Management of regional development and strategies for support policies to Local Production Arrangements: traditional and new generation APLs, or territorial production systems

Abstract

Among the criticisms that have been made to policies supporting APLs in Brazil, the most persistent ones refer to an alleged “administrative” and/ or “local” perspective of this policy. Administrative, because it reduces politicy to an issue primarily related to APL’s management, administration or governance, regarding to “successful cases” – generally from more developed regions and, therefore, frequently out of context of the present reality. Local, because the concept that local scale has unlimited power to create its own dynamic conditions permeates the policy. The objective of this article is to answer to such criticisms by presenting some strategical issues that APL support policies could take under consideration, in order to strengthen their territorial aspect. This would transform their pattern and induce the configuration of new generation production arrangements or production territorial systems.