ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to offer a new reading of this 'regional turn', by critically analysing the role of the decentralised institutions in the delivery of regional strategies. The failure to provide a space of governance and establish organized interests in the English regions represented a major disadvantage for those territories that have been battling the strong centralizing trend. The new framework, implemented by the structural funds reform, was intended to enable better involvement of the regions in the community institutional arena. While recognizing that the territorial boundaries of the English regions were mainly adopted for statistical purposes, John Major recognized the importance of bringing new changes to the territorial distribution in operation. The conservatives and the liberal democrats have never concealed their scepticism regarding new labour's territorial restructuring. The reluctance of the conservatives during the 1980s to adapt the national regional policy framework to the newly introduced community regulations caused major disagreements between the central government and the European commission.
