Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 16: 71–87, 2001.© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Regulation as process: Regulation theory andcomparative urban and regional research

MARK GOODWINInstitute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Llandinam Building, University of Wales,Aberystwyth, Aberystwyth SY23 3DB, U.K. (E-mail: mag@aber.ac.uk)

Abstract. This paper examines how recent developments within the regulation approachmight be used to inform comparative urban and regional research. It begins by outlining theways in which regulation theorists have pursued an interest in variability and uneven devel-opment. It then reviews attempts made by different authors to deploy regulationist conceptswithin urban and regional research, at scales varying from the local to the national and inter-national. The paper then outlines a methodological shift which requires us to see regulationas a process, before going on to exemplify how such an approach has been used to informempirical research. It concludes by examining how strategic-relational state theory might beused in conjunction with the regulation approach to underpin analyses of policy and politicsat the urban and regional level.

Key words: comparative research, mode of regulation, regulation as process, regulationtheory, state theory, urban politics

1. Introduction

This paper sets out to investigate the usefulness of regulation theory forinforming comparative urban and regional research. Initially it will clarifysome of the main parameters of the regulation approach before moving on todevelop an account which stresses the notion of regulation as process. Thepaper then shifts from a conceptual to a methodological focus and examinesthe way that such a notion might be used in framing comparative research ondifferent aspects of urban development. It concludes by exploring the waysin which a regulation-theoretic account of the ‘integral economy’ might becomplemented by a neo-Gramscian account of the ‘integral state’, in order toallow a full examination of the politics surrounding urban development.

The term regulation approach is used deliberately. Regulation theory hasbeen described as “one of the main theoretical industries” of recent years(Thrift, 1994, p. 370) but despite this, or perhaps because of it, no singletheoretical direction has emerged. Instead we find a wide range of studieswhich have seized upon the ideas of the regulation school and “developed

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them in many different directions. We must speak of an approach rather than atheory. What has gained acceptance is not a body of fully refined concepts buta research programme” (Aglietta, 1998, pp. 41–42). What I seek to do in thispaper is to look at some of the key aspects of this ‘research programme’, andat how these might be usefully deployed in comparative urban and regionalresearch.

The regulation approach has its origins in work undertaken by a groupof French economists in the mid-1970s. Put simply, these academics wereconcerned to analyse the ‘regulation’ (perhaps better translated as regular-ization or normalization) of the economy in its broadest sense, beginningfrom the insight that continued capital accumulation depends on a seriesof social, cultural and political supports. The approach therefore “aims tostudy the changing combinations of economic and extra-economic institu-tions and practices which help to secure, if only temporarily and always inspecific economic spaces, a certain stability and predictability in accumu-lation – despite the fundamental contradictions and conflicts generated bythe very dynamic of capital itself” (Jessop, 1997a, p. 288). As a method ofanalysis, then, regulation theory starts from the premise that the reproduc-tion of capitalist social relations is not guaranteed by the abstract relationsthat are the defining features of the capitalist mode of production. Rather,both crises in the accumulation process and phases of expanded production(when these occur) are the products of more concrete institutional structures,political and social processes and cultural discourses. Moreover, while theabstract features of capitalism as disclosed by Marx are transhistorical, all ofthese more concrete forms and practices vary historically and geographically.Regulation theory seeks to account for that uneven pattern. Indeed, accordingto Boyer (1990, p. 27), the variability of economic and social dynamics, inboth time and space, is “the central question” for regulation theory.

All these issues will be developed below, but even at this stage wecan make some tentative comments concerning comparative research. Suchresearch seems especially pertinent within an approach which emphasises thesocially embedded and socially regularised nature of capitalist economies andstresses the variability of capitalism across time and space. Moreover, if, asthe regulation approach maintains, economic relations cannot exist outside asocial framework, their regulation, or normalization, can only be understoodin relation to the concrete contexts of specific social practices. In the wordsof Aglietta, the approach looks at the “set of mediations which ensure that thedistortions created by the accumulation of capital are kept within limits whichare compatible with social cohesion within each nation. This compatibility isalways observable in specific contexts at specific historical moments” (1998,p. 44).

