Obstacles to local cooperation in fragmented, left-behind economies: an integrated framework

Fostering cooperation among local stakeholders is a core aim of place-based policies, and it can generate economic benefits and help restore a sense of agency in left-behind communities. However, relatively little is known about how to induce local cooperation in low-trust, institutionally weak areas. This article develops an integrated theoretical framework to help diagnose the precise obstacles to cooperation faced in different types of adverse settings. Such a diagnosis can help design tailored local- and macro-level policies to address the obstacles to local cooperation. The utility of the proposed framework is demonstrated using a medium-n comparative case study design

Cooperation against the odds: a study on the political economy of local development in a country with small firms and small farms

Is it possible to get economic actors to work together in order to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes in unfavourable settings? Established theories of cooperation suggest that overcoming the obstacles to cooperation requires either a robust framework of formal institutions or a long-established culture of trust. Many places in the world are endowed with neither of those characteristics. Yet, in the presence of fragmented ownership structures, sustained cooperation among economic actors is important for processes of economic development, which themselves have major implications for domestic political dynamics. My dissertation approaches the puzzle of the emergence of cooperation in unfavourable settings by drawing on qualitative empirical evidence collected through fieldwork in four areas of Greece where specific types of cooperation were observed, compared to four otherwise similar (matching) cases where such patterns of cooperation failed to occur. I argue that for cooperation to emerge against the odds, the crucial variable is leadership. A small group of boundary-spanning leading actors can trigger a process of creating local-level cooperative institutions by performing three specific types of difficult and costly institutional work. Successful leaders tend to be translocally embedded, highly skilled, well connected actors, who have a subjective conception of their self-interest as encapsulating the interests of others. The institutional work of a small group of local-level leading actors can only catalyse broad-based, sustained cooperation if it is nested within a framework of facilitative overarching institutions. Crucially, supranational actors such as the EU can also provide such facilitative macro-level institutions, thereby to an extent compensating for deficiencies in national institutional frameworks. By combining analysis of local-level agency and processes, on the one hand, and macro-level institutional frameworks, on the other, my thesis makes a contribution to our understanding of institutional change, the emergence of cooperation, and the political economy of local development in fragmented economies

Voting for your pocketbook, but against your pocketbook? A study of Brexit at the local level

In explaining the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum in the United Kingdom, can theories emphasizing the importance of economic factors be reconciled with the fact that many people appeared to vote against their economic self-interest? This article approaches this puzzle through case study research that draws on fieldwork and a process of reciprocal knowledge exchange with local communities in five local authorities in England and Wales. It argues that the Leave vote can be attributed partly to political discontent associated with trajectories of relative economic decline and deindustrialization. Building on the growing literature about the role of narratives and discourses in navigating uncertainty, it contends that these localized economic experiences, interpreted through local-level narratives, paved the way for local-level discourses of resilience and nationwide optimistic messaging about the economic impacts of Brexit to resonate. Local and national-level discourses discounting the potential economic costs of leaving the European Union played a crucial role in giving precise, somewhat paradoxical, political content to the sense of discontent. The article contributes to the growing focus on place and community in understanding political behavior and invites further research on local discourses linking macro-level trajectories and micro-level voting decisions

Uncovering the local factors that helped shape the Brexit referendum

Why was support for Brexit so widely divergent across the UK? Drawing on a new study, José Javier Olivas Osuna, Max Kiefel and Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni illustrate that while a variety of economic and cultural explanations for the result have been put forward, these processes were shaped at the local level. They find that citizens with similar socio-demographic profiles adopted very different attitudes toward Brexit depending on the local context in which they lived

Place matters: analyzing the roots of political distrust and Brexit narratives at a local level

Based on comparative qualitative research in five local authority areas, this article argues that local context is key to understanding the roots of the U.K.’s crisis of political trust and the result of the 2016 E.U. referendum. The competing cultural and economic causes of discontent suggested by the literature were found to be deeply intertwined when analyzed from a local perspective. The sense of political disempowerment and negative attitudes toward migration were ingrained in and reinforced by locally specific socio-economic and political trajectories. These experiences were articulated and amplified by dominant discourses, which channeled frustration against the political elite and the E.U. These populist narratives, promoted by the Leave campaign and the tabloid press, became dominant in certain areas, decisively shaping citizens’ voting behavior. Overall, the article highlights the value of studying how local experiences and interpretations mediate the interplay of cultural and economic causes of discontent and political distrus

Understanding Brexit: impacts at local level: Ceredigion case study

The UK is in a critical juncture with regard to the process of negotiations to leave the European Union. Important discussions are taking place which will shape the future relation between Britain and the EU. The economic analyses published on the issue have, so far, largely failed to grasp the attention of the general public. Most of the discussions about Brexit have focused at a national level and there has been very little evidence-based discussion at a local level. This project aims at stimulating a reflexive participatory research process involving citizens, policy-makers, business people and civil-society representatives. It introduces an innovative methodology that contextualises quantitative data through expert interviews and the analysis of local sources. The reports and discussion panels organised within the framework of the project seek to increase our understanding about the impact of Brexit at a local level

Understanding Brexit: impacts at a local level: Mansfield case study

Mansfield was selected as a case study of a town that has undergone significant industrial restructuring during the last four decades, following the decline of traditional industries such as coal mining and textiles. Mansfield still faces acute challenges in terms of attracting high value-added businesses and increasing the skills and earnings of the local population. the remarkably high share of the Leave vote in the area cannot be understood without taking into consideration some structural characteristics of the Mansfield economy in the post-coal mining period

Understanding Brexit: impacts at a local level: the London Borough of Barnet case study

The UK is in a critical juncture with regard to the process of negotiations to leave the European Union. Important discussions are taking place during 2018 which will shape the future relation between Britain and the EU. The economic analyses published on the issue have, so far, largely failed to grasp the attention of the general public. Most of the discussions about Brexit take place in what could be described as elite circles and tend to be London based; there has been very little evidence-based discussion at local levels. Moreover, one of the obstacles to local level evidence based discussions is a distrust of expert evidence

Understanding Brexit: impacts at a local level: Southampton case study

According to local experts and reports, only a ‘short-term slow growth’ is expected after Brexit as Southampton is not heavily dependent on EU funding or exposed to EU markets. A Brexit opportunity is to develop a skilled workforce able to compete internationally. Of the sectors identified, those that were most promising are transport and dock-related jobs. The area has individual industrial strengths that can offer opportunity under Brexit

Understanding Brexit: impacts at a local level: Pendle case study

The UK is in a critical juncture with regard to the process of negotiations to leave the European Union. Important discussions are taking place which will shape the future relation between Britain and the EU. The economic analyses published on the issue have, so far, largely failed to grasp the attention of the general public. Most of the discussions about Brexit have focused at a national level and there has been very little evidence-based discussion at a local level. This project aims at stimulating a reflexive participatory research process involving citizens, policy-makers, business people and civil-society representatives. It introduces an innovative methodology that contextualises quantitative data through expert interviews and the analysis of local sources. The reports and discussion panels organised within the framework of the project seek to increase our understanding about the impact of Brexit at a local level