Cohesion and Competitiveness of Regions in Lithuania

Abstract

Recent years have seen a surge of academic and policy attention devoted to the notion of ‘competitiveness’: nations, regions and cities, we are told, have no option but to strive to be competitive in order to survive in the new global marketplace and the ‘new competition’ being forged by the new information or knowledge driven economy. Policy-makers at all levels have been swept up in this competitiveness fever. This concern with competitiveness has quickly spread to regional, urban and local policy discourse. Growing interest has emerged in the ‘regional foundations’ of national competitiveness, and with developing new forms of regionally-based policy interventions to help improve the competitiveness of every region and major city, and hence the national economy as a whole.