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These ‘specific contexts and moments’ in turn will vary – both withinand between nations. Indeed, there is not just one possible pattern of regu-lation but at least in principle many alternative contingent combinations ofeconomic and non-economic factors that might operate to support continuedor expanded accumulation, with varying degrees of effectiveness. The factthat such ‘supports’ are socially, culturally and politically constructed, andcontested, only adds to the potential variablility. Thus from the outset theregulation approach engages with, indeed one could say expects and looksfor, spatial and temporal unevenness. In this sense it is ideally suited tocomparative work.

2. The regulation approach and comparative research: The centralityof the variability of regulation

Somewhat paradoxically, this concern with variability has often been writtenout of regulationist-inspired work. Its absence is usually a result of misunder-standing the conceptual framework of the regulation approach. All too oftenthose claiming to use regulationist concepts are simply looking for a shiftfrom one mode of regulation to another, or from one regime of accumula-tion to another. In contemporary research, these shifts are usually referredto in terms of a movement from something labelled Fordism to somethinglabelled post-Fordism. In this process, the potential richness of the regu-lation approach can be reduced to a binary categorisation – something, orsome place, or some process is either Fordist or post-Fordist. Because thisreasoning in turn owes much to the somewhat flawed ways in which someof the original regulation terminology has been deployed, I want to spenda short while clarifying some of the key concepts of a regulation approachbefore returning to issues of comparative research.

There are four distinctive regulationist concepts worth clarifying at thispoint (see Jessop, 1997a for further details). An industrial paradigm refersto the dominant technical and social division of labour. Examples might bemass production or flexible accumulation. An accumulation regime refers to acomplementary pattern of production and consumption which is reproducibleover a long period. The type of post-war Keynesian demand managementexperienced in parts of Western Europe would be one such example. A modeof regulation (MOR) is an ensemble of rules, norms, conventions, patternsof conduct, social networks, organisational forms and institutions which canhelp to stabilise an accumulation regime. In covering economic and extra-economic processes it is usually analysed in terms of five dimensions: thewage relation; the enterprise form; the nature of money; the state; and inter-national regimes. Lastly, when these three complement each other sufficiently

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over a long enough period to secure a long wave of economic expansion andsocial stability, the resulting complex is referred to as a model of develop-ment. The best known example of such a model is Aglietta’s identification ofAmerican Fordism.

One key issue for comparative research is to clarify which of theseconcepts will be most helpful for the research in question. Depending onthe object of enquiry, some will be more useful than others. Confusion cancreep in at this point, especially since the same label – Fordism – is oftenused by different authors to refer to all four concepts. Unless researchersspecify precisely what they are and are not looking at, there is a danger thatthe mode of regulation in one place will be compared with an accumulationregime or a mode of development in another. There is also a danger that work,which identifies a particular type of industrial paradigm, say, will over-extenditself and transfer this identification to the mode of regulation or regime ofaccumulation. The key point is to be precise about which aspects of societyare being studied. Essentially, work concerned with urban and regional devel-opment, and in particular with the state’s role in housing, welfare provisionand planning, will draw most heavily on concept of the mode of regulation.

The mode of regulation refers to the multiple social, cultural and insti-tutional supports which come together to sustain and promote economicgrowth. In other words, analysis of the MOR is concerned with specifyingthe social and institutional context within which expanded economic produc-tion can occur. For instance, Fordism as an MOR involved a labour relationssystem based on collective bargaining, the separation of ownership fromcontrol in large monopolistic enterprises, ‘national’ money and consumercredit, mass marketing, and a Keynesian welfare state (Jessop, 1992). Thestate operated demand management policies in the fiscal sphere and under-wrote a minimum level of working class consumption to help complete the‘virtuous circle’ between production and consumption. However, these corefeatures of Fordism as an MOR were expressed in concrete form differentlyin different countries, as actual regulatory influences and practices develop inspecific historic and geographic contexts. As Boyer has written, “the pluralityof forms of economic and political régulation is not the exception but therule” (2000, p. 279 original emphasis).

