A little less hard economics, a little more social action please? The policy rhetoric and political realities of an English region

In response to the work of authors such as Michael Porter, the concept of regional competitiveness has become a ‘hegemonic discourse’, whereby programmes of decentralisation to subnational tiers of governance have been driven by this prerogative of embracing this hegemony of regional competitiveness. In deference to this orthodoxy, Blair’s programme of devolution and constitutional change (in the United Kingdom) was provisionally stimulated by the legitimation of politics through the settlements afforded to both Scotland and Wales.