Neoliberalism and Regional Development

The neoliberalisation, and it varying forms (Peck 2001), is particularly interesting in regions that are dependent on manufacturing and that were subject to neoliberal adjustment of their path. Birch und Mykhnenko (2008) found that "neoliberal adjustment has resulted in a striking disparity of long-term restructuring outcomes amongst the European LIDRs. (Birch und Mykhnenko 2008)". In these regions "regional restructuring and economic growth trajectories have followed national trends fairly closely (") that regional restructuring in these LIDRs seem to have followed three major pattern (Birch und Mykhnenko 2008).

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" Regions experiencing (path destruction) profound de-industrialization and de-skilling are mainly found in the UK and partly Germany. "For example, Britain initially encouraged labour flexibility through the "weakening of trade unions and the welfare state" (Koch, 2004, 22) and a subsequent emphasis on micro-level policies such as "welfare-to-work" (Evans, 2005). Thus, whilst Britain has encouraged a services sector through low wages and cuts to social protection, Germany has developed a two-tier labour market in which a low-wage sector has to be promoted, because high wages in manufacturing, maintained in exchange for technological upgrading (Cafruny and Ryner, 2007), discourage the development of the services sector (Birch und Mykhnenko 2008)." Birch und Mykhnenko (2008) note that " market services employment failed to replace industrial employment losses in these regions, and (b) no region had an absolute increase in high-tech employment (Birch und Mykhnenko 2008)."

Morover, these regions experienced substandard growth which increased after time. Other regions (path-reconstruction) were able to upgrade their economic sectors in "retaining and even increasing high-tech manufacturing employment alongside some growth in high-tech services (") although these regions have experienced a loss of industrial employment.

(") on" in that existing high-tech manufacturing is retained alongside the development of other high value-added activities. In this category are the two Spanish regions, four German, four French and three Italian regions (Birch und Mykhnenko 2008)". "These regions perform well against the national average in GDP growth rates, but have not necessarily improved between the two periods we analysed. Those regions that have increased manufacturing and services high-skilled employment perform the best (Birch und Mykhnenko 2008)."

Birch und Mykhnenko's (2008) third type of regions are found to have a positive "GDP performance" in France, the Netherlands, the UK and Denmark, and depict a scenario of path creation through "both, service upgrading" and de-industrialisation (Birch und Mykhnenko 2008, S. 368) with an increase in knowledge-intensive work. As a result, industrialised regions developed quite differently in Europe. "Western Europe, between 1980 and 2005, the best performing region increased by 117% against 25% for the worst. Furthermore, even though countries like Britain (i.e. those experiencing the severest restructuring) had high growth rates between 1995 and 2005, they have produced an unequal absolute performance overall with South Yorkshire increasing its GDP by 38% in 25 years against 108% for Leicestershire (Birch und Mykhnenko 2008)".