In other words, given that the regulation approach is concerned withanalysing the “institutional infrastructure around and through which capitalistdevelopment proceeds” (Tickell and Peck, 1995, p. 363) we should expectsuch infrastructure to vary from nation to nation, in line with the emergenceof particular sets of economic, political and social relations. Table 1 tracessome of the key variants of Fordism by sketching out the range of geographi-

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Table 1. Variants of Fordism

Type of Fordist regime Characteristics Examples

‘Classic Fordism’ Mass production and consumption, USA

underwritten by the state.

‘Flex-Fordism’ Decentralized federal state. Close West Germany

co-operation between financial and

industrial capital.

‘Flawed-Fordism’ Inadequate integration of financial and UK

productive capital. Archaic class politics

‘State Fordism’ State control of large sectors of industry France

‘Delayed Fordism’ Cheap labour, state intervention to support Italy, Spain

industrialisation.

‘Peripheral Fordism’ Export orientated local assembly. Heavy Mexico, Brazil

indebtedness. Authoritarian state. Attempts

to emulate Fordist accumulation without

corresponding mode of regulation.

‘Racial Fordism’ Dualistic workforce with privileged South Africa

minority, authoritarian state and

‘super-exploitation’ of majority.

‘Primitive Taylorist labour process with large Malaysia, The

Taylorization’ supply of cheap labour. Bloody Philippines,

Exploitation and huge extraction of Bangladesh

surplus labour. Dictatorial state. High

social tension.

‘Hybrid Fordism’ Modified Taylorism, societal segmentation Japan

and under-developed welfare state. Truncated

internal market, indirect wage indexation.

Source: Adapted from Tickell and Peck, 1995, p. 362.

cally specific couplings between economic accumulation and extra-economicsupports.

Thus, from the point of view of comparative research, the fact that wemight label each of these countries as ‘Fordist’ is not a problem, since inconcrete cases, a vast range of other determinations influence the actualimpact of the Fordist features or tendencies. In practice, as we can see from

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Table 1, all Fordisms have to be ‘hyphenated’, which inserts another layer ofdetermination making the description more concrete. Fordism cannot ‘exist’in a ‘pure’ form, since it is not a complete description of a social system.Once other features and processes of existing social systems are added intothe description, they inevitably change the (regulatory) outcome. This lineof reasoning also gives us a good basis for comparative research, since weare able to analyse these differences and examine how different regulatorystructures are produced in different countries at different times.

Thus, as the analysis moves in the direction of increased concreteness,further elements will be introduced as the defining features of specificinstances of the Fordist mode of regulation. There were, for example, partic-ular patterns of gender and race relations that contributed to the operation ofthe Fordist mode of regulation in Britain. We would argue that these werecentral to the regulatory process and key components of what made BritishFordism a mode of regulation at all (Bakshi et al., 1995). Clearly, however,they were not present (at least not in the same way) in other Fordist coun-tries. Developing empirical accounts, therefore, does not entail ‘testing’ ageneral Fordist ‘model’ against specific empirical cases. They can, however,provide the basis for comparative work, as the specific features and instancesof particular modes of regulation (or regimes of accumulation, industrialparadigms or models of development as appropriate) can be compared withothers – either spatially or temporally. Such comparison can be useful inexamining different scenarios for stabilising capitalist economies, as wellas for examining why particular combinations of modes of regulation andregimes of accumulation worked in particular places to establish successfulmodels of development.

One of the key conceptual developments of the regulation approach liesin its analysis of this coupling between accumulation and regulation. Thistype of analysis can be useful in urban and regional studies, since it allowsus to relate the general movement of economic and social development tospecific processes of urbanisation. As far back as 1973, David Harvey statedthat “the general proposition that some sort of relationship exists betweenthe form and functioning of urbanism and the dominant mode of productionappears entirely reasonable. The main problem, therefore, is to elucidate itsnature” (1973, p. 205). The regulation approach provides us with a conceptualand theoretical framework within which such elucidation can take place. AsPeck and Tickell have argued, the form of urban and regional development isinfluenced and conditioned by, and can only be understood within, “the histor-ical and geographical evolution of processes of capitalist growth and crisis”(1995, p. 35). The regulation approach focuses precisely on this historical andgeographical evolution.

