The Role of Public Institutions in Regional Competition

Historically, the notion of competitiveness has been associated with a relatively specific set of ideas and policies, in which public institutions are not given a central role. These earlier approaches are still the ones most familiar to many regional scientists. This chapter is focused on the role of public institutions in regional competition and begins by characterising regional competition and the role of public institutions [see Section 5.2]. Particular attention is paid to the issue of specifying regional competition among public institutions and a variety of models of political public regional competition are presented. Section 5.3 describes basic approaches. Section 5.4 moves to the case of political regional competition within an administrative sector, while Section 5.5 considers regional competition within a federation. Political fiscal regional competition and political competition of municipalities and public firms are discussed in Section 5.6. Section 5.7 concludes with a summary and a brief outlook.