Regions in a global market: the experiences of Wales and Baden-Wurttemberg

Abstract

This article sets the question of globalization of economic coordination (which it briefly criticizes) in the context of how such coordination is managed ‘on the ground’. The region, the sub-state administrative entity found in most advanced economies, is argued to be a crucial element not least because evolving processes of economic coordination increasingly depend upon regional economies. Increasingly, too, such economies come to depend for key functions on the governance powers of regional administrations. The more progressive of these operate a ‘decentralized industry policy’ which promotes institutional learning, often through associational practices. An empirical study of two members of a recently developed European regional economic partnership, the ‘European Motor Regions’, Wales and Baden-Wurttemberg, illustrates the evolutionary processes in question.