The importance of regional development agencies in the new development approach and the applications for selected European Union countries

This study has been performed with the aim of examining the political tools in smoothing out regional imbalances of developing countries, and the applicability of these tools in abating the regional growth discrepancies in Turkey.That the neoclassical approach prolonged until the 1980s and the Keynesian thought before that could not provide with the satisfying resolutions to the current regional growth imbalances in today?s globalized world has arised the need for a new policy which is called new development approach. This new concept has the feature of detecting the unique characteristics and endowments of developed and developing regions, and make them compete with each other and participate in the development process.The basic policy tool of the new development approach is the regional development agencies. The aim of the regional development agencies that has been established accordance with the statistical regional units classification in the European Union member and candidate states is to come up with the proper development strategies and apply them to the relevant regions. The reason why these agencies are established in various regions instead of in a central location is that these development agencies are expected to cooperate with the local actors who know the regions close-up in order to develop well-designed growth strategies. This body is based to the argument that a single development plan will not be convenient for all of the regions of a country and that the dynamics of development will vary by each region.In the examination of the long-time served development agencies in the European Union countries, it is usually observed that the successful agencies are doing so due to their locations in high growth potential area. In this context, the regions where intensely invested in R&D (Research and Development) are holding a global competitive power over other regions. However, the similar outcome cannot be observed for the agencies established in the developing countries such as Turkey. Yet, these developing countries has been struggling with the basic infrastructure, the fact is that, it is highly discussable how they will create a sustainable market economyAs a result, at this stage, it is more reasonable to expect Turkey eliminating inter-regional imbalances via development agencies instead of expecting her capturing global competitive power by reducing regional discrepancies. Of course, reducing inner-regional imbalances will be helpful in an effort in abating inter-regional discrepancies. The development agencies will implement new tactics in exploring the development limits in Turkey in where the development strategies are centrally planned so far. Unfortunately, there are clear indications that Turkey is getting far away in these early stages from the initially planned structure and increasingly centralized by assigning the State Planning Organization the duty of coordinating agencies and having the governers lead to the board of development agencies, which are heavily and successfully operated by the private agencies in European Union.