European Urban and Regional Studies

European Urban and Regional Studies
http://eur.sagepub.com Rethinking Local and Regional Development: Implications for Radical Political Practice in Europe
Costis Hadjimichalis and Ray Hudson European Urban and Regional Studies 2007; 14; 99 DOI: 10.1177/0969776407076290 The online version of this article can be found at: http://eur.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/2/99
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RETHINKING LOCAL AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

IMPLICATIONS FOR RADICAL POLITICAL PRACTICE IN EUROPE
Costis Hadjimichalis
Harokopio University, Athens, Greece
Ray Hudson
Durham University, UK
Abstract
This article focuses upon the practicalities of what people actually do and can do in the present era of neo-liberal globalization to build more progressive local and regional development strategies in Europe. To do so, we introduce three examples of alternative local and regional development activities in Europe: (a) social economy projects to tackle problems of localized social inequalities and local development; (b) public sector procurement and related intiatives to create healthier diets; and (c) participatory municipal budgets as a means to make radical participatory democracy a practical proposition. We discuss the issues that arise from them in terms of a radical local and regional development strategy and how they help to re-formulate our theoretical agendas and research practice. Unlike many uncritical studies of successful places that then seek mechanistically to transplant the bases of success as off the shelf blueprints to be applied in and to other places we instead see these examples as providing an alternative framework for thinking about local and regional development that adapts more general principles (such as those of equity, accountability and democracy) to the specifics and local and regioanl circumstances. KEY WORDS Radical political practice progressive local and regional development neo-liberal globalisation Europe social economy public procurement health and diet participatory democracy
Introduction
From the early 1990s onwards there has been an ongoing debate about the future of radical geography and the possibilities for progressive local and regional development, in which both of us have participated on various occasions with polemical and/or sympathetic interventions. We will, quite deliberately, not engage here in a lengthy explicit critique of current theory, policy and practice (see Hudson, 1999; 2002; 2005; Hadjimichalis, 2006a; 2006b; Hadjimichalis and Hudson, 2006). We recognize that we continue to live in a capitalist world, dominated by capital, in which social and spatial inequalities are deepening and class, gender, racial, ecological and ethnic differences still determine our lives; and acknowledge the need adequately to come to grips with these complex processes via a variety of heterodox theoretical approaches. Instead, this article
European Urban and Regional Studies 14(2): 99113 10.1177/0969776407076290
is a modest attempt to move the debate forward and, more specifically: (a) to set up a number of issues that, in our view, radicals have to take into account in formulating Left strategies1 for cities and regions; (b) to provide a few illustrative examples of what this might mean in practice. Although we do briefly return to issues of theory in the third section of the article, we emphasize practice here because we feel strongly that too much time and space have been given over to intellectual fencing, with too little attention to the practicalities of what people actually do and can do in the present era. Fundamentally, we are interested in ways of improving the lives of people who live in those places in Europe and elsewhere that are left out of the dominant neo-liberal narratives which emphasize success and competitiveness. We have heard far too much and too much that is uncritical about successful
Copyright 2007 SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore, http://eur.sagepub.com
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regions, regional competition, clusters, learning, regeneration, networking and so on and on ad infinitum; far too little about those marginalized and excluded discursively and materially by the practices of various forms of neo-liberalism. Moreover, we see the national state as a key institution and continuing resource in the struggle to enhance the lives of poor people in poor places. We acknowledge that the deployment of state power within a national-territorial framework is always likely to be subverted because capitalist power is organized and deployed (e.g. via global commodity chains) in ways which mean that it cannot be completely or even weakly in many cases controlled by state power. Nonetheless, contra those of a neo-liberal persuasion, we insist that national states in Europe (and indeed the EU as an embryonic state, however weak and thin it may be as of now) can have an influence and retain the potential to promote progressive policies and to act as sites of resistance to the pressures of neoliberalism and as potential sites for an alternative political project. After all, neoliberalism is not a monolithic system; it is grafted into various social models and regimes of regulation, resulting in various versions of actually existing neo-liberalism and, consequently, different possibilities for progressive/Left-wing actions. Furthermore, taking serious account of the issue of scale, we acknowledge that local and regional administrations/states still play key roles in managing development problems. As a result, there is space for progressive social movements in particular places of Europe to create alliances with progressive elements within local/regional administrations, national states and the EU and to engage the states and/or regions resources in the pursuit of progressive local and regional development strategies.2 We make no apologies for the fact that we are seeking ways of achieving such progressive improvements within the limits and parameters defined by capitalist social relations. In this respect our proposals could be attacked as reformist or, in Nancy Frasers (1995) terms, accommodative rather than transformative. However, we strongly reject such criticisms for what counts as reformist depends above all upon: (a) conjuncture and political context;3 and (b) on whether these improvements are seen as an end in themselves, or as opening windows for left opportunities in the long run. Thirty or
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forty years ago in Europe such a reformist approach could be easily dismissed as tangential, even obfuscatory, diverting attention from devising more radical policy approaches. We might well then have made this criticism ourselves. In contrast, in the present neo-liberal political environment, we would argue that such a reformist approach is very relevant and urgently needed as, more than ever before, we have to fight for what we not so long ago more-or-less unquestioningly regarded as the basic rights of citizens in social democratic societies. Furthermore, we would argue that under specific political conditions such progressive reformist measures may evolve into Left strategies and so we would argue that they have the potential to be both accommodative in the short term and transformative in the longer term. Local development projects, rooted in place, can be seen as a form of democratic experimentalism (Unger, 1998) or civic republicanism (Marquand, 1997), providing spaces in which people can be the (co)producers of the context-specific (in terms of history, time and place) and progressive even radical transformations of their local and regional cultural, economic and social worlds. We develop our argument by means of three illustrative examples: (a) social economy projects as a way to tackle problems of localized social inequalities and local development; (b) public sector procurement and related initiatives to create healthier diets for those living in Europes cities and regions, starting with sensitive citizens in schools, nurseries and hospitals; and (c) participatory municipal budgets which have spread from Latin America to Europe as a means to make radical participatory democracy a practical proposition. These examples illustrate the variety of ways in which progressive grassroots initiatives may be woven together with progressive central and local state policies. Our examples may open windows for Left opportunities, as they focus on people and social movements rather than firms, demanding structural changes for those who find themselves down the social and political hierarchy (the unemployed, women, immigrants, blacks, young people, and the elderly). In this, we seek to reintroduce substantive political concerns and struggles which recognize that there are difficult choices to be made if the needs of disadvantaged people and places are to be prioritized. As such, we
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dissent from both consensual Third Way4 views which assert that there is middle way that allows everyone and everywhere to be a winner, and also from neo-liberal views which celebrate the process of producing winners as well as losers as a necessary feature of successful economies. The structure of the rest of the article is as follows. First, we introduce the three examples referred to above. Then we go on to discuss the issues which arise from them in terms of a radical local and regional development strategy and how they help to reformulate our theoretical agendas and research practice. We want to emphasize one point that we see as crucial. Unlike many uncritical studies of successful places which then seek mechanistically to identify and/or to transplant the bases of success as blueprints to be applied in and to other places, we would instead see these examples as providing an alternative framework for thinking about local and regional development which adapts more general principles (such as those of equity, accountability and democracy) to the specifics and local and regional circumstances, rather than prescribing off the shelf answers.
