ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the two main organisational requirements that are needed if these planning discourses are to stimulate regional dynamism. The local embeddedness of the private business sector is crucial to dynamism. The vertical power structure and ethos of instrumentalism which defines the three governing levels—state, county and municipality—are unsuitable for the kinds of genuinely communicative dialogue and collaboration which are necessary to create real regional dynamism. Norwegian regional politics is undergoing some fundamental changes. A policy for dynamic regional development must consist of top-down and bottom-up policymaking, balanced in such a manner that the result is local empowerment. In Norway, the county is regarded as the regional unit, but the level of government has been a weak actor in the making of regional policy. Instrumentalism dominates top-down policy in general; this applies especially to regional policies based on national strategies of redistribution.
