The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Journal of Regional Science, initiating inter-

national branches (Europe in 1961, Asia in

1963) and attracting attention from co-

gnate disciplines. One of those waseconomic

geography, and for a period in the 1960s –

the halcyon years of thequantitative revo-

lutionandspatial science– the agendas of

the two were symbiotically linked. The 1970s

began a reversal of fortunes, as former allies

such as economic geography increasingly

deserted regional science, its practitioners

caught up in the critique of spatial science,

the concomitant advance ofpolitical econ-

omythrough the sub-discipline, and the emer-

gence of an avowedlyradical geography.

From the 1990s, competitors for the same

intellectual (and artificial) turf cultivated by

regional science emerged, such as thenew

economic geography, and university admin-

istrators turned sour (Isard’s original Regional

Science Department at the University of

Pennsylvania was closed in 1994–5). Against

the backdrop of two decades of intellectual

and then institutional assault, regional science

moved to the margins ofhuman geography

and the social sciences more generally. tb

Suggested reading

Barnes (2004c).

regionalism A term referring to both a form

of politicalidentityand sub-national eco-

nomic integration. Attempts have been

made to clarify the definition to delineate the

‘old’ regionalism of a political identity seeking

autonomy or separation from thestate(see

secession) and the ‘new’ regionalism of eco-

nomic integration at the sub-national scale,

which may include governmental administra-

tive functions (Witt, 2005). Regionalism is

seen as a theoretical and methodological

vehicle to analyse new forms ofgovernance

within the context of neo-liberal policies (see

neo-liberalism) and supra-state institutions

(O’Loughlin, 1996). Further clarification is

provided by Jones and MacLeod (2004),

who distinguish between regional spaces and

spaces of regionalism. Regional spaces are

regional economic geographies of techno-

logical spillovers and inter-firmagglomer-

ationthat produce a regional clustering of

economic assets (cf.cluster).Spaces of region-

alismare the ‘(re)assertion of national and

regional claims to citizenship, insurgent forms

of political mobilization and cultural expres-

sion and the formation of new contours of

territorial government’ (Jones and MacLeod,

2004, p. 435).

As governments restructure under the pres-

sures of neo-liberalism and globalization,

the politics of regionalism often does not

distinguish between the regional economic

policies and regional political identity. As

Paasi (2003) has pointed out, there is an

important difference between the identity of

aregion, or the classification of a space by

government and other agencies, and the

regional consciousness of individuals, or the

degree and form of political regional attach-

ment. Recent identification of a ‘resurgence of

the regions’ refers to both the creation of

regional economic spaces attempting to cap-

ture global investment by touting a regional

comparative advantageas well as the polit-

ical movements, such as Lega Nord in Italy,

dissatisfied with membership in the existing

state. Jones and MacLeod (2004) caution

social scientists and policy-makers that there

is no necessary relationship between regional

economic spaces and regional political iden-

tity, which may cause problems for govern-

ments and the European Union promoting

regional policies. Furthermore, both regional

spaces and spaces of regionalism occur at

various scales, and must be viewed as a poli-

tical process involving conflict and negoti-

ation rather than fixed political geographical

entities. (See alsoregionalpolicy.) cf

Suggested reading

Allen, Massey and Cochrane (1998); Ho ̈nnigh-

ausen, Frey, Peacock and Steiner (2005).

regression A statistical relationship between

a dependent variable and one or more inde-

pendent variables. The standard technique for

regression analysis fits a straight-line trend

through a scatter of points (as shown in the

figure), with the line placed to minimize the

sum of the (squared) distances between it and

the individual points. In the formula for a

simple regression (i.e. with one independent

variable),

Y¼aþbXe,

Yis the dependent variable (shown on the

vertical axis);Xis the independent variable

(shown on the horizontal axis);ais theinter-

ceptorconstantterm (i.e. the value ofYwhen

Xequals zero);bis theregression coefficient(i.e.

the slope of the relationship, indicating the

change inYfor each unit change inX); ande

is the error term, indicating the degree of scat-

ter of points around the line. The closer the fit

of the line to all of the points, the larger the

associatedcorrelation.

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