This research explores the role and rising importance of EU R&D instruments in regional economic development in the UK since 1999. It poses the simple question of 'who gets what, and why', and how this conforms to theories of innovation. The approach combines an analysis of both the EU's Structural Funds and Framework Programmes, two instruments which are rarely considered together at the regional level. The research design is informed by a critical realist perspective which incorporates recent thinking on the role that relational geographies play in influencing social structures, the behaviour of groups and individuals and the complex interplay between these. The study centres on a qualitative, multiple case-study, approach using the UK's regions and Devolved Administrations as the unit of analysis. The study provides a robust empirical evidential base to the pattern of policy and practice running through the EU's R&D instruments in the UK and sheds new light on the 'territorial' debate which is prevalent both in EU policy circles and academic theorising. The research highlights the tendency for regional policy-makers to fall back on narratives extolling local capacity, local knowledge spillovers and locally-orientated networks. The research demonstrates that in a world of flows spaces do matter, and that the boundaries of these spaces can exert power. Equally, however, to assume that the region forms a natural arena for collaboration is ill-advised. The thesis finds that current thinking on patterns of spatial innovation underplays the importance of the territorial dialectic between the geographically proximate and the relational. It finds that the parallel worlds of practice revealed by the Structural Funds and the Framework Programmes epitomize the dialectical space of the region. The work illustrates the complex, divided, spaces forming administrative regions, and how policy-makers shape, and create, these spaces through their actions when seeking to construct the knowledge economy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:584535 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Healy, Adrian |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/54497/ |
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