Relaunching regional economic-development policy and planning for Auckland: Remaking the state and contingent governance under neoliberalism

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.