Sub-national governance and the relational spatial economy : examining spaces of firm-state engagement in the 'localist' era

Recent debate has focused on the role of state spatial approaches to the governance of an increasingly networked and fluid economy. This has seen transitions in both the scale of practise, focused on meso-level spaces, and the form of scalar fix, progressing from region to city-region and Functional Economic Area. As theories of spatial economy argue an increasingly dispersed mode of practise, integrated into global exchanges, state spatiality has responded through spatial reform to capitalise on this networked model. This study seeks to understand the link between spaces of economic governance, the formal spaces in which meso-level policy is pursued, and spaces of economic production, created by flows of firm transaction and exchange. Situated in the Southern Staffordshire area of the English Midlands, it considers how these forms of space are constructed, interpreted and integrated through articulations and practices of state spatial policy. Using a relational framework, interpreting space as a dynamic phenomenon, it considers the critical factors linking spaces of economic production and economic governance and the influence of ongoing rescaling tendencies within state and industrial strategy. It proposes whilst the sub-national has been debated as a critical point of convergence for these separate spatial articulations, this is highly selective through its capacity to interpret spatial economy and privileging of specific spatial and sectoral interests.