ABSTRACT
The fact indicates a trend towards the rationalization of regional development policies which may be due to the increasing scarcity of resources available for this purpose on the one hand, and to mounting political pressure of subjectively experienced regional development problems on the other. Although the degree of quantitative interregional disparities has successively decreased in most West European countries, the latter has been the case. During the 1950s and 1960s, a close positive correlation had been implicitly assumed to exist between interregional economic disparities and the degree of political pressure exerted by regional development problems. In other words, it was expected that the regional development problem would disappear automatically with the reduction of interregional disparities in living levels. In evaluating strategies and instruments of regional development policy it will therefore be important to include consequences of such qualitative and structural transformations.
