Public research projects and regional governance

Regional development is increasingly mobilising knowledge. Regional authorities are therefore more and more obliged to play a direct role in higher education and research. Thus, the author shows that despite the traditional centralisation of educational and research policies in France, policies structuring research have been developing for the past fifteen years on the regional level. This supposes a new mode of piloting and raises questions the article attempts to answer. In particular, according to the 'Learning Region' model, a region's capacity to learn depends on a certain number of conditions: the existence of consensus, actors who are part of a network, management practices, and the identification of needs. The author believes that the rise of regional territory calls for setting up a global strategy involving contacts and communication, concertation and cooperation networks, but also the political task of organising non material infrastructures above and beyond the regional territory. Reprinted by permission of Institut International d'Administration Publique