The Political Economy of Adaptation and Resilience in Old Industrial Regions
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE IN OLD INDUSTRIAL REGIONS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SOUTH SAARLAND AND TEESSIDE Emil Evenhuis Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2016 Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies School of Geography, Politics and Sociology Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Newcastle University ABSTRACT This project aims to make a conceptual, methodological and empirical contribution to the burgeoning field of Evolutionary Perspectives in Economic Geography. To date, Evolutionary Perspectives have tended to underplay the role of the state and macro- institutions, and how notions of agency, power, and scale feature in the evolution of a regional economy. This thesis draws upon Geographical Political Economy to develop an Evolutionary Perspective that is more sensitive to these concerns. In particular, I have focussed on aspects of policy and governance in the long-term adaptation and resilience of old industrial regions coping with disruptive structural change. Based on the Path Dependency perspective – which within Evolutionary Perspectives seems best suited to theorise aspects of policy and governance - I have developed an analytical framework and detailed a methodology of ‘deep contextualisation’, to understand (1) how policies and institutions evolve over time, (2) what role they play in long-term adaptation and resilience, and (3) how this may be shaped by the wider institutional environment. This framework and methodology (with these three distinct levels of analysis) was subsequently used to study and compare two cases: the old steel regions of South Saarland in Germany, and Teesside in the United Kingdom. These regions both experienced a crisis in their economies in the 1970s and 1980s. South Saarland has been able to adapt successfully, whereas Teesside continues to struggle. The study presents compelling evidence that this has to a considerable extent been a result of (1) different priorities and consistency in the policies implemented, (2) the more robust governance arrangements present in South Saarland compared to Teesside, and (3) the federal government structure and more cooperative form of capitalism in Germany, which appears to have been more conducive for long-term resilience than the centralist structure and more liberal model in the United Kingdom. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although the main theme of this project is the transformation of old industrial regions, it is nevertheless very personal to me. I feel like I have also undergone a transformation in the past 4 years, having to switch from a career in consulting to a career in academia, having to move to a new city in a different country, and having to get acquainted with a discipline in which I had no background. It have been very exciting and edifying times, but also demanding and uncertain. So I have had to show plenty of adaptability and resilience myself, and as this study of old industrial regions shows, you cannot successfully do this without ample support from others. First of all, I want to thank my friends and colleagues, both new and old. There are too many to mention them all here (and I am afraid that if I do, I will overlook a few…). Especially my friends and colleagues in the Geography PGR-room (of my own cohort of 2011 and various cohorts before and after) have been a constant source of warmth, comfort, distraction and inspiration. Over the 4 years I spent in North East England, and during my 4-month stay in Germany (Berlin and Saarbrücken) for fieldwork there, I have met many people through various circles, some of whom I would now count among my best friends. Thank you for being a greater or smaller part of this journey. And then there is also a steady group of friends in The Netherlands and former colleagues at Rebel Advisory, who have shown great interest and encouragement, but also made sure that I would continue to call Rotterdam my home. A number of people have contributed more directly to this project. These are of course the interviewees in Teesside and Saarland, listed in the Appendix. In particular, dr. John Bridge, John Lowther and prof. Alan Townsend have followed this project closely, and have provided valuable comments while I was developing the Chapter on Teesside. I also had excellent feedback during the many times I have presented part of my work in seminars, at conferences, and at the International PhD-course on Economic Geography in Utrecht, in particular from CURDS-staff and –students, and from prof. Robert Hassink, ii prof. Andy Cumbers, prof. Ron Boschma, and prof. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose. Prof. Peter Dörrenbächer – together with Thomas Fläschner - have been excellent hosts during my stay at the University of Saarland in early 2014, and set me up perfectly for my field work in and around Saarbrücken. But most thanks are due to my supervisors: prof. Andy Pike, dr. Stuart Dawley, and prof. John Tomaney. It has been a real pleasure to be guided by them, and they proved to be the ideal team to supervise this project. Andy and John encouraged and inspired me in the breadth of this undertaking, by generously suggesting references and strands of literature to look at, while Stuart pushed me to focus (especially in the later phases) and to really drive home the points I wanted to make. I hope this has resulted in a very rich, relevant but also well-structured and well-argued piece of work, for which they also feel some pride. Lastly I want to thank my parents. They have provided unconditional moral and material support throughout the period I have been working on this thesis, even though I think they only vaguely knew what I was doing and why it was worthwhile doing it. They are the real secret behind any adaptability and resilience I have displayed, and without their contributions this project could likely not have happened. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. Introduction ..............................................................................................1 1.1. The constancy of change: adaptation and resilience in regional economic development ....................................................................................................................... 2 1.2. The rise of Evolutionary Perspectives within Economic Geography ....................... 4 1.3. Revisiting deindustrialisation and old industrial regions ........................................ 6 1.4. This project .............................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 2. Evolutionary Perspectives on Policy and Governance in Adaptation and Resilience ............................................................................................................... 12 2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 12 2.2. Conceptualising adaptation and resilience in regional economic development .. 13 2.3. Adaptation and resilience, and aspects of policy and governance within Evolutionary Perspectives ................................................................................................. 20 2.3.1. Generalised Darwinism ...................................................................................... 20 2.3.2. Complexity Theory ............................................................................................. 25 2.3.3. Path Dependency Theory .................................................................................. 32 2.4. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 41 Chapter 3. Analysing the Role and Evolution of Policy and Governance in Adaptation and Resilience in a Multi-scalar Context ....................................................................... 46 3.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 46 3.2. Outline of an analytical framework ....................................................................... 47 3.3. The role of policy and governance in adaptation and resilience .......................... 52 3.4. The evolution of policy and governance ............................................................... 58 3.5. The multi-scalar context: diverse institutional environments .............................. 63 3.6. Analytical framework and conclusions .................................................................. 69 Chapter 4. Methodology .......................................................................................... 73 4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 73 iv 4.2. Critical realist ontology and epistemology ............................................................ 73 4.3. Comparative case study and case selection .......................................................... 76 4.4. Representativeness ............................................................................................... 81 4.5. Framework for cross-case comparison ................................................................. 83 4.6. Research techniques ............................................................................................. 85 4.7. Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 90 Chapter 5. Structural Change, the Steel Crisis and Regional Development in Germany and the