agency at different scales; they focus on everyday life issues, on what people actually do; they are outcomes of alliances between progressive social movements and progressive/Left regional institutions; although they dont have an immediate connection with local/regional policies, we believe they have a major impact on local/regional development trajectories. As such they do not constitute progressive/Left strategies as known from old practices (based on a party line, or on strong unions, for example), but instead offer some new applied heterodox ideas. Finally, it is important to stress that in all three cases, there is the potential for these local examples to be turned from a progressive to a regressive neo-liberal political project whether they do so will be a matter of practice rather than theory
The social economy: alternative interpretations of its developmental potential5

In its current usage in Europe, the term social economy refers to not-for-profit activity aimed at meeting social needs. As such, it can be defined, according to the dominant policy use, as follows (NICDA/CDS, 1999: 11):
The Social Economy constitutes a broad range of activities which have the potential to provide opportunities for local people and communities to engage in all stages of the process of local economic regeneration and job creation, from the identification of basic needs to the operationalisation of initiatives. The sector covers the economic potential and activities of the self-help and co-operative movements, that is, initiatives that aim to satisfy social and economic needs of local communities and their members. This sector includes co-operatives; self-help projects; credit unions; housing associations; partnerships; community enterprises and businesses.
Recovering space for radical politics in debates

A major neglected issue in Third Way and institutionalist frameworks of local/regional development concerns politics in its wider sense. In these studies the agent is the networked and learning firm and/or its male entrepreneur. There is hardly any reference to conflicts and power hierarchies, to gender roles and patriarchy, to environmental and ecological impacts of economic processes, not to mention unions, social movements and so on. The main assumption, central to this conceptualization, is that social interactions are conflict free and are taking place primarily via firms and institutions. This framework, instead of enabling us to reconceptualize local/regional development issues in terms of remembering the political involvement of human agency (supposedly forgotten in all Marxist studies), takes us back to the instrumental management of resources. In this respect the context is depoliticized. The choice of our three examples is based on a fourfold assumption: they provide space for human
The Third Sector and/or social economy have become a focus of considerable policy impetus at EU and national state levels in Europe. Much of this links the social economy as the solution to the explosion of place-based social exclusion as the problem a localization of the social economy as a policy approach to tackle problems of local socio-economic development. We wish to make three critical reservations about this concept of localized social exclusion: first, it addresses effects and symptoms
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rather than underlying processes; second, it underplays the significance of class vis a vis other dimensions of social inequality, such as ethnicity, gender or sexuality; and third, it constructs causal relations of social exclusion with particular places, often falling into a territorial trap. The rhetoric of spatial targeting has become a way of posing the social economy, through its varied powers ranging from the offer of work and services to empowerment and community/capability building, as a if not the means of combating social exclusion, now pathologized as the problem of particular types of people in particular types of location. This amounts to an unsubtle abandonment of the universal welfare state and the erosion of established citizens rights, under the guise of partnership, efficiency of service delivery and targeting. Given its strong association with neo-liberal Third Way approaches, it may therefore come as something of a surprise that we choose to begin our illustrative examples with a consideration of the social economy. However, we wish to emphasize two points: first, that there is no necessary connection between the social economy and neo-liberal Third Way-ism, although in some cases this is certainly present; second, that support for the social economy can come via local/regional and national state institutions and not just from within the confines of civil society. An illustrative example of how a local radical social economy initiative can be adopted by a regional government is Umbrias regional social policy plan (Regione Umbria, 2000). In this plan, the third sector/social economy is explicitly introduced as an important part of the regions associative tradition and it is directly linked to local employment and regional development. What distinguishes Umbrias regional social policy from Third Way solutions is: (a) an explicit priorization of radical initiatives that originated in social movements; (b) the multiscalar approach to social problems (combining EU initiatives, regional policies and Third World cultural and productive traditions), away from parochial localism; and (c) its emphasis on both native Italians and economic immigrants referred to as new citizens able not only to work in local firms but also to create their own business and employment. Using national and EU financial and institutional resources, Umbrias CentreLeft administration applied two specific plans to implement the above: patti territoriali
(territorial pacts agreements among firms, workers and municipalities) and contratti darea (local area contracts towards production/service provision of particular kinds).6 What is particularly interesting in Umbrias case is that everything started as a grassroots mobilization by local womens groups to help immigrants. Initially forming a movement to help the integration of Muslim and African women into the Italian environment, these women have been organized as social economy advisors to help immigrant women to start a small cooperative handicraft business and other shops. These initiatives subsequently received financial and technical support from the regional government and became part of its official regional development strategy in 2000 (see also Il Manifesto, 12.3.2003). The above example from Umbria, as well as other similar ones, illustrates the ways in which the growth of the social economy, especially via its relationship to the regional state and the EU, can form the focus of potentially progressive alternatives which contra neo-liberal readings and representations of the social economy could be viewed as radical Left. In this alternative conception of the social economy, it is seen as an alternative to the mainstream, located in the interstices of and/or on the fringes of the mainstream. The emphasis here is again upon the social economy as the creator and/or occupier of a variety of spaces which are of no interest to, or which have been abandoned by, the mainstream economy and/or state. The social economy thus constitutes spaces for humane, cooperative and alternative forms of social and economic organization and forges links with cooperatives, community groups, NGOs and trades unions, not least those experimenting with community unionism, and other longer-established groups seeking to improve the living and working conditions of the mass of the population. These revolve around the production of an albeit limited range of goods (such as handicrafts in Umbria and recycled furniture or pottery elsewhere) and services (e.g. child care, care of the elderly, environmental valorization, or local shops) via a variety of social relations which are seen as different to but also complementary to those of the mainstream. The social economy can also involve the construction of a variety of local currencies and exchange metrics such as time dollars and time banks which are delinked from mainstream monies and currencies. Interesting examples here are the urban time banks in Italy (Bance del Tempo in Rome,
