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Joined-up government seems to be able to present itself in various forms of being understood in several ways. It is therefore subject to various interpretations and divergent views. Some contend that joined-up government is inherently centralizing hence it is disadvantageous for the devolved units of the government, some on the other hand argue that joined-up government is not essentially centralizing. This chapter evaluates New Labour's initial efforts at stimulating joining-up at the local level by detailing the rise of the multitude partnership bodies since New Labour rose into power. The chapter also discusses the top-down-driven policy style that New Labour adopted in their efforts for partnerships. This style caused chaotic repercussions in the local and regional governance. Discussed as well in the chapter are the ways in which New Labour tried to localize joined-up government. The first method was the premise of adopting autonomy for the local government to pursue community leadership at the local level while the second method proposed earned autonomy or constrained discretion wherein the local government can lead and yet be under the guidance of the central government. Both of these models of governance are considered here to determine whether they can be institutionalized. The last section of the chapter presents a discussion on the seemingly centralizing nature of joined-up government.

This chapter presents insights into regional migration governance. It identifies domestic and international drivers behind regional responses and focuses on Latin America. The authors argue that state responses alone might not be sufficient to regulate migration patterns and respond to related environmental changes. In fact, Latin America has become more sensitive to the implications of environmentally induced migration and has established instruments to face more effectively the challenges posed by environmental changes, natural disasters and migration. Thus, governments have created national and regional responses to migration, some of which explicitly deal with the topic of environmental refugees form the region. The authors also point out that regional governance arrangements are important, as they facilitate the implementation of migration instruments elaborated at the global level and can serve as opportunities to develop and exchange best practices.

China's transition from a planned to a market-oriented economy has led to the emergence of “local economic dukedoms.” As local governments are responsible for their own development, the regional economy has suffered from intense intercity competition. This chapter examines governmental power and its impact on Pan-Pearl River Delta (Pan-PRD) regional cooperation. It argues that the development of a coordinated network is essential for the stable regional governance of the Pan-PRD region.

Dominant beliefs—those of political and economic entrepreneurs in a position to make policies—over time result in the accretion of an elaborate structure of institutions that determine economic and political performance. This chapter documents the worldviews and beliefs of regional leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles since 1970. In Los Angeles, leaders never developed a consistent vision of the new economy or the region’s role in it; in San Francisco, this vision emerged early in the 1980s and was reinforced over time and diffused throughout the region’s leadership institutions. Moreover, San Francisco’s leadership institutions are stronger and more interconnected than those of Greater Los Angeles, and its political majorities are more consistent over time, leading to more consistent regional policy agendas.

The capabilities and innovation perspective is applied to Malaysian electronics, a case of rapid growth and industrial development for over three decades but with disappointing productivity gains. In fact, Malaysia has not one but three electronics clusters. Each cluster has distinctive internal dynamics and is related to global production networks in distinctive ways. The most successful of the three regions in advancing local production capabilities has benefited from effective regional policy‐making and governance. The Penang Development Corporation is a model developmental agency that has coordinated the three elements of the productivity triad to create a world‐class high‐volume production system. However, the region is at an impasse: making the transition to new product development capabilities will require a substantial investment in advanced skill formation.

The literature on transnationalism suggests that transnational regulatory spaces are becoming increasingly important at the regional level and that in these domains networks represent an important new mode of governance. This chapter examines these assumptions by way of exploring the institutionalization and architecture of the Latin American regional telecoms regulatory space. We assess how and to what extent regional transnational networks are enhancing the sector’s regulatory governance. Our findings suggest that transnational networks in telecommunications configure a regulatory community in Latin America, but have many limitations in promoting regional governance. These limitations reveal the traditional institutional weaknesses of the region, but they are also aggravated by the composition and purposes of the entities within and outside the region that support and nurture these networks. Nonetheless, transnational networks facilitate exchange of information and policy experiences within the countries in the region.

This chapter examines England’s sub-national policy architecture and the ways in which successive governments have attempted to address the ‘growth gap’ between London and the rest of the UK. Following a discussion of previous initiatives such as the Northern Way, the chapter considers recent developments at the regional scale including the Northern Powerhouse, Midlands Engine and recent developments in the South West. This centres on a discussion about how cities which have been long-standing competitors can collaborate and, learning from other large scale urban agglomerations, who the key actors are to make this happen.

This chapter introduces key themes and issues that will be explored in the book’s analysis of regional migration governance in Europe, North America, South America, and Southeast Asia. It specifies how representations of the causes and effects of migration—of what’s going on ‘out there’ —held by key actors in migration governance systems have shaping effects on responses to migration, as understood and represented. These processes of sense-making are embedded in what are called repertoires of migration governance that have narrative, social, symbolic, and affective components and are also ongoing in that they don’t have a clear beginning and end. By opening the black box of governance it is possible to understand more about how know-how and social expectations about role play a significant part in shaping the outputs or outcomes of migration governance systems.