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Many authors have used a regulationist approach to trace the broadconnections between urban and regional development and processes ofcapitalist growth and crisis. Florida and Feldman (1988) and Florida andJonas (1991), for instance, have analysed the role of housing in US Fordism.They have drawn on the regulation approach to examine how the partic-ular trajectory of US Fordism helped to shape the distinctive pattern ofsuburbanisation, and how that development in turn underpinned the rise inpost-war economic production and accumulation by helping to stimulate andenhance consumer demand through privatised mass consumption. As Floridaand Jonas put it,

Suburbanisation gave a distinctive spatial character to Fordist social rela-tions. There was a marked spatial decentralisation of elements of theproduction process. This decentralisation was made possible by tech-nological changes at the point of production and changes in corporateorganisation. With it came a spatial fragmentation of labour markets . . .

reinforced by ‘dual’ housing markets . . . . The post-war geography ofmetropolitan areas, while remaining functionally linked within corporatestructures, became increasingly fragmented into a complex mosaicof industrial and commercially-orientated suburbs, and central cities. . . dominated by . . . corporate government and service functions . . .

. Consequently the economic advantages of suburbanisation accruedmainly to those who were full partners in the ‘class accord’ . . . while‘peripheral’ groups were relegated to inner-city housing markets (1991,pp. 363–364)

This is a complex form of analysis weaving together economic, social andpolitical strands in order to chart the broad parameters of post-war urbandevelopment. Such complexity is made possible by the deployment of a regu-lationist analysis, which by definition sets out to inter-relate economic, socialand political processes – empirically and conceptually. Critically however,Florida and Feldman point out that the particular form of privatised USsuburbanisation was “the product of unique historical conditions” (1988,p. 188) and as such was only one of a range of potential outcomes, allsocially determined, that were possible within the basic parameters set byFordism. In this case, the specific form of (sub)urbanisation which emergedin the US “was ultimately shaped by contextual circumstances peculiar tothe US political economy, including the unique position the US held in thedeveloping world-economy of capitalism in the post-war period” (Florida andJonas, 1991, p. 352). Other contributory factors included the particular socialand political resolutions of the ‘New Deal’ conflicts in the inter-war period,which led to a unique and very restricted ‘class accord’ between capital andlabour, as well as the early growth of assembly-line production and a very

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fine-grained division of labour. Elsewhere in the world, post-war urban devel-opment was shaped by very different constellations of political, economic andcultural processes. In much of Europe, for instance, consumer demand wasstimulated by public housing and mass transport, rather than by the privatisedmodes which emerged in the US. This more “social-democratic solution”(Florida and Feldman, 1988, p. 198) to the contradictions of capitalist devel-opment led to a different form of urbanisation, where public and co-operativehousing was more prevalent, and where state intervention was more keenlyfelt across the urban arena. In the UK, for instance, the social democraticcompromise which politically and socially underpinned Fordism included anacceptance of both technocratic land-use planning and high levels of stateintervention in the built environment, leading to a range of measures designedto tackle the pre-war problems of urban sprawl and deprivation. The resultsof these post-war measures can still be felt across the UK’s urban areas andinclude large-scale industrial estates; new and overspill towns; green belts;peripheral estates; urban motorways; shopping centres and high-rise housing(see Rees and Lambert, 1985). The contours of the shift away from theseFordist infrastructures have been traced by Esser and Hirsch (1989) in theirwork on West Germany. Again they draw explicitly on regulationist concepts,in this case to sketch the ways in which the patterns of urban and regionaldevelopment in West Germany have been affected by the search for a ‘solu-tion’ to the crisis of Fordism. They show how the shift away from Fordism– as both a regime of accumulation and a mode of regulation – has resultedin greater heterogeneity, both between regions and within cities, leading to amuch greater uneveness in Germany’s socio-spatial structure.

