ABSTRACT
National competitiveness has become a much-debated and much-maligned concept. Why some nations prosper and others do not has been one of the central questions in economics since the days of Adam Smith, yet there remains considerable debate as to whether nations can be deemed ‘competitive’ entities in the same manner as can firms. Certain authors highlight that countries do not go out of business in the same way as firms do and do not engage in trade as a zero-sum game. Rather, the success of one country creates opportunities for others (Cellini and Soci, 2002; Krugman, 1994). Others argue that all ‘places’ clearly engage in competitive behaviour in respect of the attraction of investment and key resources (Boschma, 2004; Turok, 2004). However, in spite of the growing literature on this topic there is precious little agreement as to what place competitiveness actually means or how it can be conceptualized. The notion of regional competitiveness is particularly contentious and is
characterized by a striking paradox that makes it a fascinating and rich focus for study. On the one hand, the region appears to have become a determinate space of competitiveness inasmuch as the rescaling processes associated with the spread of neoliberalism have enhanced its economic and institutional role within competitiveness agendas (see Introduction). It is indeed at the regional scale that many of the ‘soft’ factors that enhance the productivity of firms and raise general economic performance are deemed to be created and sustained. Yet at the same time, the region represents a somewhat awkward scale
for analysing what is essentially a concept concerning relative economic performance. This is because the regional or meso scale is neither macro-(national) nor microeconomic (firm-based). Regions are not like firms, inasmuch as they are not direct economic ‘actors’ with discrete control over the activities taking place within them. Neither are they like nations, since they do not possess the same macroeconomic policy levers. Nor do they go out of business. They may, however, be more vulnerable than nations to changing patterns of trade if they become over-specialized in particular economic activities which subsequently emerge elsewhere. Furthermore, regions do
appear to compete for economic activities and use a range of material and immaterial inputs such as housing, infrastructure, communications and social networks to create or enhance their locational advantage which, in turn, may influence the competitive advantage of their firms (see, for example, Malecki, 2004). However, precisely how this is then transmitted into improved regional economic performance is not clear. Regions are, in effect, the space in between the micro and the macro and
are neither simple aggregations of firms nor scaled-down versions of nations (Cellini and Soci, 2002). The regional scale is thus possibly the most difficult and complex level at which to analyse competitiveness, not least because, as Budd and Hirmis (2004: p. 1021) observe, ‘regional competitiveness appears squeezed between the rock of the national competitiveness debate and the hard place of the plethora of the volume of work on territorial competitiveness at an urban scale’. In short, the tendency to conflate competitiveness and competition at the regional level creates huge scope for analytical, conceptual and operational confusion. This raises interesting questions as to how and in what ways regions compete or are competitive, and whether either the firmbased or more macro export-orientated or income-based conceptions of competitiveness often used at the national level can be suitably applied to regions. The purpose of this chapter is thus to explore these questions and seek to find some way through the conceptual chaos which surrounds regional competitiveness.
