This article attempts to demonstrate on the basis of the Greek experience, that the relationships between local development and the forms of state regulation correspond to a wide range of combinations consisting of both structural and contingent elements, which coexist to the extent that they provide viable solutions to the constitutive and the reproductive needs of the society. Parallel to the spatial shifts which correspond to the economic restructuring, there is also extensive restructuring of the regulatory stale functions at the different spatial levels (local, regional, national and international). In this process the opposite poles of the local and the international play an increasingly important role as the geographical base of the dominant mode of development. However, and in contrast with the previous emphasis upon the national level, the new geography of development is characterised by the focus of most empirical and theoretical studies upon the local level. The article argues in favour of the need to expand our research interests in order to include the forms through which the local is integrated within broader spatial levels.