These types of accounts are pitched at a fairly general level, but workhas also been undertaken which brings the analysis down to the sub-nationalscale. Peck and Tickell (1995) have used the regulation approach to analyseregional-level processes, and in doing so have helped to shift it from itsprimary articulation at the national level. Their research explores the possi-bility that different regulatory functions may be sited at different spatialscales and they set out to examine whether it might be possible to distinguishdistinctive local modes of social regulation. They do this through an analysisof the South East of England, which places an emphasis on the position ofthe South East within the wider accumulation project of ‘Thatcherism’ (seeJessop et al., 1988). This project itself, of course, is interpreted within aregulationist framework as part of the search for a resolution to the crisisof Fordism – for a new and sustainable coupling between accumulation andregulation. Under Thatcherism, this search entailed a new authoritarian stateform combined with a selective liberalisation of the economy. Such a strategy“reasserted and attempted to recohere the interests of the capitalist class in

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a way compatible with winning a degree of popular acceptance” (Peck andTickell, 1995, p. 28). It consisted of an antipathy towards trade unions, localauthorities and the remnants of the corporate state and a privileging of theinterests of business and the property-owning middle classes. In practice, thepolicies of successive Thatcher governments “pursued a limited hegemonystrategy, which underwrote the growth of incomes in the south at the expenseof the withdrawal of public services in the north” (ibid).

What this form of regulation and accumulation meant for the South Eastis sketched out graphically by Peck and Tickell. Unemployment in the regionwas around one third of that in the North of England and at times in the mid-1980s came close to full employment. Incomes rose in the region, whereasthey actually fell in the North, and so did house prices. In the two yearsfrom 1985 to 1987, house prices rose by 47 percent in the South East,compared with only six percent in the North. These processes were fuelledby the Thatcher policies of deregulation in both labour and financial markets.The results of the so-called ‘economic miracle’ in the South East werefar from those anticipated by the government. Peck and Tickell show howthe region actually suffered from the effects of an economic boom. Skillshortages reached epidemic proportions and recruitment difficulties spreadthroughout the region. This fuelled wage inflation, which in turn contributedto higher housing costs. Commercial property also increased in price, andbusinesses had to cope with rising congestion and environmental degradation.It became clear that the deregulationist policies underpinning the Conser-vatives’ attempt to introduce a new mode of regulation “were beginning tosuffocate the growth of the South East economy” (Peck and Tickell, 1995,p. 30).

By the end of the 1980s labour was beginning to be shed from the servicesector, as boom turned to bust. This filtered through to the housing market,and house prices collapsed. House owners were left with negative equity asbuilding society repossessions rocketed, running at twice the levels experi-enced elsewhere in the country. The growth of salaries and house prices wassent swiftly into reverse. Peck and Tickell conclude that Thatcherism failedas a regulatory experiment, because it was unable to sustain economic growthin the core region of the South East. The results were an overheated economy,inflation, housing market and labour market imbalances and over-exploitationof resources. Significantly, they point out that these processes occurred partlybecause “appropriate mechanisms for the regulation and reproduction of theeconomy had not been set in place” (1995, p. 35). If anything, the regionsuffered from a regulatory deficit – the coupling between accumulation andregulation was entirely absent.

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This study shows the way in which the regulationist framework can bedrawn upon to account for urban and regional change as part and parcel of theuneven development of contemporary capitalist restructuring. But it can onlydo so if the regulationist concepts are used correctly. Terms such as regime ofaccumulation and mode of regulation are not simply descriptive labels to bewheeled on as a context for specific events happening in particular places atparticular times. They actually specify concrete sets of processes, which canbe used to understand both the “evident historical and spatial discontinuitiesin capitalist development” and “the role of social, political and institutionalfactors in the analysis of these development processes” (Peck and Tickell,1995, p. 35).

3. Spaces, scales and sites of analysis: From ‘modes of regulation’ to‘regulation as process’

However, two notes of caution should be added at this stage of the argument.Although the regulation approach provides an excellent basis for comparativeresearch, at both a national and a sub-national scale, this requires a clearunderstanding of what is being explained, and at what scale such explana-tion is most appropriate. There is a tendency to almost assume that anyregulationist concept can be used at any scale. Thus we see reference to‘post-Fordist’ cities (Mayer, 1992); ‘fordist towns’ and ‘postfordist regions’(Esser and Hirsch, 1989); ‘national Fordisms’ (Tickell and Peck, 1995); andinternational, national (Jessop, 1997b) and local modes of social regulation(Peck and Tickell, 1995). This can lead to inappropriate comparative researchas different scales and sites of regulation in one place are compared to thosein another. We need to ask at the outset exactly what it is we are comparing. Inwhat sense, for instance, is a city or region ‘Fordist,’ or even ‘post-Fordist’?The problem around appropriate scales of analysis is one reason why thoseusing the regulation approach have tended to pitch their comparative workvery much at the national or international level. Yet for those interestedin urban and regional development, it is equally important to be able toanalyse differences within as well as between nations. This is one reasonwhy Goodwin and Painter (1996, 1997; see also Painter and Goodwin, 1995)developed the notion of regulation as process, and the concept of regulatorycapacity, to replace the rather formalised and structured concept of mode ofregulation. Drawing on these more fluid concepts, it then becomes possibleto analyse processes of regulation at any relevant scale – and indeed across‘nested’ scales. Again there is a clear role here for comparative research,both within and between nations, to set out and analyse the relative extentof different regulatory processes and capacities. As we shall see, many

