Uneven development: convergence, divergence and politics[Competitive austerity’ and the impasse of capitalist employment policy]

The paper positions itself in contrast to some themes in work on local and regional development. These have included an emphasis on policy rather than politics, tendencies to over-generalize across countries, and to abstract from the more global context. The empirical context for the discussion is the shifting character of geographically uneven development since the Second World War: first a convergence and then, after the mid-1970s, a divergence. Convergence is held to be the result of what some have called spatial Keynesianism. The conditions for this and for its demise, resulting in divergence, are traced out with particular reference to how the shifting pressures and opportunities were refracted by the specificities of countries. State form emerges as particularly important in understanding different trajectories, along with a neo-liberal globalisation that has been in contrast to the monetary and trading regime inaugurated by the Bretton Woods agreements.