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Milan, Bologna) described by Paolucci (2001), and Ithakas (New York, US) local alternative currency, described by de Fillippis (2004). Furthermore, it can be argued that the clear sense of being part of a wider social desire for a meaningful alternative to a capitalist market-dominated society constitutes the real strength of the social economy. It will never become an economic growth machine or an engine of mass job generation and it should not be seen as a replacement for the welfare state. However, it can signify the possibilities of another way an alternative and challenge to, rather than a complement to, the mainstream; and constitute the kernel of a symbol of another kind of economy, one based on more democratic economic practices, on meeting social needs and on enhancing social citizenship. Indeed, while recognizing that such potentially radical alternatives are always necessarily grounded in specific times and places, it might even transcend its current limits if the policy-driven conception of the social economy as a localized solution to the problem of local social exclusion could be broken. However, while this localized conception of the social economy celebrates the variety of forms the social economy can take in different places, it also rules out consideration of systemic alternatives to the mainstream capitalist economy. Maybe the key move, therefore, is to break the localized link between the social economy and social exclusion, as it is demonstrated in the case of Umbria. This would require delocalizing and descaling discourses around the social economy and challenging the dominant conception of the mainstream rather than seeking to cast the social economy in its mould or to see it as filling the interstices and margins those places which the mainstream has abandoned. This might involve rather more than just a radical reformism in Frasers (1995) terms, a structurally transformative politics. Although admittedly such systemic change isnt currently on the agenda in any major way, it is vitally important to keep open the theoretical and political space for such possibilities.
state to engage progressively in economic and social issues in the age of neo-liberalism, it remains the case that states continue to possess considerable power and resources which can be deployed to enhance peoples lives and living conditions and to encourage sustainable local economic development if they choose to use them, even in seemingly unpropitious circumstances.7 One example of this is the way in which state and regional policies in some European countries (such as France, Italy, Serbia and Spain) have created spaces for local initiatives to find ways of using procurement policies for food purchases in a variety of prosaic settings such as schools, care homes and hospitals to improve the quality of food and thereby deliver a variety of health and well-being benefits as well as stimulating local agricultural economies (Peckham and Petts, 2003).8 The benefits arising from such changes include: More nutritious food helps to reduce diet-related health problems such as obesity, cancer, heart disease and diabetes. In the UK, for example, these are major causes of death and ill-health, blighting the lives of millions of people, with particular concentrations in swathes of places blighted by poverty in major urban and former industrial areas. More locally produced foodstuffs create new local markets for local farmers and producers, affording new opportunities and maybe even a lifeline to hard-pressed rural areas and thus contributing to local economic development. More localized and organic agri-food chains yield environmental benefits through lower food miles, thus reducing ecological footprints elsewhere and increasing local sustainability. While there has been some progress to date in many European countries in realizing such benefits, further radical reform of public procurement policies to embed such changes more deeply and widely (especially in countries such as England where they have a very tenuous hold) will require further and more radical action. Two interesting although quite different cases in point are Italys national and regional procurement policies and Serbias lack of them, despite local ecological actions.9 Since 1992, when the EURegulation 2092/91 about organic farming was implemented, Italy has been at the forefront of
Towards healthier and more sustainable cities and regions

While there has been considerable emphasis upon the alleged decline in the capacity of the national
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organic farming in Europe. A very innovative phenomenon that has grown rapdily is that of organic food in schools and hospitals. As a result of such policies many Italian cities now have wellestablished organic school meal systems in place: in Ferrara, for example, 80 percent of all food served to the citys nursery schools is organic, while Udine was one of the first Italian cities to supply organic meals to all its schools (Morgan, 2004). The Friuli Venezia Giulia region supports municipalities which adopt organic catering, meeting 30 percent of the total cost. With a special regional law 29/2002, Emilia Romagnas regional government imposed a 100 percent organic diet for nursery and primary schools and one that was at least 45 percent organic in universities and hospitals, again meeting 30 percent of the total cost. In Emilia Romagna as well as in Toscana and the Marche, a combination of parental concern (there are several parents associative movements) and political pressure from Left unions and political parties (particularly from the Greens and Rifondazione), is cited as the reason for regional governments switching to organic sourcing for schools. Organized parents representatives now sit on all committees that decide menus within each school, and parents agreed to meet part of the cost of organic meals. In these three regions, 48 percent of total organic food is produced locally, the rest is produced in the Mezzogiorno and only 10 percent, mainly beef, is sourced abroad. In northern Serbia, in the commune of Subotica (Vojvodina region), a strong organic farming movement has been created, as a way of reuniting all cultural and political sides formerly divided during the war.10 According to local activist Tereza Horvat Skenderovic (1998): In devastated and destructive social surroundings, health and environmental protection comes to the fore as an imperative topic because it connects and unites us regardless of ideological, religious, ethnic or political differences. Indeed, during the war, Western sanctions prevented the use of locally produced pesticides and fertilizers so regional people used the period to promote organic production. Without export possibilities or a strong local market, however, a local market had to be created. Unlike the Italian experience (where technical support, developed markets and financial subsidies were available from the EU, the state and regional governments), people in Subotica tried themselves, through a local
