Building regional ‘goodwill’: on the financialization of subnational economic governance

Subnational economic governance has witnessed ongoing transformation as part of what is argued as a financialization of the policy process. Within England, recent reform has seen two specific tendencies: a transformation attempting greater integration between industrial structure and subnational spaces; and more entrepreneurial practices incorporating businesses as key actors. Here, city-regional agglomeration models have been adopted to activate internal resource. This paper explores the effect of these changes on policy continuity amongst constituent parts of the city-region through the concept of goodwill. It focuses on the Greater Birmingham and Solihull region of the UK and its relationship with a constituent locality: Southern Staffordshire. It argues reform has redrawn the subnational map with greater sensitivity around industrial structure. Adapting modes of financializing the governance process, however, using city-regions’ presumed benefits around competitiveness and efficiency, frame this sensitivity. A form of goodwill has thus emerged founded around compliance with orthodox city-regional interpretations, supplementing financial shortfalls yet reinforcing further space–policy separation.