Current research projects:
Towards New Nordic Regions
Currently, there is an apparently common development in the Nordic countries towards new political and administrative government structures at the regional level. One aim of the project is to present this development, in order to figure out both similarities and differences in the content of the reform and the reform processes. The second focus is to describe and analyse how and to what extent new regions are growing from below. How are the national policy reforms related to change processes within the regions? Through a series of case studies, we want to concentrate upon three aspects of the change processes: The first sub-theme is how regional clusters and regional innovation systems are shaped in Nordic regions. How do businesses cluster, innovate and learn? And how do they get involved in regional partnerships and innovation systems? The second aspect is how new policies are developed at the regional level. We will look at ict-policies, gender policy and new forms of regional development policy. The third theme is about the development of new regional structures ? new functional regions. What do the emerging regional patterns look like? The overall aim is to outline the broader implications of the Nordic experience for the understanding of the international trend towards the development of new regions: What are the main elements in top down reforms of regional governments? What is the content of regionalisation processes from within the regions? To what extent are these processes related to each other? Are the state reforms mainly an answer to bottom up economic and social drivers towards new regions? Are they rather motivated by ideas of a new regionalism which are spreading through Europe? Or are they may be a result of a felt need for more efficient service delivery at the regional level ? By discussing this kind of questions, our aim is to contribute to the international discussion on new regions and regionalisation.
Regional restructuring in Sogn og Fjordane
Local welfare management in a system under pressure
Link to the SFUC research group Organisation and Management
Link to all my research projects in ForskPro
Last updated September 19, 2007
by Oddbjørn Bukve