Since the 1990s, regional policy has been experiencing a renaissance in many European countries. The changes which have been made to regional policy have been referred to as a shift in paradigm : encompassing different policy goals, geography, governance and instruments.
However, questions have been raised about the extent of the change in practice as well as about the effectiveness of the new policy approaches. A recently-published paper by John Bachtler and Douglas Yuill takes stock of national regional policies in Western Europe and examines national experiences with the new policy paradigm.
The paper, Regional Policy in Western Europe: Taking Stock of the Shift in Paradigm, has been published in the 'Beitrage zur Ballungsforschung' series of the Ruhr-Forschungsinstitut fur Innovations- und Strukturpolitik (RUFIS) and can be ordered from the RUFIS website: available here .