Regional development is one of the most important issues faced by many countries across the globe. It is a complex matter involving multiple actors, both economic and social, with diverse interests and motivations. This multifaceted nature of the topic has led to its being studied by a wide range of academic disciplines, including geographers, economists, sociologists, political scientists and historians.
The vast majority of the literature focuses on two dominant questions: how is regional welfare created, and how can we cope with undesirable interregional welfare discrepancies? The first question is normally framed as an economic issue involving the optimal spatial-economic use of the available resources (labor, capital, physical and financial inputs) so as to generate maximum value of output. The second question is more of a sociopolitical equity nature and addresses the mechanisms and conditions (economic, policy interventions) that may help alleviate undesirable development disparities in the space-economy.
Despite this broad spectrum of research, there is an unfortunate lack of attention to the role of politics and power relations in the study of regional development. This is particularly the case for two influential strands of geographical approaches, namely evolutionary economic geography (EEG) and regional innovation systems (RIS). EEG and RIS both tend to treat possible regional development paths as a purely economic process driven by firms’ ability to adapt to changing economic environments and diversify into other sectors of the economy.
We therefore argue for a more thorough integration of visible forms of power and domination in the study of regional development, notably through the adoption of methodologies such as narrative analysis. We suggest that a more open mind to the different ways in which power is exerted and represented through language, both explicit and implicit, can contribute to a greater diversity of potential regional development paths and, as a result, to more equitable outcomes.