ABSTRACT
Regional policy, as a special part of general policy with strong elements of economic development and its promotion, has undergone substantial changes within the last two decades: a change in primary objectives, an extension of instruments, an increase of institutions and agents as well as new theoretical foundations and legitimization of its policy orientation. At the same time the regional dimension of economic activities has gained importance – and hence regional policy in general has also (Bachtler and Brown 2004; Cooke 2002). On the one hand, a stronger regionalization and decentralization of economic policy, mainly its technology and research orientation, took place; on the other, the spatial aspect of many sectoral policies was recognized and emphasized (Gruber et al. 2006; Hartmann and Steiner 2007; Sternberg 1995). In summary:
The main objective, as expressed in most official and semi-official documents, now lies in gaining a higher degree of competitiveness, in improving the conditions for innovation and growth and in attaining a higher standard of living and welfare. The former goal of reducing regional disparities has not been forgotten but has been adapted.
The instruments changed both in quantity and in content. Formerly, they consisted mainly of regionally differentiated fiscal incentives – higher for ‘poor’ and ‘peripheral’ regions – with the aim to induce mobility both of capital and labour towards these regions. Nowadays they are increasingly non-financial (notwithstanding having costs in monetary dimensions), and are meant to support different forms of adjustment, are concentrated on the strategic behaviour of economic agents, and are designed for the specific local and regional milieux.
The fiscal-functional approach – as theoretical legitimization for regional support – has been replaced by a systemic approach emphasizing interdependencies and feedback mechanisms: recognizing nonlinearities in the innovation process, regarding regions and space as being subject to a variable geometry, and connecting the economic dimension to phenomena like milieux, culture and depending on different mentalities.
