The idea about regional development is in this talk critically discussed from the point of view of the literature on the 1990s Eastern European supposed transition from autocratic communism to liberal democracy and pluralistic capitalism, seen through the prism of Western intellectual history in general and put into various theoretical contexts. The analysis assesses different implications of the uses of the concept of ‘transition’, constituting a master narrative of modernity as well as of Europe itself, regarding teleology, chronocentrism and ethnocentrism. A special focus is put on the fluctuating role of the researcher as an academic expert and a virtual policy-maker.

In the paper I will look upon those approaches within regional studies, in which one predicts an increased sub-national and place-based development of urbanization, clusters, synergies, innovations, competitiveness, entrepreneurship, growth and democratization. I will do so from the viewpoint of how postcommunist area studies of the 1990s sought to explain—and guide—the simultaneous “transition” in Eastern Europe from autocratic communism to liberal democracy. A comparative analysis, it is argued, allows a better understanding of the premises of the conceptualization of regions, and how these condition the “pre-understanding” of development taking place within these. I propose a regionalized approach which emphasizes the heterogeneous, constructive, political and above all relative dimensions of regionalization, hence resisting conceptualizations implying teleology, determinism and totalization.