GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY TO INCREASE BENEFITS FROM THE GLOBAL STANDARDS SYSTEM ∗

Abstract In this paper,we review the factors influencing the evolution of the global standards system. We then discuss some of the approaches that governments have taken or are exploring in order to modify the system for the benefit of domestic and worldwide economic development. We use as an example an effort of the U.S.National Institute of Standards and Technology to encourage voluntary consensus standards for interoperable broadband wireless access systems. This article has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 2nd IEE

From RDAs to LEPs: A new localism? Case examples of West Midlands and Yorkshire

The new Coalition Government formed in May 2010 in the UK is to abolish Regional Development Agencies and, in the name of a ‘new localism’, is to replace them with Local Enterprise Partnerships, ‘joint local authority-business bodies brought forward by local authorities to promote local economic development’. This article looks at the proposals for LEPs, in the light of theories of governance. It explores the case examples of the West Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside, where there have been differing proposals for region-wide LEPs. It argues that far from localism, the move to set up LEPs is profoundly ant-regionalist and is re-centralisation in disguise, given that many economic development functions are being taken back to Whitehall. That problem of recentralisation, we suggest, risks being exacerbated by a fragmentation of LEPs into small territorial units, and a lack of resources