EU Mainstreaming of the Information Society in Regional Development Policy

Abstract

Information and communication technologies are seen as representing one of the most fundamental changes of our time, and from the perspective of the European Union the promotion of an information society provides enormous opportunities for all of the regions in Europe. In this article the process by which the European Union attempted to mainstream this highly normative and deterministic agenda within regional development policy in the late 1990s is critically assessed. The article concludes by identifying four discourses which are likely to underpin future policy analysis in this field: market regulation; the nature of technological change within models of regional development; the information society paradigm; and the changing nature of time and space.