ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, regions across Europe have engaged in regional economic development activities to improve their position vis-à-vis other regions at home and abroad. The aims, scope and organisation of activities have varied between regions, but for more than two decades regional development agencies – or RDAs for short – have played a significant role in these bottom-up regional policies. In the mid-1990s their prominence was captured in the notion of ‘model RDAs’, which were defined by Halkier and Danson (1997) as:
based in the region they are working for, and organisationally, in a semi-autonomous position in respect of their political sponsors so that regional policy moved away from central government offices and came to be operated much closer to the firms and organisations being supported
strategically supporting mainly indigenous firms by means of ‘soft’ policy instruments such as advisory services, network building and support for cluster organisations
integrated implementation, i.e. drawing upon a range of different measures so that the complex problems of the individual regions could be addressed.