association called Terra, to establish links with local schools, nurseries, hospitals and training institutes. The organic products are 100 percent locally produced, but they must have the same price as non-organically produced ones. The project only became successful with the help of various citizens organizations and the regions Open University, the former Yugoslav Workers University, and through long-term agreements between producers and large consumers. As a result, organic production expanded, regional incomes increased and, after 2004, some exports began to Germany, Denmark and Hungary. These two cases open interesting possibilities, but more radical action is required at both a behavioural and at a structural level and at both local and extra-local scales, on at least four dimensions. Thus the first of the required changes would involve creating a regulatory framework which fosters rather than frustrates the growth of sustainable and so more localized or regionalized organic food chains and healthier diets and eating patterns. This is perhaps the most important reform because it would create a new set of incentives and sanctions for all those involved in the food chain. The regulatory changes would require a combination of global action11 (such as the reform of WTO rules to make them more supportive of human health, the environment and animal welfare) and EU action (such as more radical reform of the Common Agricultural Policy to shift the emphasis more firmly to promoting sustainable agriculture). Even so, while the EU directives do indeed outlaw explicit buy local public procurement policies, some member states are more creative than others in how they interpret these directives. The issue then is not so much the written regulation but the way in which it is interpreted or evaded. For example, public bodies in Italy and France design contracts (as they did in Serbia) which specify certain product qualities such as fresh ingredients, seasonal produce, locally certified products (like those with Protected Geographical Indication status), organic products and so forth which allow their cities and regions to practise local purchasing. Stimulating demand for local food, a second required action, is a long-term endeavour and, to be effective it needs to be part of a wider process of consumer education. But this educational process needs to move beyond the conventional injunctions
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of the health promotion industry to eat less, move more and to beware of foods high in salt, fat and sugar, even though these will undoubtedly remain key messages. For example, in Italy local food products are being used as learning materials for teachers and pupils alike in a programme called Cultura che Nutre culture that feeds. As well as learning about local produce, and how it changes through the seasons, the key aim of this educational programme is to create knowledgeable consumers that is consumers who have an awareness of, as well as a commitment to, locally produced nutritious food. Discerning and demanding consumers are ultimately the critical factor in the campaign to create and maintain healthy eating environments (Morgan and Sonnino, 2004). The third required dimension of change is that of supply, ensuring that farmers and producers have the productive capacity to meet local demand for healthier foodstuffs and that distribution networks are available to deliver it. There are evident dangers in creating a new market by stimulating demand, while doing nothing to create local sources of supply. This could well provoke a flood of imports, making it that much harder for local producers to then enter the new market. This is precisely what happened with the rapid growth of the UK organic food market, where some 75 percent of organic products are now supplied through imports. This dimension of change requires also a different imagination of European rural space, away from the currently dominant version which approaches it mainly as a consumption site. The latter is well documented in the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), which marginalizes rural space as a productive site (with the exception of some very intensive and high-value production areas) and reduces it to recreational and second-home spaces (Hadjimichalis, 2003). This directly links our example with national and EU regional policies. The fourth type of required action is to reform the social environment of food choice to ensure that healthy food as opposed to mass-produced junk fast food becomes a visible and feasible option for all. Here more attention is required to reduce health inequalities based on class, gender, income and living conditions and not simply improving a vague general average. This is a vital macro-level action needed to complement micro-level actions in the food chain. The simple point to make about this
complex area of food choice is that choices are not made in a vacuum. For example, just 0.9 percent of the UK food advertising budget in 2000 was devoted to fresh fruit and vegetables; 28 percent was devoted to advertising cereals, cakes, biscuits, crisps and snacks; and, even more extraordinary, 99 percent of adverts for food during childrens TV programmes was for products high in either salt, sugar or fat (Sustain, 2001, cited in Morgan, 2004). Clearly, a combination of consumer action and citizen action will be necessary to secure a healthier food choice environment (Lang and Heasman, 2004).
Participatory budgeting
Participatory budgeting (PB) is an innovative financial practice which helps to enhance democratic participation in local planning and improve accountability and transparency in local administration (Allegretti and Herzberg, 2004). In this respect it opens a different path for urban and regional governance from those currently in vogue, which are heavily influenced by neo-liberalism. From its origins in Porto Alegre, it diffused to other parts of Latin America, and then to parts of Europe. In Porto Alegre (with a state population of 1.3m, 22 administrative regions and 670 local assemblies), the overall process was divided into four stages, which operate throughout the calendar year.12 In the first stage, Municipal Public Assemblies, Regional Thematic assemblies and Regional Directive Plenaries discussed and voted on specific projects, actions and thematic priorities. These enabled each region and neighbourhood to identify and rate particular overarching priorities, as each participant voted in the Thematic Meetings on three preferred options. Ballot papers were distributed and outcomes calculated at the conclusion of each meeting. In the second phase, the Regional Plenary of Delegates met and fulfilled two main tasks: first, synthesizing and evaluating different demands; second, electing delegates to the next phase of the PB process. The regional level meeting therefore acted as another stage of discussion and debate on programmes and themes between the municipal assemblies and the main decision-making process at the statewide level. The main decision-making process was the third stage:
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the Council of the PB. The composition of the Council is determined through the election of representatives from previous stages and the appointment of some technical delegates. In total 204 people participated in the Council. The fourth and final phase was execution, with Council decisions subjected to a process of appraisal, according to the Rio Grande do Sul states rules and norms of operation (Abers, 1998). While PB is widespread in Latin America (with various versions present in 2,600 cities), focused on radically democratizing local institutions and developing considerable autonomy in decision making for the lower social strata, in Europe it is restricted to cities in four countries (France, Germany, Spain and Italy). Compared to Latin America, PB has a more advisory role, focusing on transparency and good governance. Although there are many common themes in these four countries, national differences are important in shaping how PB operates in practice in cities and regions. In France and Spain PB has been presented as a strong political-ideological project supporting a concrete struggle against traditional Centralism, with three general objectives: (a) the enhancement of public management and local governance; (b) the transformation of social relations; and (c) fostering participatory democracy.13 Germany has seen the most instances of PB in Europe: 1524 according to the interpretation chosen. It is, furthermore, the country where the experiments have lasted the longest and where there has been the greatest number of wide-ranging political coalitions promoting them (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2003).14 The Consolidated Act for Local Authorities of 2000 in Italy boosted a number of the specific instruments to transform participation from a symbolic resource to an instrumental resource at the local level. After the 2001 council elections and the parliamentary Left (particularly Rifondazione Communista) gaining power, many municipalities (over 20, including Naples, Venice and Rome) formalized an interest in the adoption of PB (Amura, 2003). Among the European cities which have applied PB, the case of Seville (with a population of 700,000 in 2001) deserves attention. The introduction of PB was discussed in the municipal council from early 2000, when a Left coalition (Union of the Left, Andalusian Socialist Party, and Greens) came into office (Allegretti and Herzberg, 2004). By 2002
