En studie om görandet av hållbarhet i regional utvecklingspolitik
Av Tangnäs, Johanna
Regional development policy has been devoted to tackling global competition for decades. This governmental rationality puts growth objectives at the heart of development and Swedish regions have channelled their efforts into building attractiveness and supporting market differentiation. This competitive orientation has been accompanied by a collaborative approach, rather than by political debate over competing ideological positions. Since the early 2020s, a new direction for regional development has begun to evolve as the Swedish government is changing its regional policy from regional growth to sustainable regional development. By using Carol Bacchi’s critical policy approach (WPR), this thesis explores how sustainability is represented in recent regional development policy and whether these problem representations create room for other conceptualisations of development or open up space for what Chantal Mouffe describes as the political to re-enter the policy field. The study draws on fieldwork comprising interviews, policy documents and observations. The thesis shows that regional development is changing into a broader and more societal-oriented field as a result of the sustainability efforts, but the major problem representations identified in the policy proposals produce sustainability as a problem of outdated methods, silo-based organisation and a lack of innovative tools. Aspects such as climate change, inequality or loss of biodiversity are seldom addressed in the proposals. Together, this constitutes sustainability in regional development as a matter of form, rather than content. As a consequence of the effects of how sustainability is currently represented, the thesis concludes that there are openings for re-vitalisation due to colliding aims and approaches, but the challenge they pose to the established rationality has not yet induced a (re)politicisation of development in regional policy