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aspects of urban and regional development are critical to how these processesfunction and to whether these capacities are realised.

We have already stressed how the regulation approach seeks to explain thespatially and temporally uneven reproduction of capitalism with reference tothe variable pattern of cultural and political institutions and practices. Thisis what makes it so well suited to comparative research. Conventionally theterm ‘mode of regulation’ refers to a specific combination of these prac-tices operating together in a mutually reinforcing way. There are, however, anumber of analytical and empirical difficulties involved in giving such prac-tices the label of a ‘mode of regulation’ (see Goodwin and Painter, 1997 andPainter and Goodwin, 1995 for more details). First, the term ‘mode’ is oftenunderstood as implying a completed system rather than one in the processof formation. Critics argue that the notion of modes of regulation overem-phasises the functionality, stability and coherence of regulatory relations andunderemphasises change, conflict and development during their period ofoperation. Second, by extension, the idea of contrasting ‘modes’ succeedingone another places too much stress on sharp breaks and radical discontinu-ities in the development of capitalist societies. A crude account of one stableand enduring mode quickly breaking down and then equally quickly beingreplaced by a markedly different but equally stable new arrangement is clearlyunsatisfactory and historically inaccurate.

This is partly because any period of stable development will have itssetbacks and conflicts. Most of the time, therefore, regulation is neitherperfect nor wholly absent. Rather, it is more or less effective, dependingon the mix and interaction of the various factors involved. Thus, regulationshould be seen as a process rather than as a series of different ‘modes’.Instead of looking for coherent ‘modes of regulation’, we can then emphasisethe ebb and flow of regulatory processes through time and across space. Atcertain times and places, those processes will be more effective than at others.According to Painter and Goodwin (1995, p. 342), this process of regulationis the product of material and discursive practices that generate and are in turnconditioned by social and political institutions. This challenges the view ofthe history of regulation as marked by stable and coherent phases separatedby brief but sharp discontinuities.

In terms of comparative research, a regulation approach that treats regula-tion as process is perhaps able to deal rather more subtly with temporal andspatial variability. As Painter and Goodwin put it,

Since regulatory processes are the product of social practices, theymust be understood in relation to the concrete contexts of practice. Asconcrete phenomena with specific histories and geographies, practicesmust be understood as intrinsically unevenly developed. In other words,

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the geography of regulation is not an optional extra or final compli-cating factor. On the contrary, the process of regulation is constitutedgeographically. Its unevenness is inherent. Indeed, as a product of thecontingent interaction of disparate practices, each with its own geography(and history) the process of regulation has a highly complex geography(1995, p. 342)

This leads us to thinking about the generation of regulation (or, conversely, ofprocesses which undermine regulation) as organised in and through key sitesand spaces. Each set of social practices which go to make up the interactionswhich can be identified as regulation has its own key sites, and those interac-tions are thus interactions across space. Hence, the spatiality of regulation isintegral to its effectiveness, or the lack of it. It is easier to utilise such a frame-work in this manner, however, if we use the concept of ‘regulation as process’rather than that of ‘mode of regulation’. In this way we can investigate issuesat the urban level – such as transport, housing, social polarisation, employ-ment change and economic development – and still maintain a purchase onhow each of these is related both to each other and to wider sets of social,economic and political processes. Hence, comparative research can proceedwithout divorcing the city from its broader social context. Comparisons canbe made, both between cities in the same countries and between cities indifferent nations, of regulatory processes and regulatory capacity.

