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Neoliberalisation in New Zealand has been driven further as a political project than in most other countries. After two decades of neoliberal economic policy, it is possible to examine how political-economic actors in subnational spaces have responded to vastly new conditions. I provide an account on how regional economic-development policy and planning has reappeared in Auckland in the postrestructuring period. By deploying relational-institutional and poststructural perspectives in the examination of key policy initiatives that coconstituted an emerging regional economic intervention trajectory, I discuss how economic governance has been assembled, assess its structural coherence and directionality, and analyse the role of the state. I argue that regional governance processes are characterised by contingencies, patterns of institutional experimentation, and, increasingly, the work of central state actors. What is not known to date, however, is whether new regulatory structures are having any major material effects on the course of New Zealand's largest regional economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines how regional development policy in New Zealand has attempted to reshape the organizational and institutional foundations of regional growth and innovation since the government initiated the implementation of growth and innovation-focused policies in 2000. Dealing with the governance and the economic dimension, the paper elaborates on the challenges encountered in different regional environments that range from metropolitan areas to remote rural regions. The paper outlines New Zealand's institutional and economic framework and the set of programmes used to foster regional development and innovation. Principal lessons from New Zealand's experience are the importance of the institutional set-up in regions, the need to tailor initiatives to different regional contexts, and insights into the complex relationship between regional development and regional innovation policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]