiveness of their jurisdictions relative to other European and global locations. In short, the competitiveness hegemony is such that, according to certain analysts, ‘the critical issue for regional economic development practitioners to grasp is that the creation of competitive advantage is the most important activity they can pursue’ (Barclays, 2002: p. 10). Policy documents extolling the importance of competitiveness tend to pre-
sent it as an entirely unproblematic term and, moreover, as an unambiguously beneficial attribute of an economy. This is particularly the case at the regional scale. Competitiveness is portrayed as the means by which regional economies are externally validated in an era of globalization, such that there can be no principled objection to policies and strategies deemed to be competitiveness enhancing, whatever their indirect consequences. For example, the European Commission (CEC, 2004: p. viii) states that ‘strengthening regional competitiveness throughout the Union and helping people fulfil their capabilities will boost the growth potential of the EU economy as a whole to the common benefit of all’. Similarly, the UK government sees its regional policy as being one of ‘widening the circle of winners in all regions and communities’ (DTI, 2001: p. 4).
