Dear Colleagues,

It is widely known that national socioeconomic policies are built on the grounds of efficiency and equity. From an economic efficiency perspective, policymakers aim for high economic development and growth, and from an economic equity perspective, they aim for low interpersonal income inequality. Policymakers try to achieve both aims, because persistent low economic development and/or persistent high income inequality create a raft of social, economic, and political problems in a nation. Nevertheless, encompassing both the goals of high economic development and equitable distribution of income is not easy. Many countries cannot improve economic performance without increasing economic inequality, while others can reduce economic inequality but at the cost of low economic growth. The equity-efficiency relationship has been analysed and debated by many scholars and international institutions such as the OECD, the World Bank, and the IMF.

The role of cities and regions is fundamental to the efficiency and equity of a nation and thus to the relationship between economic performance and equality. For example, large cities are an important source of national economic growth, but they usually cause the level of income inequality to rise. Both cities and regions are essential dimensions of the development and equality process. However, socioeconomic and political processes operate both at the national and at the urban and regional level.

This Special Issue focuses on the role of cities and regions in economic development and income inequality within a country. It welcomes well-founded empirical papers which explore the socioeconomic and political relationship(s) between national and sub-national (i.e., local, urban, and regional) characteristics and policies. First, this Special Issue aims to better understand whether and how sub-national characteristics, such as regional disparities, urbanisation economies, city regions, uneven spatial distribution of factors of production, local authorities, metropolitan areas, and rural and remote areas and islands affect national characteristics, such as national economic development, income inequality, unemployment, poverty and exports, and vice versa. Second, it aims to better understand whether and how urban and regional policies, such as land use housing and policy, town planning, urban regeneration, regional planning, regional competitiveness policy, and cohesion policy, affect national policies, such as welfare policies, social policies, health policies and education policies, and vice versa. Overall, this Special Issue intends to provide an understanding of the importance of cities and regions in a national economy.

Dr. Vassilis Tselios
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• economic development
• income inequality
• equity
• efficiency
• national economy
• city
• regions
• national policies
• regional policies
• urban policies

Planned Paper:

Type of Paper: Research article

Tentative Title: Social Protection Design, Health and Inequalities in the United Kingdom and Denmark - A Humanist Governance Approach to Capability Development in OECD Countries

Authors: Prof. Louise Haagh

Affiliations: University of York

Abstract: This paper promotes a humanist governance approach to examine the role of sensitivity to human development within public finance, education, and labour market institutions, and discusses implications for debates about distributive and institutional choices in public welfare policy. The paper uses an original comparative data-set to evidence impacts of institutional change in middle and high income OECD countries. This is complemented with a comparative case study of transformations within the United Kingdom and Denmark to trace sources of the evolution and impact of inequalities and of global transformations in state capacity for humanist governance.
The humanist governance perspective entails an institutionalist approach to the problem of promoting developmental capabilities. As the paper sets out, this has three related applications in the global study of and debate about welfare state transformation, at the level of conceptual framing, comparative analysis, and policy debate.  First, applying an institutionalist approach to the problem of promoting developmental capabilities brings the problem of health in societal institutions to the centre of comparative welfare analysis.  Second, this enables a new conceptual frame and empirical method to evidence key constitutive features of and impacts on state capacity for humanist governance. Third, the humanist governance approach provides a broader foundation for contemporary debates about policy options in the adoption and combination of, respectively, distributive and institutional approaches to welfare state transformation.  Comparative analysis evidences how hyper-globalisation linked with de-formalisation of human economy has constrained policy options, whilst at the same time existing levels of shared security in society abates a linked trend towards punitive governance. An overall upshot is to caution us to rethink the problem of development and welfare policy in terms of formalisation of human activities, cooperative forms of public finance and the construction of shared risk institutions in society.