Towards a redefinition of space in regional incentives policy

Abstract

The article presents an evaluation of the regional policy framework, through the examination of key sectors of the Greek economy and the impact on their development of regional policy incentives.The diververgence between development "discourse" and development practice has does not facilitate the determination of a long-term intervention policy in postwar Greece. As a result most development programms are not completed thus making their evaluation, based on scientific criteria impossible. It is argued, in the article that in an economy influenced both by 'macro' economic and 'macro' geopolitical factors, as well as by the specificities and interconnections of its social and spatial constitution, development policy should be sectorally and spatially differentiated. Policy that is promoting the development of socially determined key sectors of the economy, differntiated according to the specifities and the prospects of the socially constituted 'micro'space'. The neccessity of a disaggregated approach of social phenomena and the identification of the importance of the spatial divisions of these phenomena as well as of the social divisions of space are the main conclusions of the evalution presented in this article.