ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the strategies for competitiveness implemented in the Basque Country, an autonomous region of Spain, between 1980 and 2012. The Basque case is particularly interesting for several reasons. First, it epitomises the experience of old industrial European regions that, ravaged by the economic crisis of the 1970s, were able successfully to transform their industrial and productive structures and to achieve significant progress in terms of economic and social development (Birch et al., 2010; Aranguren et al., 2012a). Second, it is a region with exclusive jurisdiction in many policy matters and with a complex and multilevel policy system, thus representing the dual process that has taken place in Europe involving top-down decentralisation and the transfer of powers from national governments to supranational institutions. In fact, there is no region within the EU than enjoys more political autonomy (Cooke and Morgan, 1998; Morgan, 2013). Third, it provides a good example of the application of the new regional policy that has been evolving in the EU since the 1980s. Analysis of the development of regional strategy over time is uncovered within the framework of the three questions emphasised in the first part of the book: what for, what and how (and who).
