ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the partnership model for regional development and how its adoption can result in changes in the role of such institutions as regional development agencies (RDAs). Using the Scottish experience as an example, it examines how networking within a partnership could impact on these institutions and proposes a framework for analysing such developments. The chapter focuses on whether the partnership model developed in the Strathclyde region of Scotland is unproblematic in practice and so whether it can be transferred uncritically throughout the EU to promote regional development. Scotland differs from other European regions in several ways which may have impacted on the success of the partnership model to date. Regional development agencies (RDAs) are set up as a method of reducing the level of localised market failure in accordance with and in support of the government's macro-economic regional policy instruments and objectives.