several preparatory steps had been taken and in 2003, after the introduction of a new municipal law 57/2003, PB has been implemented in three stages. During the first, the municipal council decided to allocate 3242 percent of the municipal budget through participatory processes to 18 districts, following a quota based on population, socioeconomic and geographical characteristics. In the second stage, neighbourhood committees in each district voted in local assemblies for particular projects, social policies and actions in their area and elected representatives to go to the districts assembly with a catalogue of urban social needs. All people in the neighbourhood had a vote, independently of age, gender, occupation, ethnicity and so forth, an important factor as 10 percent of the population of Seville comprises immigrants. The third stage was the Districts Assembly with representatives from all neighbourhoods, where all catalogues have been discussed, debated and evaluated with the technical assistance of municipal personnel. Final decisions from the Districts Assembly are obligatory for the municipal council (Fillipi, 2003).15 The peculiarity of PB in Spain is its reference to associative democracy.16 Indeed, in various cities, neighbourhood associations are the only legal participants in the process. The organizational rules are usually clearly pre-established. There are several variants, supported by their own regulations, generally jointly created by the council and citizens, which decree the functions of every actor, with a common first phase of general information provision and presentation of projects, leading to the elaboration by a few popular delegates of a list of priorities. PB is not without problems, however, and a lot depends on the issues that are to be discussed and the methods of implementation. In various cities, levels of participation vary, participation fatigue often appears and agendas are sometimes predetermined. But these are known deficiencies which can appear in any form of popular involvement in local politics, and what is at stake is how Left-wing policies could eliminate them and move forward. In both the French and Spanish cases, participation is founded mostly on the creation of open assemblies, while the acceptance of requests depends, above all, on political will. The main advantage of the Spanish routes to PB results
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from the strong political will of councils to make available the means for organizing participation. Citizens remain full of doubts about the real impacts of their proposals, given that they are usually unaware of why some suggestions were taken on board but not others. Contrary to the Latin American tradition, PB in Germany is fashionable but politically unimportant and it is dominated by the administrations, although in Berlin all political parties have recently started a dialogue in order to implement it in a few districts (Allegretti and Herzberg, 2004). In reality, however, few cities have matched this interest with concrete innovations. In addition to the specific points noted above, there are more general critiques arising from the Left. First, it is argued that PB has a limited influence on local development as it usually involves only 1530 percent of the total municipal budget. Second, it is viewed as a reformist strategy, which coopts popular demands and does not directly challenge capitalism. PB has indeed attracted considerable international attention following two tremendously successful World Social Forums in Porto Alegre. Indeed, international organizations like the IMF, World Bank, UN-Habitat and EU have selectively adopted some parts of the process. And third, it has met with reservations from traditional Left parties, unions and local authorities, which see their old political structures challenged by a heterodox strategy (Penha, 2003; Reid, 2003). These critiques (which can also be addressed to the other two examples) are valid, but in some cases they are narrowly focused and are sometimes highly sectarian in nature. We do not see PB or healthier food and organic agriculture as isolated radical strategies for local development, or as ends in themselves. We see them as open processes which under specific political conditions and after some time can initiate a process of radical democratic participation which, in turn, may contribute to increased progressive or even Left political consciousness.
regional competitiveness? we may ask, How do we improve regional health, nutrition and food supplies? Instead of asking for learning firms and learning regions we may ask for an engaging social economy able to support a different form of local social enterprise and deal with immigration issues. And finally, instead of understanding everything as superimposed by global forces, we may participate in local democratic struggles around municipal budgets to improve local well-being, as the experience of PB demonstrates. There is certainly a degree of reformism and utopian thinking here, which may at first appear contradictory. We believe, however, that any implementation of a progressive strategy, which under a specific political conjuncture may evolve to a Left strategy, contains elements of reformism (improvements under capitalism) and utopianism (imagination for a better future, Left in our case), elements of both accommodative and transformative strategies (cf. Fraser, 1995). After all, what those examples demonstrate is a struggle to acquire political hegemony over local and regional development issues, as a first step towards radically democratic principles. More specifically, there are (at least) three lessons to be learned from these short examples. 1. These examples raise the question of the extent to which local and regional spaces are or more properly should be seen as collective resources at a time when privatizations prevail. More generally they raise questions as to the most appropriate use of particular local spaces that is, use by whom, for what, making space again political. In the present conjuncture of neoliberal hegemony this is a positive step towards a transformative politics. For example, social economy projects can directly challenge the property relations of capital and the claims which these make over place-based resources. Projects to supply healthy foods locally challenge the perspective of the rural as a space of class-based consumption and reassert in regional planning practice the importance of the rural as a place of production, which in its turn challenges the imaginations of both the EU and the global commodity chains of multinational agribusinesses. Starting from health food for all, we could unpack a whole chain of exploitative relations from farming, GM seeds, trade
Lessons and unanswered questions

These examples do not provide direct answers to local and regional development problems but they are helping to reformulate the questions. In other words, instead of asking, How do we improve
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relations and multinational firms to local retail networks, food deserts and pricing. Finally, PB takes the issue of resource allocation into a different conception of participatory politics and decision making, making it again political, thus challenging established orthodoxies about urban and regional governance and, through this, contributing to a more balanced regional development. 2. These examples demonstrate how the arena for struggles over the distribution of resources among all citizens (including economic migrants), firms and institutions, living and operating in specific places, can be opened up. By resources we mean both material and symbolic resources such as symbols, images, representations and imaginations. For example, in the context of PB, these struggles acquired different forms along class, gender, racial, ethnic and environmental lines, as a result of giving people the possibility to choose among alternatives under the principle one vote for one person. In Latin America and Spanish cities these choices provided opportunities to women and elderly people to have a voice in local politics. Social economy initiatives create the possibilities for people who are excluded from the mainstream, such as migrants in Umbria, to be involved in the economy (in consumption and production) in a variety of ways and thereby create local developmental opportunities. And organic meals in schools, nurseries and hospitals, as in central Italy and northern Serbia, provide healthier food for all students and patients, avoiding the usual division, which promotes such food as a new luxury only for the upper classes. 3. All three examples have the potential to contribute to a long-run educational process towards democratic principles and a sense of collaboration-through-struggles among people instead of individualism and competitive success, the cornerstones of neo-liberal planning discourse. In this respect they reintroduce the old Left we instead of the neoliberal I, although we know that the we is now a contested notion and must go beyond the white male, employed/unemployed but unionized, heterosexual, ignoring ecological effects, dominant representation of the past. As such, they challenge head-on the one-dimensional
