Propuesta de actividades para la comunidad universitaria

1.5 Role of the CASE partner

The research is undertaken as a CASE partnership with the Southern Staffordshire

Partnership (SSP), a consortium of Local Authorities based in the county of Staffordshire.

This organisation was founded in 2001 to focus on economic development and regeneration issues, forming a partnership adhering to both regional and national

government expectations for collaborative forms of organisational practice in the delivery and governance of sub-national economic policy.

The SSP is involved in the research from a position of enhancing their evidence base and understanding of the Southern Staffordshire economy and its position in and relationship to both Staffordshire county and the GBS area. Referred to in their various publications and releases as the ‘Edge of City’ study’, SSP see this work as providing additional intelligence to supplement the ‘E3i Belt’ study published by the West Midlands Observatory (Bryson

& Taylor, 2006) detailing the economic contribution and potential of an area encircling the Birmingham-Black Country conurbation, of which Southern Staffordshire is a part.

SSP played a key role in the progress of the research, providing legitimacy in engaging with policy makers and firms alongside an impact setting through which to focus and disseminate findings. The partnership holds a large body of intelligence on local economic

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and demographic issues, developed as part of their service-based economic development activities, alongside their separate statutory duties in terms of Planning Policy and Local Economic Assessment. Additionally they were able to provide support in accessing the two target sets of interview subjects; the political actors for governance interviews, and the firms for the spatial economy analysis.

The various political organisations and subjects involved in economic governance, either through the GBS and S&S LEPs or one of their peripheral partners, were each engaged with SSP members to varying degrees. This ensured an established relationship which was utilised to gain access to both organisations and key individuals. For accessing firms the LA’s involved in SSP have their own set of networks established again through service-led ED activities and more strategic or ceremonial relationships between senior political and management personnel and key local business leaders. These relationships are seen as critical to the research, providing the opportunity for initial business contact to cascade into a wider engagement across the business community. In addition to direct access to

subjects, the SSP relationship adds a dimension of legitimacy to the research through providing it with a ‘real world’ setting which will utilise research outcomes for the benefit of policy and strategy development. It also is seen as a conduit into a stronger

understanding of key firms within the area alongside an opportunity to raise both LA and SSP profile amongst such organisations to later utilise in enhancing their dialogue with key economic actors.

18 1.6 Aims & Objectives

In this section I discuss the aims and objectives of the study and how these will be progressed through the body of the study. The principal objective of this research is to understand the processes and practices in the formation of spatial economy through spaces of economic production and spaces of economic governance. In progressing this objective, I will use a relational approach to my analysis, starting from a point of the economy as a networked, dynamic, and perpetually evolving spatial phenomenon. In this section I outline the research questions which constitute the collective aims of the research, and then discuss how these will be addressed through each of the chapters in turn.

1.6.1 Research question

The principal question for the research is “How is sub-national spatial economy

constructed and interpreted through the interaction of spaces of economic production and spaces of economic governance?”. This question will be progressed through division into three separate parts, a structure which approaches the examination of spaces of economic production and spaces of economic governance in Southern Staffordshire individually, before analysing how these manifestations are integrated through state-market interaction.

Alongside this, they explicitly incorporate the concept of relationality as the principle lens used in understanding the spaces of state and firm actors. These questions stands as;

How are spaces of economic governance relationally constructed through state spatial policy and interpreted as spatial economy?

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How are spaces of economic production relationally constructed through sub-national industrial or structural contexts and network connections?

Within this relational dynamic, how do these spaces of economic governance and spaces of economic production converge at the sub-national scale?

These questions will be addressed through the following set of chapters.

1.6.2 Chapters and content

In this opening chapter I have provided an outline of this study. This has included commentary on the genesis of the research, a justification of its relevance and need, an introduction to the study area and the research CASE partner, and a statement of the key question the study will address. The rest of the study will follow the structure set out below.

In Chapter 2, I will set out my case for the study, identifying the key concepts and

theoretical debates to shape, refine and contextualise the research alongside identifying the critical gaps in existing debates I aim to address. This will engage with a broad literature incorporating elements of neo-regionalism and critical regionalism, regional development theory, firm location theory, evolutionary economics and regional innovation systems, and state spatial governance and state rescaling. It will further build the case for the relevance and importance of this study and outline its anticipated contribution.