In order to illustrate this we will use the example of research by Goodwin,Duncan and Halford (1993), who looked at the changing processes of regu-lation in three urban centres in the UK – Camden, Sheffield and Bracknell.All three areas once typified key elements of the UK’s Fordist settlement.Both Sheffield and Camden (in inner London) had local economies whichwere heavily dependent on state investment and nationalised industries inthe post-war period. Sheffield was the centre of Britain’s specialised steelindustry, which was amongst the first sectors to rationalise its national post-war development plans around major new investments. Camden’s economywas dominated by the railway industry and attendant engineering plants. Bothareas suffered when these respective industries were restructured in the 1960sand 1970s, but in both areas the labour movement had come to dominatelocal politics from the outset of the post-war period. As a consequence, localstate provision of services was maintained at a high level. In contrast, theinvolvement of the state and the labour movement in Bracknell was perhapsmore formalised, but no less important. The town was developed as one ofBritain’s first generation of New Towns in the immediate post-war period.All three places represented local spaces of regulation which were heavilyinfluenced by Fordist relations in economy and society. These were not, ofcourse, the only processes which contributed to that “particular constella-

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tion of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus”(Massey, 1991, p. 28) which defines the specificity of different places. Butthey were important in defining those ranges of social norms, mechanismsand institutions which helped to shape the content of local politics.

In each place a highly skilled labour force reaped the benefits of highwages and increasing levels of service provision, in return for increasingproductivity. In all three areas, structures of local politics were in placewhich were conducive to continued economic growth, social stability andincreasing standards of collective consumption. In the case of Sheffield andCamden, these were forged largely around the institutions of local govern-ment. Each place became renowned for the level and standard of its publicservices, especially in the fields of housing, social services, leisure facil-ities and libraries. In both places, the Labour Party dominated local electoralpolitics for the whole post-war period, partly through this commitment topublic services. In Bracknell, an appointed New Town Development Corpor-ation meant that local electoral politics were less important in determiningthe provision of public services. The Corporation co-ordinated the devel-opment of the publicly funded and planned New Town. There the originalnotion, as in the other British New Towns, was that the “watchful eye andstrong hand of the state” (Harvey, 1989, p. 69) should guide service provision‘from the cradle to the grave’. But the social, political and economic relationswhich underpinned the expansion of public services in each place, as part ofparticular regulatory processes, were gradually eroded.

The key point is that the results of this erosion have been different ineach area (see Goodwin, Duncan and Halford, 1993, for more details). InBracknell, the strategic and structural moments of Fordism, which werecentral to the ethos and practices of the New Town Development Corpora-tion, have been completely replaced. Instead, the local state now facilitates aprivatised environment, in which collective services are kept to a minimum.In Camden, the post-war coalition has also declined, but as yet nothing asclear as Bracknell’s ‘two nation’ model has taken its place. The local spacesof regulation are still being restructured, as the local state attempts to come togrips with the development of a new service- and media-orientated inner-urban economy. In Sheffield, the local economy, society and politics hasundergone yet another form of restructuring. The old Fordist coalition whichsuccessfully controlled Sheffield politics until the late 1970s has been irre-versibly weakened by local economic restructuring. The former strength ofthe labour movement, central to the policies and practices of this particularlocal space of regulation, declined dramatically along with the industrialfortunes of the city’s steel and engineering plants. Unlike Bracknell, the insti-tutions of local government are still controlled by Labour, but the policies and

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discourses that help to shape the local processes of regulation have changedconsiderably.

The examples show the ways in which the Fordist mode of regulation hasbeen restructured locally, partly via changes in the practices of the local state.They also show that we cannot speak of some undifferentiated movementaway from one type of regulation and towards another. Instead we need toconceive of a whole series of movements between the differing processesof regulation operating at overlapping scales. We are at present witnessinga series of diverse and contested changes in the form of local regulatoryprocesses, rather than looking at some nationally determined shift. To raisethese concerns is to foreground the issue of how regulation operates in prac-tice at spatial scales other than that of the nation-state. From this arises theissue of how practices and processes of regulation and accumulation interact,both locally and nationally. Asking these questions in turn focuses attentiononto the concrete outcomes of different processes of regulation. In this waywe can unpack the rather abstract notion of mode of regulation, to inves-tigate the ways in which regulation and accumulation interact in practice inspecific places. The results of this interaction will be seen in economic, socialand political developments at the urban level, which will help to structure,amongst other things, the nature of housing provision, employment, publicservices, transport, planning and economic development.