emphasis which runs through neo-liberal policy concepts and agendas for local and regional development, an agenda that is already dominant over much of Europe and threatens to become even more so, irrespective of the social and ecological costs it brings, unless confronted directly. In this way they can be viewed as transformative and, despite the fact that they are not direct local/regional policies, they have the potential to revive radical developmental politics in general, subject to the limits of translating militant particularisms (Williams, 1989) beyond the specific times and places in which they arise. Let us reiterate one thing, however: we do not claim that these are great revolutionary achievements, or that they are progressive-Leftist success models for local and regional development. We accept that regressive political forces may capture these and similar examples, that they can result in less promising outcomes after many years, or even be dominated by large capital, particularly in organic food production. We claim no more than that these are modest small steps towards a heterodox strategy for a better capitalism, which under some conditions via transforming the process of socialization itself, may evolve into a Left strategy. As a result, therefore, all the examples have the potential to contribute to a radicalization of both politics and practice in the context of local and regional development policies. Whether this potential is realized and under what conditions it might best be realized remains an open question, however, to be resolved only in political struggle. Nonetheless, when all is said and done, they are steps forward. While we would therefore defend the progressive aspects of the examples we have discussed, it is also important to be aware of the issues that cannot be addressed via these particular examples, and indeed more generally via place-based examples; not least as we wish to avoid falling into the trap of believing that what works in one place can be non-problematically transferred elsewhere.17 Unlike much of the recent work informed by the institutional turn in regional analysis (e.g. Amin, Cooke, Healey, and Storper; for a summary, see Hudson, 2001: 16980), our examples do not focus uncritically on the success stories of entrepreneurs and firms, cities or regions which can be seen as
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innovative, intelligent and networked and have learned the competitive lessons which enable them to be winners in the global economy. Therefore we wish to switch the emphasis from the firms, the prime preoccupation of so much recent institutional analysis of regional development, to those who work for them and/or who remain unemployed because of them. People as individuals and as collectives, as producers-creators, as citizens and consumers with rights/no-rights, with gender, age, racial, ethnic, sexual identities, rather than firms become the focus of attention as the main form of agency. This is so because our examples focus on peoples everyday lives, rather than the well-being of firms. In the political economy critique in which we speak mainly about socio-spatial inequalities and how to eliminate them, we have to make room for the discourse of appreciating identity differences and how to enrich them. The struggle against inequality starts at home and in everyday life and extends to local, national and global issues.18 What remains unspoken in these examples and in much of the Third Way literature are the relations among places, successful and unsuccessful alike, in other words the hard question of uneven development under capitalism. Much has been written and debated about these issues in the 1970s, resulting in a rich body of evidence based on practical action, as well as greater experience and knowledge from reflecting on and responding to critiques of the radical literature produced over this period. Recent work on commodity and value chains has emphasized the ways in which the success of some regions is inextricably bound up with the failure of others as a result of the way in which unequal power relations between firms and regions cause interregional value transfers (e.g. Hadjimichalis, 1987; Smith et al., 2002). While retaining a focus on the centrality of commodity production to capitalism, appreciation of the way in which the economic fortunes of regions are bound together entails a shift in emphasis towards the mechanisms through which flows of value in particular sectors of activity are shaped and governed by networks of intrafirm and interfirm linkages which typically span the globe. Since these activities are necessarily based in specific places and regions, these flows of value link regions into these interregional networks and flows of activity, differential power and value. This is not to claim
that regions are always or necessarily passive actors in these processes of network construction. Regions or more precisely those claiming the right to speak for and act on behalf of regions seek to position themselves as favourably as possible within these networks. However, the hard fact remains that the difficult work of production has to be carried out somewhere, that some places will be the sources of net value outflows, and that there will be many more of these than regions that gain as a result of net inflows of value. These asymmetries and inequalities are a structural feature of a capitalist economy and cannot be simply wished away. Finally, therefore, it is important to consider whether local and regional initiatives exacerbate rather than help resolve the broader question of the systemic social production of uneven development at various spatial scales. We are aware of the danger that some local actions may redistribute unevenness rather than fundamentally reduce it. Marxian and indeed other strands of political-economy have much to say about this issue (e.g. Mandel, 1968; Harvey, 1982), emphasizing that uneven development is genetically encoded within the social relations of capital in a non-deterministic way. By the same token, however, we would like to move beyond the safe sectarian position that, if this is the case, nothing could be changed before the total change of the capitalist system. While we support the need for such systemic change, and struggle to achieve it, we also feel that it is necessary to be engaged in struggles to ameliorate living conditions for people as much as possible, here and now. This is an issue on which much recent neo-liberal and some institutional analysis with its focus on success stories and winners has been conspicuously silent, beyond implausible appeals to the effect that all regions could be winners if only theyd get their institutional acts together. This seems to us to be a self-evidently unsatisfactory position to adopt, not least because it propagates the myth that all can be winners and so if they are not, then that is their responsibility, and systematically evades consideration of one of the structurally defining features of capitalist economies. It is therefore an urgent task to identify and to focus upon noncompetitive alternatives and upon the marginalized unsuccessful places trapped in the doldrums of persistent decline, and the mass of people living in them.
