@phdthesis{01HN32A232DPQK3GGTJW0PKQ8H,
  abstract     = {{In every country there are regions doing less well economically and socially than others with a higher average level of prosperity. Within Flanders, the regional differences in this respect have become relatively small today and there is mainly a wealth discrepancy with large parts of Wallonia which lost its 19th-century economic supremacy within Belgium from the 1960s onwards. However, until the end of the 1990s also within Flanders high unemployment rates and unequal employment opportunities continued to exist and became an increasing concern for policymakers. Even though, as we studied, the demand for government intervention to increase employment possibilities in all regions already was going up before the Second World War, it was only from the 1950s onwards that there was a more structural policy in this respect. In Belgium the first initiatives were largely shaped bottom up. Policymakers became increasingly convinced that specific measures (e.g. financial support for companies or the reduction of taxes) for certain sectors and regions could reduce regional wealth and income inequality. 
In this research we studied the origin of that policy. We looked how the regional economic policy strategies were interpreted by policy makers, from local/sub-regional governments to the European policy level that became increasingly important in defining regional policy lines. We also studied which political strategies have tightened or weakened those policy, to what results they led to and which actors (with or without a political mandate) played an important role in it. By reconstructing the different policy strategies and visions, each with its own long-term emphasis and underlying ideas, certain fault lines and/or continuities became visible, which gave us a nuanced picture of the most important shifts and policy mechanisms. We were able to clearly demonstrate that such a policy process was not at all evolving in a linear way: there were ups and downs and often a lot of time elapsed between the initial ideas and proposals and their actual implementation. Much depended on the shifting political constellations. Specific for Belgium the complexity of this process increased, because regional economic awareness was part of an important nation-building undercurrent. Each regionally differentiated economic policy initiative was viewed through a state reform lens and was strongly influenced by it. We also investigated the extent to which the gradual transfer of economic policy to Flanders since the 1970s has led to different, more or less effective results to eliminate regional socio-economic inequalities. The study ends in the mid-1990s, when Flanders' 'own' economic policy had come to full development and when an important part of new bottom-up initiatives stimulating regional economic development now were taken by the companies themselves.}},
  author       = {{Ongena, Ophelia}},
  keywords     = {{regional economic policy}},
  language     = {{dut}},
  pages        = {{XXII, 732}},
  publisher    = {{Universiteit Gent. Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte}},
  school       = {{Ghent University}},
  title        = {{'Werk in eigen streek!' Ontstaan en evolutie van een economisch beleid op maat van streken en regio's (België, tweede helft van de 20ste eeuw)}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}