Regional governance in second-tier city-regions in Sweden: a multi-scalar approach to institutional change

Abstract

This study focuses on the formation and institutional changes of governance for regional development in three second-tier city-regions in Sweden. It explains the spatial relations of such institutional change. It integrates concepts from historical institutionalism in a spatial approach and investigates the path dependency of institutional change. This involves conceiving the mechanism of feedback effects and institutional changes of layering, conversion and recombination, and of how these play out differently within the three city-regions. The conclusions highlight the relations at different scales of different institutional changes.