4. Concluding comments

Of particular interest here is the link between economic processes and thosesurrounding the state and political activity. In focussing “on the histori-cally contingent ensembles of complementary economic and extra-economicmechanisms and practices which enable relatively stable accumulation tooccur over relatively long periods” (Jessop, 1997b, p. 503), the regulationapproach legitimately links the traditional concerns of political economy withanalyses of the state and civil society. This is one of its attractions for thoseresearching urban politics or the local provision of welfare services. Theuse of the regulation approach would lead to the conclusion that for thoseinterested in local changes in housing, planning and welfare provision, thelocal state and local governance cannot be fully understood outside their roles(both positive and negative) in the ebb and flow of regulation. However, thepoint should also be made that neither can they be fully understood withinthem. The institutions and practices of local and regional government havetheir own histories and patterns of development. Explaining their changingcharacter thus requires a theory of governance, a theory of the state, andempirical historical and geographical research, as well as a theory of their

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impact on (economic) regulation. What is required, therefore, is an investig-ative frame which joins a geographically sensitive regulation approach basedon social processes to a critical political sociology of the local state and urbangovernance based on an investigation of the material and discursive practicesin which they are grounded.

This kind of issue is not new for those working on various aspects of thestate and welfare provision, and the dilemma of how to link the economicwith the political has been a perennial one. As Boyer (2000, p. 279) haswritten, “in modern societies, there is no economics without politics and nopolitics without economics”. The difficulty lies in analysing how they cometogether. Jessop has explored neo-Gramscian state theory, as an approach tothe analysis of politics and the state, which has significant complementaritiesto the regulation approach. While the latter is concerned with the economy inits integral sense, the former is concerned with the state in its integral sense.Jessop argues that while a regulation-theoretical approach can help us to inter-pret the generic shift from a Keynesian Welfare National State (KWNS) toa Schumpeterian Workfare Post-National Regime (SWPN), neo-Gramscianstate theory may help to disclose the political forces and regulatory prac-tices and discourses which activate the very constitution of specific SWPRsin specific places. The emphasis is on exploring how political, intellectualand moral leadership is “mediated through a complex ensemble of institu-tions, organizations and forces operating within, orientated toward or locatedat a distance from the juridico-political state apparatus” (Jessop, 1997c,p. 52). In this way, the introduction and operation of the new institutionsand processes of urban and regional governance can be positioned withina wider set of social and political forces. It can be understood as part of thecontinuing attempts to forge and sustain a ‘successful’ political and economicproject – although a regulation approach would claim that the fundamentalcontradictions of capitalism can never be fully contained.

This stress on politics and political strategies is also useful in avoidingthe dangers of economism. It is sometimes tempting when using a regulationapproach to appeal to the effect of economic changes – usually characterisedas a shift from Fordism to post-Fordism – in order to explain changes withinurban politics. However, there could well be political reasons prompting suchinstitutional redesign. Even if economic forces do have a direct role we needto understand how these “are first translated into political projects for stateaction and [how] their solution is mediated through the specific, structurallyinscribed, strategically selective nature of the state” (Jessop, 1995, p. 30). Inthese terms, a crisis in the KWNS and its yielding to a hollowed out Schum-peterian Workfare Post-National Regime is not simply to be understood asthe alighting of certain structural limits and the consequent shift from one

86 MARK GOODWIN

regime to another. Rather, such a transformation is narrated, manifested andresolved within the ideas, spaces and times of particular state projects andsocietal paradigms. In this way we may be able to complement the regulationapproach to understanding the economy with a neo-Gramscian approach tounderstanding the state, and in so doing provide much fruitful ground forcomparative research on the politics and economics of urban and regionaldevelopment.

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this paper was presented to a workshop on comparativeresearch methods, organised by AME, University of Amsterdam, 16th–17thDecember, 1999. I would like to thank the organisers of that workshop for theinvitation to participate, and those present for helpful discussion.

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