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Conclusions
In preparing this article, we have not been motivated by a nostalgic concern to recover a sense of a lost golden age of the past, but rather to make it clear that Marxian political economy and other approaches which emphasize uneven development and collective action still remain intellectually and politically relevant and have a future. This is not because of a magical or dogmatic superiority, but because these approaches retain both a critical focus on agencies in need and their exploitative conditions, and a strategy of struggle to overcome these exploitative conditions. That said, rather than attempt to reach firm conclusions about the character of a Left strategy for more progressive local and regional development, we instead end by identifying four further issues with which such a strategy would need to contend. We do this in clear recognition that the formation of such a strategy will necessarily be a product of political practice rather than simply academic theorizing, while recognizing that theoretical reflection could certainly help and underpin this process in important ways (cf. Hudson, 2005; Castree, 2006). First, such local initiatives should avoid becoming part of a parallel alternative good economy that pits place against place in much the same way that mainstream local and regional development policy is predicated upon interplace beauty contests and competition for investment and jobs in the mainstream economy. They should be progressively delocalized and translated into broader regional initiatives while retaining their critical and radical edge. Put another way, such local militant particularisms (Williams, 1989) need to become translated into wider progressive regional programmes and policies, and become the pegs around which broader regional hegemonic blocs might develop around specific projects and programmes (see Gramsci, 1971; Jessop, 1990). Equally, such local and regional initiatives should avoid simply reproducing the same pattern of inequalities as occurs in the mainstream (e.g. Bowring, 1999). Such desired outcomes can only be assured via politics and political struggle theory will help and indeed provides a necessary guiding framework, but in the end it is practice that will be determinate. However, it is clear that a key question will be the ways in which bottom up popular and
local initiatives can find space in local and regional institutions and build bridges to top down initiatives emanating from more progressive regional institutions. Second, and related to this, addressing these broader questions of systemic uneven development requires that local and regional movements develop progressive interregional alliances, acknowledging that the problems of different places are linked via different logics among which the logic of capital, the imperatives of profitability, surplus-value production and geographical transfer, play a key role. This highlights also the limits to capital and the opportunities this provides for progressive interregional collaboration that both avoids the territorial trap of reducing space to territory (as exemplified by much institutionalist analysis of the industrial districts of the Third Italy, for example) and of reducing spaces to flows. There is a venerable history in the realms of political-economy of analysing the tensions inherent to capital between the forces of territorializing, deterritorializing and re-territorializing, and there really can be no excuse for ignoring the significance of the multiple scaling of capitalist social relations and of the implications of this for seeking to construct progressive strategies to address questions of uneven development. Consequently, and third, banal and old-fashioned though it may sound to some, we would argue strongly that this requires the construction and adoption of new enabling and supportive regulatory frameworks at local/regional, national and EU scales which will allow issues of progressive regional relations and the reduction of interregional and intraregional inequalities and uneven development as a matter of priority. This in turn will necessitate working with progressive politicians and parliamentary and regional institutions an approach that no doubt will be anathema to some on the non-parliamentary Left and to some social movements but which we would argue is necessary and indeed badly needed, subject to the important qualification that the mistakes of the past are avoided. Far from being neutered, the national state (albeit as one strand in a multilevel system of governance) retains considerable capacity to enable and facilitate progressive economic and social change and indeed can help create the local and regional capacities to take advantage of the opportunities created by its actions. Of particular
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importance here is democracy and accountability at all scales. It may again seem strange to some that we have to address the issue of radical participatory democracy in the context of Left politics, but it seems European societies at all scales face deep democratic crises and deficits. Here important issues include, among others: identities, transparency, the spatial dimension in democratic politics and more. Similarly, while we argue strongly for the continuing salience of class in politics, it is also the case that established old-fashioned politics must also radically change and should be more open to ethical, feminist, ethnic, ecological and other critiques, and sensitive to the codetermination of and relations between class, ethnicity and gender. Fourth, however, this alternative strategy will also involve working with a variety of social movements, NGOs, with the mass involvement of young people in voluntary work, the European Social Forum (ESF), ecologists, feminists and others outside the realms of formal politics. We are aware how difficult it is for some movements to agree among themselves. This in turn could be anathema for some on the parliamentary Left and to maledominated trades unions, which do not appreciate the refreshing radicalism of these movements and the fact that they can potentially at least mobilize social forces on a local as well as on a pan-European basis to develop alternative imaginations based on cooperation, collaboration and association-instruggle and seek to develop a new moral economy. Crucially, this should link local and regional development issues with a broader perspective, principles and values that acknowledge and respect local and regional difference but equally understand that these must be situated in the context of systemic and global processes which generate uneven development. In the final analysis, seeking radical reform may not be enough but for the moment it seems both badly needed and a feasible option in terms of tackling problems of uneven development. Are we utopists? Let Henri Lefebvre (1984) answer the question from his Everyday Life in the Modern World:
And why not? For me [us] this term has no pejorative connotations. Since I [we] do not ratify compulsion, norms, rules and regulations; since I [we] put all the emphasis on adaptation; since I [we] refute reality, and since for me [us] what is possible is already partly real, I [we] am [are] utopian[s]; you will observe that I [we] do
not say utopist[s]; but utopian, yes, a partisan of possibilities. (p. 192; we, us, are and emphasis added).
Acknowledgements
This is a revised version of a paper first delivered at the 6th European Urban and Regional Studies conference (September, 2006), Roskilde. Thanks to the participants for constructive and helpful comments on the first draft. Thanks also for comments to Allan Williams, Doreen Massey, Dina Vaiou and Maria Chaidopoulou-Vrychea. The usual disclaimers apply.
