ABSTRACT SUBMITTED TO
International Research Society for Public Management) Conference that will be held in Edinburgh on 11 – 13 April 2018
THEME
Leadership and Strategic Planning for Places and Spaces
TITLE
City and Regional Development after BREXIT: What Does it Mean for Leadership and Governance?
AUTHORS
Dr John Gibney (University of Birmingham, UK) &
Professor Joyce Liddle (VP, Newcastle BS, Northumbria University, UK)
"There is considerable interest in the implications of BREXIT for sub-national development both in the UK and beyond. However, whilst there is a growing policy and academic literature on the local and regional consequences of BREXIT (See for example, Dickinson and Cox, 2016; Centre for Economic Performance, 2016; Barber, 2017; Barber and Jones, 2017; Bell, 2017; Local Government Association, 2017; North, 2017) – relatively little conceptual or empirical attention has been paid to the new and emerging leadership and governance (L&G) challenges and opportunities for city and regional development after BREXIT. Drawing on relational leadership theory, the paper will contribute to our understanding and explanation(s) of the new and emerging L&G challenges and opportunities for UK cities and regions and their European and international partners in a ‘post-BREXIT’ world. Beneath the national scale, an important pan-Europeanising of sub-national working and partnering has been fostered over the past thirty years between cities and regions across Europe (Marlow, 2017) – driving the ready flow and exchange of ideas, knowledge and learning on/around ‘good’ socio-economic and environmental practice – and that has been a critical (and arguably under-estimated) progressive relational feature of the wider UK/EU sub-national development experience. This pan-European sub-national ‘coming together’ is important to maintain and grow, since irrespective of BREXIT - and as we will argue through this paper - the interdependent and highly relational nature of complex social, industrial and environment related (and public-private-third sector) policy problems in the future will require a refreshed conceptualising of leadership for an unfettered and non-prejudicial exchange of knowledge and collaborative learning – and so as to inform the enactment of continuing pan-Europeanising leadership and governance approaches at the sub-national scale that will be better suited to transcending the economic, social, environmental and political uncertainties post-BREXIT. In this sense, 'dialogic leading' across the sub-national scale for progressive and sustainable economic, social, environmental outcomes across Europe will continue to matter".