This chapter discusses the Pearl River Delta Urban Cluster Coordinated Development Plan (2004–20) (UCCDP). It discusses how this plan evolved out of the joint efforts of the Guangdong Provincial Government and Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development to strengthen Pan-Pearl River Delta (Pan-PRD) coordination and enhance the competitiveness of the PRD city cluster. It examines the background, methodology, objectives, significance, and implementation process of the plan to aid in the further understanding of the theory and practice of mega-city regional governance and planning in contemporary China.

Networks of people and organizations create “invisible colleges” in labor markets, industries, communities, and political leadership. They influence who gets access to other people and hence to implementing ideas and finding resources. This chapter measures the corporate, philanthropic, and leadership networks of the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles since 1980. It shows that they had similar starting points in terms of their structure of connections, but that they diverged. Principal firms and industries in Los Angeles became less connected, while in San Francisco they become more closely intertied, with broader and deeper connections among their boards of directors. Networks among scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs, and firms are much denser in San Francisco than in Greater Los Angeles. There are more industry-building dealmakers in the Bay Area than in Los Angeles. The relational infrastructures of the two regions have become more and more different over time.

There is a gap between global and regional trade governance. FTAs require deeper liberalization and their subject matter coverage is broader. They generally have (but do not constantly use) detailed rule-based dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs). The WTO has a more comprehensive scheme for negotiation rounds for further liberalization and for establishing new rules; but the operation of negotiation rounds is not effective. It is desirable to bridge the gap to make them mutually supportive. For regional trade governance, suggestions include widening the geographic coverage of FTAs to make them more plurilateralized and adopting rules to allow periodic ‘internal negotiation rounds’ to remove the residual trade barriers. For global governance, it suggests relying on treaty interpretation to introduce external values into the multilateral system and allowing WTO DSMs to address preliminary issues arising from external norms (such as labour and environmental protection) so as to integrate them into the WTO’s operation.

There are different levels on which the concept and the principles of good governance have been developed: national, regional, and international. On the national level there are the developments of prevention maladministration but also from the regional and the international level there are injections—by harmonization and cooperation between the national governments—for these concepts and principles of good governance on the national level. Where on the national level the original concept of the rule of law was developed to protect the citizens, the concept of democracy made it necessary to provide more influence from the citizens. That was also because of the important realization of social and political rights and the more important active role of the government. In addition to the classical principles, more attention was also given to effectiveness and accountability of governmental institutions. Because of the fragmentation of administrative law there was also more attention given to the development of general administrative law acts on a national level. There were several initiatives of codes for good governance and good administration. There was the development of the regionalization of administrative law. And, especially on an international level, the international institutions were more and more focused on good governance.

This introductory chapter discusses the European Union's (EU) impact on Basque Country politics. It identifies the theme of EU scholarship, which examines the relationship between the EU and regional governance. It then addresses two questions that reflect the rationales for Basque devolution and significant debates in EU scholarship on regional governance. This chapter also outlines the other chapters.

The goal of this chapter is to present the main elements of our theoretical argument. Departing from existing studies, the chapter introduces a new theory called “authoritarian regionalism” and derives hypotheses from this. The chapter provides a definition of the NDROs (authoritarian regionalism) and then identifies several areas where these organizations should be different from their democratic counterparts: heterogeneity of membership, power distribution, and governance. This chapter also discusses the most important argument of the book: authoritarian regionalisms’ ability to contribute to the consolidation of autocracies. The chapter presents the main mechanisms which can be used for this purpose, discusses whether NDROs possess their own actorness, and analyzes the limits for autocracy promotion by authoritarian regional organizations.

This chapter quantitatively tests the theoretical framework outlined above using a novel dataset containing detailed information on fifty-four regional organizations. In particular, the chapter looks into two aspects of NDROs compared to DROs: membership composition and governance. This chapter reports the results of a large-N analysis of a world-wide sample of regional organizations. It presents evidence on the heterogeneity of their membership and their governance structure. We show that NDROs are substantially more heterogeneous by including countries with different political regimes and income levels (as well as, in line with some evidence, culture and religion). We also show the predominance of person-based decision-making mechanisms involving the highest leadership in the NDROs rather than of supranational bureaucracies. Both features are linked to the characteristics of modern autocracies.

Chapter 1 provides the conceptual and theoretical frame to answer comprehensively the two main questions we pose in this book. It briefly introduces the concepts to capture the major building blocks of the bilateral Franco-German order—its regularized intergovernmentalism, predominantly symbolic acts and practices, and parapublic underpinnings—in order to grasp the logic and political implications of this special bilateral connection, and to explain its resilience and adaptability. Integrating factors located at the bilateral, domestic, regional European, and international levels, this chapter outlines a framework to explain why France and Germany’s combined impact on Europe has varied as widely as it has across political domains and time. To that end, the chapter also considers different types of joint bilateral leadership in regional politics and reviews the evolution of the joint French–German resources of power and authority in European affairs over time.