Local economic experimentation is gathering pace

A burst of enthusiasm for experimentation and local learning is afoot. A new book – The End of the Experiment– by Mick Moran and colleagues explains how the thirty-year experiment in competition in the UK has failed, and new local and regional experiments are needed to regain prosperity based upon the everyday economy.

New ideas are introduced to trigger local innovations: the importance of the ‘foundational economy’ of utilities, transport, retail, health, education and welfare that everybody uses virtually everyday; the value of diverse economic activities within and beyond the mainstream; and, the authority of ‘social license’ granted only to corporate businesses operating locally and making enhanced social contributions.

The End of the Experiment is profound and resonant stuff. It demonstrates the power and worth of co-operation and collective endeavour in doing the hard work of rethinking and articulating what alternative economies and policies might look like. The arguments against the economic myopia and singularity of competition, centralisation and concentration are powerful.

The authors and the ideas are already engaging local actors and the wave of experimentation is spreading. Enfield Borough Council and the ‘Deep Place’ study in Tredegar are but two examples.

There is a long, worthy and international history of economic experimentation at the local level. Periodic waves of activity have risen and – to greater or lesser degrees – fallen: the municipal interventionism of the Greater London Council in the 1980s, the labourist activism of the Piquetero movement in Argentina in the 1990s and social economy innovations in Québecin the 2000s. Clear-eyed thinking is needed, then, in addressing the kinds of challenges that local experimentation and learning raise in the context of our current predicament.

A central concern is how such local experiments can be scaled-up. How can their wider economic, social and environmental benefits be generalised and socialised to wider populations and geographies? Sharing ideas, connecting and linking between local actors might be one place to start. Sustaining such experiments is critical too.

It demonstrates the power and worth of co-operation

and collective endeavour in rethinking and articulating

what alternative economies and policies might look like.

An all too familiar arc has been evident from past experience: an initial burst of enthusiasm, growth, maturity and then wane and decline. Embedding and demonstrating the continued worth and ability of local experiments to learn and be self-critical could help adapt and maintain their contributions in the longer term. Relationships with the mainstream economy bedevil localised experimentation as well, especially when pursuing alternative models of economy with ideas of value and worth beyond money.

That there is much distributed intelligence in economy and society outside the metropolitan centres of elite decision-making is a key claim in The End of the Experiment. Abundant evidence exists to underline this point. Indeed, the UK government’s localism agenda in England has sought to support and relies heavily upon such local  initiatives.

But, despite mention of ‘re-balancing’ in various dimensions, the shadow of centralisation looms large, constraining much local inventiveness. Local and regional development priority is afforded to London and the greater south east. Decentralisation is viewed with suspicion if it risks diminishing the power and contribution of the national economic growth machine.

So, how to mobilise and harness local energy, enthusiasm and experimentation for local development in such a centralised and unequal system? How to avoid answers to important questions about local resilience descending into competitive narratives about self-help and self-reliance?

Resources are part of the answer. Helpful too are new ways of working between local actors, marrying the benefits of democratically representative institutions with participatory structures that reach out to business, labour and civic society. Bringing local actors together to deliberate and determine locally appropriate forms of development is a good place to begin. The Deep Place study in Tredegar provides a model of how to do this. Institutional innovations and new skills might be needed, and Cleveland’s Urban Design Collaborative provides an interesting example to reflect upon.

Further and deeper decentralisation holds a central position, then, in the current wave of local experimentation. Yet decentralisation comes in different shapes, forms and degrees. It has different geographies and spatial levels: regional, local, city(-regional), community, neighbourhood and even social groups.

Decentralisation hinges on the reform of relations between central and local government. Local government is pivotal as a long-term, intergenerational local actor albeit constrained by its current financial situation and limited fiscal autonomy. The question asked less often is what’s the role and form of central government in a more decentralised political-economy? How does it have to adapt and change its structures and ways of working to encourage and stimulate local initiative while maintaining key functions of re-distribution for social safety nets?

Renewed action on local initiatives, diverse economies and decentralisation is heartening to see. Learning from experience and realistic engagement with its challenges alongside its potential are critical.