Everyone's a ‘winner’: problematising the discourse of regional competitiveness

Revealed competition for greenfield investments between European regions

“…First, shifting the focus from measuring competitive advantage to measuring competition can contribute to the literature on territorial competition by providing a method to estimate the degree to which cities and regions are in competition, to identify clusters of competitive cities and regions, and to analyse the sources of territorial competition. Second, identifying the most important competitors of cities and regions provides a much better foundation for benchmarking (Bristow, 2005;Luque-Martínez and Muñoz-Leiva, 2005) as well as valuable input for local 1 At the same time, attracting many (high-level) investments can be a source of competitive advantage in that it generates a demonstration effect (Budd, 1998) as well as agglomeration externalities.and regional policymakers. For example, having identified the most important competitors of a particular city or region, it becomes easier for government officials to recognise which aspects of territorial competitive advantage should be improved to increase the likelihood of attracting foreign investments.…”

The Question of Responsibility: (De-)Peripheralising Rural Spaces in Post-Socialist Estonia

“…On one hand, this resulted in a restructuration process that replaced the former system of state and collective farms with large-scale farming, causing widespread unemployment and a downward spiral of rural impoverishment and outward-migration (Nugin, 2014) . On the other hand, it led to the institutionalization of a competitiveness-based regional policy focusing on consumption-oriented place promotion and post-productivist entrepreneurialism while simultaneously dismissing policies based on egalitarian norms (Bristow, 2005;Nugin, 2014;Peck, 2010) . Whereas these political changes also offered new opportunities for a diversification of rural income opportunities, they could not ensure equally distributed living standards .…”

“…As explained in great detail elsewhere (Bristow, 2005;Peck, 2010), the neoliberal model focuses on fostering economic growth on the national level and in growth poles, which in a trickle-down process should eventually reach less prosperous regions . Development is thereby reduced to an issue of growth building on two principles: austerity and competitiveness, which constitute prominent discursive threads among Estonian proponents of a neoliberal development paradigm .…”

“…This reference to cost-effectiveness and efficiency also sets the basis for delegitimizing decentralized settlements based on an alternative redistributive paradigm . It is accompanied by an emphasis on competitiveness shifting the responsibility to individual regions and thereby separating winners from losers (Bristow, 2005) . This discursive thread is used to denote success stories .…”

The Relationship between Spatial Planning and Economic Competitiveness: The ‘Path to Economic Nirvana’ or a ‘Dangerous Obsession’?

“…Despite the hegemony of neoliberal competitiveness (elevated to a 'natural law') it is 'complex and contentious', 'vague and slippery', 'chaotic and confused', 'lacks precision' and is thus a 'far from straightforward' concept (Bristow, 2005(Bristow, , 2009(Bristow, , 2010a(Bristow, , 2011Kitson et al, 2004;Turok, 2004). Given these theoretical deficiencies Budd and Hirmis (2004) suggest it may represent a 'chimera'.…”