Regions, welfare state services, and the political economy of growth regimes

This essay advances an understanding of the extent to which political economies have changed in the ‘era of knowledge-based growth’. It emphasizes the importance of considering not only the country level but also the sub-national regional level of socioeconomic dynamics, as well as the role of welfare state services. This contribution provides three main findings based on an ad-hoc dataset built by collecting different types of socio-economic information at the regional level. First, it demonstrates how the welfare state is playing an increasingly pivotal role as a direct ‘growth engine’. Second, it shows the emergence of complex and diversified economic specialization and growth models at the sub-national level. Third, two major types of political economies are identified that are characterized by differing degrees of territorial integration of their regional economic specialization and growth models. The identified ‘typology’ of national political economies only partially overlaps with the most common ones described in comparative political economy literature.