ABSTRACT
Throughout this work special attention has been devoted to the political and ideological importance of spatial organization in the reproduction of capitalist social relations. This has been analysed in detail historically, by taking agriculture as an example, and with a direct discussion of the central and local state. The reproduction process of capitalist relations (including the reproduction of core-periphery regional relations) necessitates, at every stage of development of a social formation, the intervention of the state and local authorities, as putatively ‘separate social agents’, apart from individual capitalist interests. In what follows I will attempt first to discuss briefly contemporary political developments in southern Europe, focusing on three interrelated issues: clientelism, corporatism and authoritarianism; and secondly to discuss emerging regional mobilizations, questioning both the practices of the state and regional backwardness. These mobilizations, however ambiguous they may often be, have a directly political character and under a certain conjuncture may become major agents for social and spatial change.
