Regional politics and economic patterns: ‘glocalisation’ and the network enterprise

Abstract

The exploration of contemporary accents in regional economic policy is the starting point of this paper. The confrontation of this investigation with the theoretical background that is developed within the global-local paradox, leads to a glocalisation concept, being the ratio between global orientation and the local and regional aspects of industrial production. Glocalisation manifests itself as local production complexes that are nodes within global networks. Seen from the production point of view, industrial strategies, leading to the emergence of the network enterprise, are the driving forces behind this process. Both examples, the network enterprise between the Belgian car manufacturing industry and their suppliers and the rail engineering in the Berlin-Brandenburg region as nodes in a global network, support this thesis. In search for a new perspective of regional economic policy, it is clear that the local does not exist without the global. This implies that regional policy must be seen from the point of view of a socio-political entity that defends local interests by attempting to unite the firms’ interests with their own interests. There is no doubt that this concept of local interests is precisely the missing link in the global/local models. From the existence of the network enterprise, for whom local is certainly not the same as it is to the socio-political entity(ies), this also indicates that purely indigenous models and policies are not appropriate.

Keywords

• regional economic policy
• global-local paradox
• network enterprise
• glocalisation
• local interests