Template-Type: ReDIF-Article 1.0
Author-Name: José Ignacio Vigil
Title:  El Estado en Movimiento.  Una revisión de la relación entre los conceptos regionalistas y la política regional.
Abstract: Resumen
En el marco de los enfoques conceptuales y las políticas vinculadas al
desarrollo regional y local, se plantea un repaso de la manera en que las
dinámicas de los espacios regionales deben combinarse con las formas de
intervención estatal, sobre todo de la instancia central. Con pinceladas del
caso argentino y con base en dos transformaciones estatales (espacialidad y
morfología) se explora la idea de Estado
en movimiento para el desarrollo regional que, con hincapié en el
nivel nacional, propone un accionar dinámico de la intervención que atienda a
las diferentes características de las formas socio-espaciales regionales, que
procure formas de dinamización variadas (mas allá del empowerment regional por el lado de la oferta y la generación de enclousers para la obtención de
competitividad) y que prevea mecanismos para re-direccionar
dinámicas regionales rentistas.Abstract
The paper proposes a review of the way in
which regional spatial dynamics should combine with state intervention, mainly
national and it explores some of the way in which this combination (of state intervention
and regional formations) may occurs which particular concerns to the
Argentinean context. The proposal departures by describing and recognizing that
much of the Latin America –and in particular Argentinean- specific policies for
regional development that took place all trough the 90s have been (and still
are) quite influenced by a set of concepts that are usually gathered around the
new regionalism theorist or even
“paradigm”. Those concepts, such as cluster, industrial district, regional
innovation systems, learning regions, and the like, have been mainly suggesting
that to obtain regional economic competence a central concern should be empowering
local and regional actors on the supply side within a more or less delimited
territorial space. 
 With that assumption as point of departure (very
well documented), the paper later suggests also that this new regionalism trend for regional policies have been sympathetic
to (and supported by) the transformations over central state that many (or even
most) Latin American countries has “suffered” from during the neoliberal wave
of the 90s. The paper suggest that whilst it is true that there is a tendency
to transform state structures on its spatiality (transformation from national
concentration of task and functions to up
and down scaling of those activities)
and its morphology (transformation from government to governance), Argentina in
particular was subject of what some authors have identified as a hollowing out of the state structures (rolling out), rather than a rescaling and rearticulating of their geographies of regulation. For some
commentators, the new regionalism
paradigm has contributed to this hollowing
out of the state structure as a sort of “reaction” to the Latin American
state centralist tradition, which apparently did not allow regions to direct
their own future. The result, it is suggested in the paper, was a combination
of devolution of tasks and functions to
local and regional levels with a national policy for regional development
supporting regions on the supply side, while fostering a bottom up
(local-global) model for economic success.
 
That said, the paper later suggest two
interrelated arguments: first, that
there is now a wide array of description of the possibilities in which regions
may change and evolve, with so many different forms and possible network-like shapes,
and that there has also been descriptions of the way in which regions can obtain
externalities in those network-like forms beyond the agglomeration by
territorial proximity. For instances, non-territorial network forms came to
complement more traditional forms of regionalism, showing that even at a
distance, it is possible to coordinate economic activities. As such, fostering
regional economic development should open up the array of instruments available
for regions in order to take advantage of the new possibilities coming from the
different forms and shapes of the economic activities. This argument came then
to question the theoretical grounds of new
regionalism usually based on the idea of a local community, proximity,
local collective efficiency and
regional economic success, or the supposed ability of local/regional actors to decide
by their own about the regional economic future. Second, it suggests that there is enough argument to support state
(national) intervention beyond the devolution mechanism to empower local and
regional actors. Actually, it is suggested that central state should have a
(more) active role than promoting the supply side of regional economies,
especially for less favored regions.  
                       
With some references to the Argentinean
context, and based on the two previously mentioned state transformations (on
its spatiality and morphology) the paper explores the idea of State in motion for regional development
which, stressing the national level, proposes a dynamic performance of the
intervention attending to the different characteristics of the socio-spatial
regional forms, tending to vary the support to regional development initiatives
(beyond enclosures and regional empowerment) and planning mechanisms and tools
to eventually re-direct certain regional dynamics. The argument described
suggest the need of a central/national state with enough capacities/abilities in order to attend the following elements: a)
to conform a national strategy for regional economic development, gathering the
interested parties around in order to design the strategy as well as allocating
different task, functions and responsibilities among participants; b) to act
balancing the inter-regional equilibrium/convergence and fostering each
regional socio-economic space with tools and strategies that allow to
eventually “open” the territory to non-local linkages and connections (that is,
neither dismissing parochialism nor uncritically assuming local coherence,
endogenous or local competence by agglomeration factors); c) (very important)
to develop new and (more) effective tools to be able to revert rent-seeking
behavior of regressive local economic actors while avoiding the pitfalls of the
past authoritarian and hierarchical central State against to which the new regionalisms has being trying to
make an improvement. 
 Amongst others results, the paper finish by advocating
an approach to the regional problem that do not came from a single and singular
spatial receipt. On the contrary, in considering the national intervention for
regional development there should be a bunch of tools and strategies to tackle
the different shapes and forms of the diverse socio-economic regional
formations, their particular needs and level of technological development
obtained including their particular path dependences. The central government,
in particular scenarios like Argentina and Latin America, deserves to be though
again in order to seriously tackle regional problems in less favored regions.   
Classification-JEL: R1
Keywords: Estado, Política regional, Teorías regionalistas, Argentina, State, Regional policy, Regional concepts
Pages: 39-67
Volume: 2
Year: 2015
File-URL: http://www.revistaestudiosregionales.com/documentos/articulos/pdf-articulo-2469.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:rer:articu:v:2:y:2015:p:39-67