With the usual apologies for cross-posting.
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Best wishes,
Catherine
Session Title: Devolution and the Transformation of Regional Economies: Problems, Possibilities, Measurement and Evaluation
Session Organisers:
John Bryson, City-REDI, University of Birmingham, UK, [log in to unmask];
Catherine Harris, City-REDI, University of Birmingham, UK, [log in to unmask];
Raquel Ortega Argiles , City-REDI, University of Birmingham, UK, [log in to unmask]
Session Outline:
Devolution has the potential to transform or to reshape regional economies as new powers, responsibilities, but also liabilities, are devolved from national governments. This is very much an on-going process that is challenging the established status quo, producing new policy and research challenges and opportunities. It is in this sense that there is a ‘great regional awakening’. This raises a number of important issues regarding the development of new, more localized, approaches to understanding regional economies. Of particular importance, is understanding how devolution settlements are negotiated, shaped, implemented, evaluated and the tools that are being developed to assist local policy-makers. Regional devolution requires the development of more integrated approaches to understanding city-region economies as well as new approaches to finance and funding. For some regions, it has involved the creation of place-based econometric models as a tool to assess potential impacts and to support the decision-making process.
This session seeks to fill a gap in regional science and social sciences by bringing together diverse work on regional economies that will explore the shift towards regional devolution, the negotiation and implementation of devolution deals, the analysis of regional economies that supports this on-going process, as well as measurement and impact. An important issue is to consider different national and regional solutions to the management of regional economies. In Germany, for example, Hamburg, unlike most of the country’s cities, is a ‘city state’ giving it more autonomy, including tax raising powers, compared to cities like Frankfurt and Munich. This autonomy permits responsive local decision-making, but it also comes with liabilities and responsibilities.
We invite papers which examine devolution with a focus on city-region economies. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
• Localized approaches to understanding regional economies
• The negotiation of devolution deals
• Different experiences of regional devolution or comparative studies
• The needs of local policy-makers and tools used to assist them
• The evaluation of devolution settlements
• Governance issues and regional devolution
• Finance, funding and fiscal devolution
• Financialization and city-regions
• Local infrastructure and regional devolution
• Spatial planning and economic development
• Partnership approaches and devolution
• Papers that explore the history of devolution
• The analysis of specific devolution deals including policy evaluation
• The impact of devolution deals
Submission guidelines:
Please submit proposals for papers in the form of a 250 word abstract (text only) through the Regional Studies Association conference portal by Friday 24th February 2017. Proposals will be considered by the Conference Programme Committee. https://members.regionalstudies.org/lounge/Meetings/Meeting?ID=149
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