This fellowship provides a forum for knowledge exchange about the transnational networks
and institutions that have framed local and regional social and cultural infrastructures in the UK.
PARE addresses two fundamental dilemmas of agency in efforts to maintain and regenerate local and regional social and cultural infrastructures in the wake of Brexit:
First, the dilemma that, on the one hand, regional development policies in the context of the ‘levelling up’ agenda after Brexit have asserted regional sovereignty, but that, on the other hand, the ways in which regional empowerment has been exercised has often depended on links beyond the region and nation.
Second, the dilemma that paradiplomatic efforts by regions have led to conflicts with the central government’s diplomacy as carried out by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) as well as conflicts between FCDO and other central government departments (such as the Departments for Levelling Up or the Department for International Trade).
[Selby Town Hall, photo by David Ward, 2007]
Through the lens of agency in regional paradiplomacy, this project thus engages deeper questions about the historical conditions under which vibrant sub-national social and cultural infrastructures can emerge and, specifically, how the UK’s political and constitutional setting has been embedded in transnational patterns of interaction.
This project addresses four research questions:
- What has been the role of Wilton Park for paradiplomacy in the context of UK regional development?
- Which actors are stakeholders for such paradiplomatic activities?
- What has been the relationship between paradiplomacy and central-state initiatives in these regional
development activities? - How do stakeholders think the current processes and institutions related to developing regional social and cultural infrastructures can be improved?