3 2 Empleo en los jóvenes
5. Conclusiones y recomendaciones de política
As noted already, the complexity of concepts considered in the thesis is such that a qualitative single case study research strategy is adopted. Within this, qualitative methods of investigation used are documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews.
1.4.4.1 Documentary Analysis
The shift from government to governance has meant a corresponding turn in policy-making from the normative to the empirical, as top-down institutional decision-making has come up against
governance networks whose practices are open-ended and ad-hoc, leading to a more wide-ranging problem-solving capacity and creating scope for learning as part of the policy-making process (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003). The result for scholars of the policy process is that empirical research, involving discourse analysis among other methods, can offer a great deal of insight into how policy is made in systems of governance. Discourse analysis has, correspondingly, become a commonly used methodology in urban policy research, and is regarded as an effective means of investigating policy implementation in a way that scrutinizes the ways in which power is exercised and exposes the ideological conflicts that can influence the formulation of policy (Jacobs, 2006). It is thus a useful method of analysis where policy is contentious and where actors with differing agendas seek to influence policy.
In spite of this, the thesis does not use discourse analysis as an exclusive way of interrogating the range of documents analysed in the course of the research. The reasons for this are twofold. First, documentary analysis is not the sole analytical method used in the research but one that
interrogates a source of data that complements that drawn from interviews to produce an understanding of the region and of the processes explored that is sufficiently wide-ranging. To employ discourse analysis in its full form would entail the analysis of a reduced and more focused range of documentary evidence, which would limit the scope of the research. Therefore, while discourse analysis would be a useful and profitable technique for research of this sort, it is deemed more important in this instance to focus energy and attention on the scope of documents available, rather than on the more extended analysis of a more limited range of documents. Secondly, while the understanding of policy-making in this thesis is consistent with the position of Hajer and Wagenaar (2003), in that policy is understood as resulting from the conflicts and compromises occurring between competing interests, much of the policy that has been applied in the planning and development of the North West was constructed at national and European tiers. While the
governance interactions that dictate the application of this policy are the subject of analysis in this research, in terms of the governance scales at which policy is constructed, only policy that has been formulated within the region is analysed with regard to this.
It is thus intended to adopt an approach informed by discourse analysis, in order to take advantage of the ability of that method to draw intentions from, and identify underlying agendas in, a text, without formally applying that technique. As much as identifying unwritten and not explicitly
acknowledged content, the documentary analysis employed here is intended to reveal the expressed spatial content of plans and strategies, as a starting point from which interview data can yield a greater level of depth and detail.
The documents selected for analysis encompass plans and strategies for land-use planning and economic development at local, city regional and regional scales, produced by a variety of authors and agencies. These include local government, metropolitan / city regional scale government, partnerships of governmental and non-governmental actors at various scales, non-government agencies, regional development bodies and regional partnerships of local authorities. Programming documents and associated documents such as programme complements for European Structural Funds are produced by local government and state agencies under the considerable influence of the guidelines of the European Commission, which themselves are included among the documents analysed. In addition to these are a number of documents falling into the category of ‘grey literature’. These relate to the workings of the North West Development Agency (NWDA) and are made up of memos, notes, sketches and unpublished strategic documents, used to inform the writing of chapter five.
1.4.4.2 Interviews
While literature and documents pertaining to the subject matter of each of the essays illuminate the process by which spatial policy has been constructed and applied, interviews with key actors in planning and development in the case study region are thought necessary in order to reveal more about the motivations and intentions behind policy, plans and strategies, as well as the interactions between governance actors and agencies.
Given that the interviews aim at ‘digging deep’ into the policy and planning process, a semi- structured format is chosen for its adaptability in the face of interviewees’ willingness to diverge
from specified topics into areas that, by intention or serendipity, might yield otherwise unobtainable data. Robson (2002: 270) summarises the qualities of the semi-structured interview:
‘The semi-structured interview has pre-determined questions, but the order can be modified based upon the interviewer’s perception of what seems most appropriate. Question wording can be changed and explanations given; particular questions which seem inappropriate with a particular interview can be omitted, or additional ones included.’
