Regional Policies: Promoting Competitiveness in the Wake of Globalisation

This chapter highlights several approaches, beginning with the slippery concept of social capital and the way it is used to explain economic growth. It examines policies to strengthen the university industry linkage to promote national and regional economic development. The chapter deals with a number of reflections on competitiveness. The process of globalisation has highlighted an internal tension that has long lurked beneath the surface of the nation state. The changes from inward to more outward looking national bureaucracies is of substantial significance for regions that will themselves increasingly have to coordinate national and super-national policies within their defined territories. The process of globalisation highlights this contradiction as new opportunities arise for utilising the ownership of private capital to create and benefit from activities that take place outside the jurisdiction and territory of the nation state. Social capital contributes to economic performance by reducing inter-firm transaction cost, i.e. "search and information costs, bargaining and decision costs, policing and enforcement costs".