ABSTRACT
This is an opportune moment to be considering the political economy of industrial policy in England for several reasons. First, as part of its wider agenda of constitutional reform for the UK, the Blair government is creating nine Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) for the English regions (DETR, 1997). The introduction of the RDAs from April 1999 will have major implications for industrial policy in England. However, even before the Regional Development Agencies Bill was brought before Parliament, some commentators had already questioned whether such proposals constituted a missed opportunity for both the government and the English regions (for example, Mawson, 1997a). Indeed, campaigners from one English region had issued ‘A Declaration for the North’ (Campaign for a Northern Assembly, 1997) in the hope of persuading the government to give the north-east (rather than the whole north of England as implied by the Campaign’s title) its own referendum on devolution. Any discussion of industrial policy in England must therefore engage with this broader constitutional debate.
