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Regulating Regional Spaces: State Agencies and the Production of Governance in the Scottish Highlands

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  • Danny MacKinnon

    (Department of Geography and Environment and European Urban and Regional Research Centre, University of Aberdeen, Elphinstone Road, Aberdeen AB24 3UF, Scotland)

Abstract

In recent years, regulationist research has increasingly focused on questions of subnational governance and regulation. Whilst there has been a shift towards new forms of local governance across the United Kingdom, in this paper I contend that the interaction between new mechanisms of (national) regulation and preexisting local conditions has produced considerable spatial variation in the precise forms of governance that have emerged at the local level. Following Peck, I suggest that this can be seen in terms of the interaction of distinct institutional ‘layers’. This insight is developed by adapting Offe's notion of ‘institutional filters’ to emphasise the role of regional agencies in mediating and ‘filtering’ the effects of wider (national) regulatory mechanisms. In the second half of the paper, I apply these ideas to a particular regional case study, assessing how the national-level shift towards neoliberalism has shaped the practice of economic governance in the Scottish Highlands in the 1990s. As mid-level metaphors, ideas of institutional ‘layers’ and ‘filters’ help to open up a space for the consideration of agency and strategy at regional level, thereby addressing what has been termed the ‘regulationist enigma’, defined in terms of the need to avoid ‘reading off’ regional transformations from the posited logic of broader macrostructural shifts.

Suggested Citation

  • Danny MacKinnon, 2001. "Regulating Regional Spaces: State Agencies and the Production of Governance in the Scottish Highlands," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(5), pages 823-844, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:33:y:2001:i:5:p:823-844
    DOI: 10.1068/a3346
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. J Peck & M Jones, 1995. "Training and Enterprise Councils: Schumpeterian Workfare State, or What?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 27(9), pages 1361-1396, September.
    2. Ranald Richardson & Andrew Gillespie, 1996. "Advanced communications and employment creation in rural and peripheral regions: a case study of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 30(1), pages 91-110.
    3. J Murdoch, 1995. "Actor-Networks and the Evolution of Economic Forms: Combining Description and Explanation in Theories of Regulation, Flexible Specialization, and Networks," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 27(5), pages 731-757, May.
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    Cited by:

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    2. Sally Randles & Peter Dicken, 2004. "‘Scale’ and the Instituted Construction of the Urban: Contrasting the Cases of Manchester and Lyon," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(11), pages 2011-2032, November.
    3. Deborah G Martin & Steven R Holloway, 2005. "Organizing Diversity: Scales of Demographic Change and Neighborhood Organizing in St Paul, MN," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(6), pages 1091-1112, June.
    4. Crispian Fuller & Robert J Bennett & Mark Ramsden, 2003. "Organised for Inward Investment? Development Agencies, Local Government, and Firms in the Inward Investment Process," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 35(11), pages 2025-2051, November.
    5. Monios, Jason, 2019. "Geographies of governance in the freight transport sector: The British case," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 295-308.
    6. Gordon MacLeod, 2013. "New Urbanism/Smart Growth in the Scottish Highlands: Mobile Policies and Post-politics in Local Development Planning," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(11), pages 2196-2221, August.
    7. Proinnsias Breathnach, 2014. "Creating City-region Governance Structures in a Dysfunctional Polity: The Case of Ireland’s National Spatial Strategy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(11), pages 2267-2284, August.

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