The Impact of Public Policy and Membership of the EU on Regional Policy in Estonia

The primary aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the development and topical issues of the Estonian regional policy along with public policy. In order to implement a public policy, choices must be made based on values, which in their turn considerably influence the actual result. Public policy is usually described as a process of making choices from the determination of the situation to evaluation of the policy being implemented. This process has often an irrational character, which is caused by limited information available to decision-makers and limited time. My approach moves on from the statement of Ludek Sukora and his colleagues (Balchin et al 1999, 163) which says that in Eastern European countries, thus, hypothetically in Estonia as well, the former centralised planning economy replaced by relatively small local governments under the conditions of new legislation, where national plans do not work and consistent regional development policies do not exist, has brought about a situation of uncertainty, application of ad hoc methods instead of long-term comprehensive planning, and the use of earlier experience in administrative techniques. Following the above I present following hypotheses: H1) governmental normative documents on regional development change frequently and are often contradictory; H2) institutions responsible for the implementation of regional policy are unstable; H3) national and EU plans do not work and sectoral development plans are not compatible; H4) regional political initiatives depend on activities of different officials or ministers - human factor is critical; H5) no attempts are being made in municipalities to achieve awareness of conceptual basics of national and EU policies and their objectives, instead, different lobbying methods have been applied. In theoretical part, we look at the concept of regional policy and it’s changes in Europe. The empirical part will give a description of the Estonian regional and administrative polices in time, primarily based on observations, on the content analysis of documents and the written media, and interviews carried out in 1990-2005.

Centre?periphery model explaining the regional development of the informational and transitional society

This paper analyses regional development and uses centre-periphery models (CPM) of Friedmann, Gibbs and Hautamäki as a base for theoretical discussion. In general, these centre-periphery models foresee stabilisation and de-concentration of population and economic agents after the concentration stages. The spatial processes of 1970s and 1980s were rather well described by the CPM. However, the 1990s turned to a new concentration in several countries. Classical CPM that assumed the continuity of industrial society and relevant factors, both negative and positive for concentration, influencing regional structures and settlement became useless. Therefore, first topic in this paper analyses concentration-deconcentration factors of the informational society and tries to plant the classical approach in the new soil. Secondly, we set a hypothesis arguing that Baltic Countries have followed partly similar, but simultaneously rather different spatial development stages. If the Western economies enjoyed particularly after the World War II economic and political stability, then regional development of their Eastern counterparts has been influenced by several political convulsions. Besides, even the same results in urban development may have had rather different causes in the West and former East. The empirical part analyses the regional development of Estonia in a historic perspective. The description of past developments attempts to outline (1) influencial causal factors, (2) periods of concentration and deconcentration, and (3) particularities compared with Western countries. The discussion is supported mainly by population data of past censuses, but uses also a limited number of soft empirical materials like small case studies, interviews and observations. Finally, we attempt to design a comparison of different urban development stages in UK, Finland and Estonia. This paper prepares and tests an extensive analyse of census and labour market survey as well as enterprise development data of the transition period, the 1990s. Key words: centre-periphery model, urban development stages, political factors in urban development

Central places versus networks: the future of collective farms built community infrastructure in Estonia

The aim of this paper will be to discuss possibilities to shift from a central-place theory towards to a network paradigm in local and regional planning practices. According to the first hypothesis, planning and development of social infrastructure (schools, sports halls, etc.) has remained rather central place oriented in Estonia. Even despite high and steadily increasing mobility (due to the rapidly spreading car ownership) and increasing share of city-population. The central-place approach would mean construction of overcapacity on the regional level. The social infrastructure built by the collective farms in rural areas has remained often unused already now, quite often because of the lack of collaboration between communes. The second hypothesis, therefore, argues, that application of the network paradigm and encouraging co-operation between local communes may considerably save public resources, create new jobs close to living estates, and reduce negative consequences of ongoing centre-periphery differentiation processes.

Model post-socialističnega prehoda na podeželju: odprtost in (ne)učenje proti neformalnim odnosom

Prispevek na teoretičen in praktičen način (študija primera: Mustoce inKasepää) podrobno analizira elemente in instrumente, pa tudi poslediceprehoda v tržno gospodarstvo v Estoniji

The model of post-socialist rural transition: openness and (un)learning versus informal relations

The aim of this article is to discuss development issues at the locality level.Below, we are working with the learning economy theory and the conceptof bottom-up indigenous development in combination with other approaches.The principal transformation model for the post-soviet rural areas furtherdevelopment is elaborated. The acknowledgement of local social networks is crucial, especially in eco-nomically decreasing areas. Innovation and development potential in ruralareas with primary sector dominance, where few service industries andjobs have been created, remain usually low. Improving infrastructures andcreating jobs by outside authorities (state subsidies) and enterprises onlywill not be enough for the sustainable economic development of a localityor a region. Besides, in the case of strengthening informal structures and behaviour,local (self)exclusion will tend to grow as a side effect in these areas. The(self)closeness of the society can be considered as an important impedi-ment to indigenous development

Being Resilient Between the Region and the Higher Education System? Views on Regional Higher Education Institutions in Estonia and Finland

The chapter investigates the organizational resilience of the regional higher education institutions (RHEIs) located in the peripheries of Estonia and Finland, focusing on two case studies: Kuressaare College, Estonia and the University Consortium of Seinäjoki, Finland. The aim is to explore the sources and strategies of the organizational resilience of RHEIs, which must be resilient in two respects: they are exposed to changes in the higher education system (HES), and they are impacted by the processes in their region that is, in turn, a part of a larger economic and administrative system. We found that the resilience of RHEIs within regions and the HE system develops in a coevolutionary manner over the course of history; here, progressiveness and flexibility are the most important strategies for RHEIs.publishedVersionPeer reviewe