Notes
1
We will not discuss now what constitutes a Left strategy, other than to make the obvious point that it must be one that contests the imperatives of capital along with other issues and divisions oppressing our daily lives. We are aware that these remarks need to be debated, but we hope by the end of the article the reader will understand what we mean. Indeed, if the alternative is to accept the forces of neoliberalized global markets as defining the parameters within which regional and local development strategies must be constructed, then they are doomed to be regressive. For a similar argument in the context of the debate about social capital, see Das (2006). The Third Way refers to approaches which fall between those of the neo-liberal market and those of the socialdemocratic (Keynesian) welfare state, although it may vary in its links to both of these. This section draws on joint research with Ash Amin and Angus Cameron (e.g. Amin et al., 2002) and Katy Bennett and Huw Beynon (e.g. Bennett et al., 2000). In other parts of Europe, as in Greece and Portugal, territorial pacts and local areas contracts have been used by the state as regressive policies and have been opposed by unions and progressive local administrations. This section draws on work by Kevin Morgan at Cardiff University; e.g. Morgan (2004). A variation on this theme is that local doctors and other primary care medical practitioners prescribe subsidized healthier foods as part of a health care programme. For example, in 2006, the Healthways initiative in Ross and Cromarty, as part of the Scottish Community Diet Project (Scottish Office, 1996), received funding to pilot a fruit and veg on prescription scheme in Ullapool. Working
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10
11
12
13
14
15
16
with local primary care professions (general practitioners) and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms, the pilot scheme involves providing 204 families per week, over a 24-week period, with a subsidized box of locally produced vegetables (and, when in season, some fruit). Patients participating in the scheme are encouraged and assisted to visit their local CSA farm and receive advice on preparing and cooking the vegetables they receive (Scottish Community Diet Project, 2006). See: [www.organic-europe.net], countries reports; [www.greenhorizon.rec.org]; [www.ekocentrum.info]; [www.sustainableregions.com]. See sites above in Note 9 and [www.lanefood.org]. For a critical analysis of the Yugoslav war see our intervention: Hadjimichalis and Hudson (2003). On the global scale, a recent international trade agreement, signed on 14 December 2005, between Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia (to be joined by Brazil and Chile), provides a different regulatory framework for fair trade. Called ALBA, this agreement sets as its priority fair trade, food and nutrition safety through organic farming, and protection of employment and the environment instead of free trade and competitiveness. Key signatories to the agreement are public companies, cooperatives and some large private companies. Although it is a capitalist trade agreement, it stands as a radical alternative to what the WTO, NAFTA and World Bank propose and implement. See Le Monde Diplomatique (February and July 2006). PB operated initially between 1989 until 2004, when the Workers Party lost control. It continues today, under the new CentreRight municipal government, with a deradicalized content. In France the cities which have applied PB include: Saint Denis (population 85,000) since 2001, Bobigny (population 45,000) since 2002 and Poitiers (population 120,000) since 2002. The experience of Morsang-sur-Orge (population 19,500) is the most radical to date. It took shape in 1998 with the creation of the District portfolios and in 2001 five citizens workshops were set up, each tackling budget issues. In the French case participation often tends to be directed towards investments in urban areas, discussed during local assemblies, and in thematic meetings to discuss transport, education and the environment. The main actors in Germany are the municipal foundations and organizations which work on the issue of institutional modernization. Local councils, however, tend to perceive PB as a competitor rather than as an excellent opportunity for improving the decision-making process. For more information see: [www.presupuestospartcipativosdesevilla.org]. In Spain, there are dozens of examples of PB, including some large cities, Sabadell (population 185,000) and Cordoba (population 300,000) as well as Seville (population 700,000).
17
18
This, however, does not disqualify similar attempts elsewhere from having also positive political and social outcomes. Indeed, Flusty (2004) argues that in order to properly understand globalization processes we must begin with the micro scale, with the banal experiences of everyday life, through which that which is understood as globalization is socially produced. This goes hand-inhand with older concepts such as local/global labour markets, socio-spatial dumping and mobilizations at different scales on local/regional issues. Such concepts are still badly needed, as sectoral European strikes in the car industry, by harbour workers, school teachers, Euro-farmers, events such as women march across Europe, various environmental movements and of course the global/ European anti-war movement and many others illustrate.
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Hadjimichalis, C. (1987) Uneven Development and Regionalism: Territory and Class in Southern Europe. London: Croom Helm. Hadjimichalis, C. (2003) Imagining Rurality in the New Europe and Dilemmas for Spatial Policy, European Planning Studies 11 (2): 10313. Hadjimichalis, C. (2006a) The End of Third Italy as We Knew It? Antipode 38 (1): 82106. Hadjimichalis, C. (2006b) Non-economic Factors in Economic Geography and in New Regionalism: a Sympathetic Critique, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30: 690704. Hadjimichalis, C. and Hudson, R. (2003) Geographical Imaginations, Post-modern Imperialism and the Project of European Integration, Soundings 23: 3753. Hadjimichalis, C. and Hudson, R. (2006) Networks, Regional Development and Democratic Control, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30: 85872. Harvey, D. (1982) The Limits to Capital. Oxford: Blackwell. Hudson, R. (1999) The Learning Economy, the Learning Firm and the Learning Region: a Sympathetic Critique of the Limits to Learning, European Urban and Regional Studies 6 (1): 5972. Hudson, R. (2001) Producing Places. New York: Guilford. Hudson, R. (2002) Fuzzy Concepts and Sloppy Thinking: Reflections on Recent Developments in Critical Regional Studies, Regional Studies 37: 7416. Hudson, R. (2005) On Keeping Left: or, Why Geography Still Needs Marxian Political Economy, Antipode 38: 37495. Jessop, B. (1990) State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in their Place. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lang, T. and Heasman, M. (2004) Food Wars: the Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets. London: Earthscan. Lefebvre, H. (1984) Everyday Life in the Modern World. Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Mandel, E. (1968) Marxist Economic Theory, Vols 1 and 2. London: Merlin Press. Marquand, D. (1997) The New Reckoning: Capitalism, States and Citizens. Cambridge: Polity. Le Monde Diplomatique (2006) Accessed at: [www.mondediplomatique.fr]. Morgan, K. (2004) School Meals and Sustainable Food Chains, The Caroline Walker Lecture, Royal Society (Nov.), London.
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Correspondence to:
Ray Hudson, Wolfson Research Institute, University of Durham Queens Campus, Stockton, University Boulevard, Stockton on Tees TS17 6BH, UK. [email: email: ray.hudson@durham.ac.uk]

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RETHINKING LOCAL AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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