ABSTRACT
Globalization and new approaches to innovation and competitiveness have generated pressures on regional and local development agencies. New challenges require new approaches. Two of the trends that have challenged the agencies in the Basque Country are the need to understand multilevel approaches to development and the need to balance top-down and bottom-up initiatives. The Basque Country is a region of approximately two million inhabitants with a very dense institutional structure as there are three political and administrative levels (regional, provincial and municipal) plus a fourth level, the counties, where there is no administrative or governmental body but county development agencies operate. In this context, the absence of a coherent approach to multilevel approaches that combine top-down and bottom-up elements could create inefficiencies in the system that in the end might question seriously the need for agencies, as well as other programmes defined at regional and provincial levels.