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Chapter 3 focuses on the methodological approach taken in the research. In this I will discuss the research design, the processes through which I collected the intelligence, and the rationale for the methods selected. This will include detailed statements on the approach to interviewing subjects, the methods employed in managing the quality of intelligence attained during these interviews, and the process used in analysing this data. I will also outline the ethical issues identified and how these were mitigated and provide some further rumination on the role of the SSP as the research partner in practice.

In Chapter 4 I commence the empirical analysis of spaces of economic production and spaces of economic governance within Southern Staffordshire. The principal aim of this chapter is to establish a picture of Southern Staffordshire and its relationship to concepts of sub-national economy through formal governance relations, structural similarity and industrial concentration. From a starting point of Southern Staffordshire as a bounded but not contained economic unit, it progresses this to consider its changing shape and

positioning through the transition from regionalist to ‘Localist’ approaches and

introduction of the FEA concept as a spatial policy tool. It moves on to test the validity of these spatial articulations through the use of key measures in defining FEA; labour flows and industrial concentrations. Using the relational discourse, this chapter unpicks the relationship between Southern Staffordshire and the organic FEA of Greater Birmingham and Solihull into which it has been interned. It argues the limitations of such singular models of spatial economy, suggesting this manifests instead in a highly spatially

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fragmented form with a set of structural alignments contesting established spaces of economic governance.

In Chapter 5, I turn attention to the construction of spaces of economic production within Southern Staffordshire from a networked perspective. Focusing on the practices and exchanges of firms from amongst key industries in the area, this chapter examines the spatial extent of their critical dependencies. Interpreting dependency in three distinct ways - through the embedding resources underpinning location, the distribution of key markets, and the process of knowledge exchange - I consider the spatial manifestations of these dependencies and how they correspond with formal, state-based articulations of spatial economy. Through this I argue a form of spatial economy in Southern Staffordshire increasingly detached from concepts of the sub-national and instead highly integrated in networked practices, contributing to current theoretical and policy debates on firm-space integration and understandings on the extent of local dependence in local economy.

Chapter 6 considers the changing form and nature of spaces of economic governance in Southern Staffordshire. It focuses specifically on the role of relational attachments and how these serve to construct and are constructed by changing tendencies in political practice and partnerships. It examines the evolving spatial permutations of Southern Staffordshire and its wider territorial associations, applying a framework of periodization to the changing spatial iterations and spatial relationships at play in the area. The chapter proposes the formulation of spatial economy through changing forms of policy unit indicates an ongoing process of state spatial revision. Whilst articulated through formal

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governance spaces, these are integrated with a set of informal relationships represented by historic and emerging association. The interplay between these spaces and their shifting ability, via state and market patronage, to accommodate strategic service and corporate interests proposes a continually fluid space of economic governance, localities shifting via association and priority interests creating a sub-national space in perpetual flux.

Chapter 7 pulls together these analyses of spaces of economic production and spaces of economic governance to examine the implications for sub-national spatial economy.

Considering the detachment between spaces of economic production and spaces of economic governance examined, this chapter builds on these understandings to consider the extent to which they convergence at the sub-national scale. It considers the effect of practices of multi-scalar and multi-stakeholder governance in integrating economic interests and examines how these translate in the consolidation of economic and political spaces. Its analysis proposes both an extending congestion, and through this contestation, of national spatial economy through these practices. Whilst suggesting the sub-national retains a position as a point of convergence between spaces of economic

production and those of economic governance, this is increasingly narrow and selective, shaped by influences of central government policy, market sponsorship, and local resource management. For those interests outside of this convergence, the sub-national increasingly represents a point of departure as actors and stakeholders seek other platforms through which to pursue objectives.

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Chapter 8 concludes the thesis. This chapter reiterates the key findings of the study, considering the implications for key debates in the functioning of spatial economy, the development of state spatial governance, and the integration of state and market interests as part of a process of sub-national economic management. It finishes considering the

implications of both the research and the evolving governance environment for Southern Staffordshire and the potential for further research around the areas of economic and political geography.

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CHAPTER 2: ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE IN A RELATIONAL