Variation in questions asked between interviewees was an outstanding feature of this research, in which a fairly wide range of interviewees active across different periods and in different policy fields required the tailoring of questions around particular experience and topics. The tendency of
interviewees to move the interview onto topics that had not been specified at the outset and the propensity for the semi-structured interview to, at times, take on the form of a conversation, produced some of the most interesting and arresting data revealed in the research.
A number of interviewees were selected at the outset of the research, based on a representative group of governance actors from a range of institutions across the themes and periods to be
analysed. During the course of the interviews with those candidates originally selected, a number of other potential interview candidates were suggested by interviewees, via the technique of ‘snowball sampling’ in which interviewees act as ‘informants’ in suggesting the names of other potential interviewees, a process that can be repeated ad infinitum (Robson, 2002). Additionally, an iterative process of interviewee identification was used as a way of covering gaps in the evidence base that could only be identified during the course of the research. Interviewees are referenced throughout the course of the thesis by their role and the organisation to which they belonged at the time to which the reference refers. Where interviewees have occupied multiple roles over time, only the role relevant to the reference is given, though at times more than one role is considered relevant, with all roles duly referenced.
While one interview lasted only thirty minutes, due to time constraints imposed by the interviewee, all other interviews were of between one-and-three-quarter hours and two-and-a-half hours, reflecting the researcher’s intention to delve deeply into the processes investigated and to allow interviewees to range widely as a way of accessing information unobtainable elsewhere. Interviews were conducted under Chatham House rules and were recorded, with the permission of the
interviewee, and transcribed. A number of interviewees requested that certain responses of sentences not be quoted, Chatham House rules notwithstanding, an appeal the researcher was happy to comply with. The guidelines established in the Economic and Social Research Council’s
Framework for Research Ethics 2010, Updated September 2012 (ESRC, 2012) are complied with, in order to ensure high ethical standards and to follow the stipulations of the funding body for this research. While the interview data was not coded according to specific themes or analysed using qualitative data analysis software, word searches were heavily used in order to access particular topics within lengthy transcriptions.
A standard set of questions is given below:
1. What roles did you play in which organisations?
2. What strategy documents were you involved in the production of, whether published or unpublished?
3. Where did the balance of power lie among the institutions active at this scale during this period?
4. What was the nature of interactions between your organisation and others active during this period?
5. Was there a linear path of capacity building over the course of the period?
6. Was there a clearly defined shared strategy or were there shared strategic priorities among the various institutions and bodies active during the period?
7. Were funds combined towards a shared end during the period?
8. Was it the intention that a range of sectoral interventions would be planned together as part of a single integrated strategy, or as separate initiatives within a generally agreed or assumed overriding imperative? Were investments planned to complement each other e.g. training and local economy; transport and sustainability?
9. At the scale of strategies and policies, was there a strong idea of the spatial scale over which these would be effective, e.g. urban or neighbourhood regeneration, as opposed to growing the regional economy?
10. Was there a broadly agreed-upon spatial conception of the local area / sub-region / region?
11. How were the sub-region and the region conceived of as places, in terms of their identity and resources?
12. What was the relationship between the component parts of the sub-region / region? Were different parts seen as playing different roles?
13. Was there a coherent visualisation and representation of the sub-region / region in the thinking of your organisation and more widely during the period?
This list of questions would form the basis of the interview, which would be added to by questions specific to the interviewee and by additional questions and enquiries provoked by unplanned and off-topic comments made by the interviewee.
Questions 1 and 2 are intended to establish the role(s) of the interviewees within regional and sub- regional institutions and to understand which policy documents were subject to the influence of the interviewee. Questions 3, 4 and 5 attempt to uncover the configuration of governance during particular periods covered in the analysis. Questions 6, 7 and 8 relate to the possibility that a relatively diverse array of governance bodies may come to function in a coordinated way in order to achieve an explicitly or implicitly agreed strategy. Question 9 addresses the relationship between policy interventions and spatial scale, relating to the multiscalar approach of the thesis. Questions 10, 11 and 12 are concerned with the spatial understanding of the region, together with its component parts, in order to measure interviewees’ attitudes to spatial organisation at various scales. Question 13 relates to the ways in which such attitudes are visualised, a consideration to be placed in the context of the gradually increasing use of spatial visions and other diagrammatic representations of spatial policy over the course of the period analysed in the thesis.