There is a perceived North-South divide in British politics. In this study, William Field points out that this divide marks the resurgence of a core-periphery cleavage which was also dominant in British politics in the years before 1914. Other similarities are pointed out.

Economic and financial crises have brought the rise of unemployment, reduction of economic growth and emergence of global imbalances and tensions as countries and regions have suffered the effects of a variety of internal and external shocks. In this context of constant disruption, the scientific community has struggled to provide satisfactory answers to current economic challenges within standard frameworks. Focusing on the interconnections between innovation and resilience, this edited book contributes to a better understanding of how the crisis affects innovation and the capacity of territories to adapt and evolve. It offers both theoretical and empirical contributions that debate the notions of resilience in regional and urban contexts and serve as case studies related to innovation strategies and territorial clusters.

The task of modelling the evolution of cities – the dynamics – is one of the major challenges of the social sciences. This book presents mathematical and computer models of urban and regional dynamics and shows how advances in computer visualisation provide new insights. Models of non-linear systems in general have three characteristics: multiple equilibria, ‘path dependence’ over time and phase transitions – that is, abrupt change at critical parameter values. These phenomena all exhibit themselves in reality, and it is an ongoing task to match model-based analysis with real phenomena. There are three key features of cities and regions to be represented in models: activities at a location – residence, health, education, work and shopping; flows between locations – spatial interaction; and the structures that carry these activities – buildings, transport and communications networks. Spatial interaction and many elements of activities’ location can be modelled by statistical averaging procedures, which are related to Boltzmann’s methods in statistical mechanics. This is while the evolution of structure can be represented in equations that connect to the Lotka-Volterra equations in ecology. Within this broad framework, alternative approaches can be brought to bear. This book uses entropy-maximising versions of spatial interaction models. The authors explore the dynamics in more detail, using advanced visualisation techniques. These ideas have wide potential uses, and the book illustrates this with applications in history and archaeology.

Hinterlands and Regional Dynamics in the Ancient Southwest is the first volume dedicated to understanding the nature of and changes in regional social autonomy, political hegemony, and organizational complexity across the entire prehistoric American Southwest. With geographic coverage extending from the Great Plains to the Colorado River, and from Mesa Verde to the international border, the volumeÕs ten case studies synthesize research that enhances our understanding of the ancient SouthwestÕs highly variable demographic, land use, and economic histories. For this volume, ÒhinterlandsÓ are those areas whose archaeological records do not disclose the ceramic, architectural, and network evidence that initially led to the establishment of the Hohokam, Chaco, and Casas Grandes regional systems. Employing a variety of perspectives, such as the cultural landscapes approach, heterarchy, and the common-pool resource model, as well as technical methods, such as petrographic and stylistic-attribute analyses, the volumeÕs contributors explore variation in hinterland identities, subsistence ecology, and sociopolitical organization as regional systems expanded and contracted between the 9th and 14th centuries AD. The hinterlands of the prehistoric Southwest were home to a substantial number of people and were often used as resource catchments by the inhabitants of regional systems. Importantly, hinterlands also influenced developments of nearby regional systems, under whose footprint they managed to retain considerable autonomy. By considering the dynamics between hinterlands and regional systems, the volume reveals unappreciated aspects of the ancient SouthwestÕs peoples and their lives, thereby deepening our awareness of the regionÕs rich and complicated cultural past.

Regional Dynamics: Burgundian Landscapes in Historical Perspective challenges traditional practices and approaches to regional studies by anthropologists and economic geographers. This book attempts to incorporate various fields such as natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities for a more comprehensive framework in regional studies. A region that has historical record of depth, i.e., Burgundy, France, is chosen for this book. The book begins with a chapter on theories that critique the past approaches to regional studies and introduces relevant concepts covered in the book such as landscape, sociohistorical structures, heterarchy, etc. The following chapters focus on the physical structures of the region, the archaeological excavations, settlement and land use during the Iron Age and Gallo-Roman times, multiscalar research design, and Roman period beginning from its conquest until the Middle Ages. A summary of important themes is given in the last chapter. This book caters to many students and professionals in various fields like anthropology, geography, archeology, history, economics, and ecology.

Poland's continuing housing shortage reduces labor mobility, which reduces potential growth. Improving housing is essential to improving economic growth in Poland.

Warum sollen Regionen innerhalb eines Landes unabhängige Inseln sein? Und warum sollen, über das gesamte Land hinweg, einheitlich starke ökonomische oder soziale Wirkungszusammenhänge bestehen? Diese zwei Annahmen werden in der angewandten empirischen Wirtschafts- und Sozialforschung üblicherweise implizit unterstellt. Wie in statistischen Verfahren von dieser unrealistischen Modellstruktur unter Ausnutzung der räumlichen Strukturen in beobachteten Variablen und unterstellten Zusammenhängen abgewichen werden kann, diskutiert Norbert Schanne im vorliegenden Band. Möglichkeiten, unser Verständnis der Ökonomie zu vertiefen, werden ebenso verdeutlicht, wie Chancen und Tücken beim Einsatz der Methoden in Studien zu verschiedenen Aspekten der Arbeitsmarktdynamik.

This title was first published in 2001. In the framework of the EU, a number of policies have been devised for regions in order to facilitate their balanced economic development. The author argues that the focus on regional planners and their actions in academic literature has obscured the importance of regional elites in this process. The author compares Western Scotland and the west of Crete, focusing on the wider regional political and business elites within these regions, and attempting a comparison of elite attitudes within regions and between regions.

History is replete with instances of what might, or might not, have been. By calling something contingent, at a minimum we are saying that it did not have to be as it is. Things could have been otherwise, and they would have been otherwise if something had happened differently. This collection of original essays examines the significance of contingency in the study of politics. That is, how to study unexpected, accidental, or unknowable political phenomena in a systematic fashion. Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait. Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans. How might history be different had these events not happened? How should social scientists interpret the significance of these events and can such unexpected outcomes be accounted for in a systematic way or by theoretical models? Can these unpredictable events be predicted for? Political Contingency addresses these and other related questions, providing theoretical and historical perspectives on the topic, empirical case studies, and the methodological challenges that the fact of contingency poses for the study of politics. Contributors: Sonu Bedi, Traci Burch, Jennifer L. Hochschild, Gregory A. Huber, Courtney Jung, David R. Mayhew, Philip Pettit, Andreas Schedler, Mark R. Shulman, Robert G. Shulman, Ian Shapiro, Susan Stokes, Elisabeth Jean Wood, and David Wootton

This volume examines contemporary diplomatic, economic, and security competition between China and Japan in the Asia-Pacific region. The book outlines the role that Sino-Japanese competition plays in East Asian security, an area of study largely overlooked in contemporary writing on Asian security, which tends to focus on US–China relations and/or US hegemony in Asia. The volume focuses on Chinese and Japanese foreign policy under President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, and regional security dynamics within and between Asian states/institutions since 2012. It employs regional security complex theory as a theoretical framework to view Chinese and Japanese competition in the Asian region. In doing so, the volume draws on a "levels of analysis" approach to demonstrate the value in looking at security in the Asia-Pacific from a regional rather than global perspective. The vast majority of existing research on the region’s security tends to focus on great power relations and treats Asia as a sub-region within the larger global security architecture. In contrast, this volume shows how competition between the two largest Asian economies shapes East Asia’s security environment and drives security priorities across Asia’s sub-regions. As such, this collection provides an important contribution to discussion on security in Asia; one with potential to influence both political and military policy makers, security practitioners, and scholars. This book will be of much interest to students of Asian politics, regional security, diplomacy, and international relations.