The governance of economic regeneration in England: Emerging practice and issues

Abstract

How spatial economies are governed across the different places of England recently (re)commenced a process of fervent renegotiation following the 2010 election of a coalition government. As the third paper in a series examining state-led restructuring of sub-national development, the principal concern and analytical focus of this paper is the evolving governance landscape. Based on a review of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), the state reterritorialisation strategy is explored. Analysing the motives, interests, attributes and accountability of some primary actors entangled in these new and recast multilevel governance networks, the paper directs some much needed critical attention towards ‘the who’ aspects of economic regeneration partnership working. The paper argues that if LEPs are to be understood as a radical departure from what has gone before, then the form and mode of governance must, in turn, undergo a radical transformation of substance that transcends symbolic politics.