SWOT-analysis as a basis for regional strategies - EUROlocal

Instead, all parts of the programming document go through multiple rounds of
informal commenting and formal assessment. This means that an increasing number
of aspects are added to it. The text changes, gradually overlapping with issues of
interest to an increasingly diversified stakeholder group, and encompassing everlarger
parts of a region’s development. Simultaneously, however, it also begins to lose
something of its initial edge. The internal logic of the programming document is being
put to a test.
3.4 The limits of the evolutionary model
To summarise the viewpoints raised in the previous section, it can be maintained that
the SWOT analysis, as the core of the analytical part of a programming document,
stands at the crossroads of the two dimensions discussed above. The setting is
illustrated in Fig. 7, a synthesis of Figs. 3-5 and 6. These dimensions have provided
the main pathways for approaching the SWOT analyses in the scrutinised
programmes. As the programming document is considered as both a political tool and
a means to gather the elements agreed upon into a logical and convincing package, the
main attention has been directed to the consistency of that package. It should
obviously serve as an optimally designed tool that elaborates the relationship between
the region’s projected development and the actors influencing processes relevant to it.
Standard of consistency: example case of Blekinge County Growth Agreement
In assessing the standard of consistency of the programmes, one can cite the case of Blekinge
County Growth Agreement for instance, in which consistency between the SWOT and the
activities and measures derived from it makes for a well functioning programme The nature of the
programming document as a political tool becomes obvious through the strategic choices in
its framework, but this does not necessarily interfere with the consistency of the document.
As is to be expected, SWOT analyses are followed by corresponding concrete measures to be
undertaken, which are in turn divided into four focus areas, i.e. the geographical focus = the
Baltic perspective; the focus of activity = areas in which measures are to be taken, actors to be
involved in them, driving forces, relevant economic infrastructures; the information focus =
knowledge, competence and IT; and the ecological focus = forms of developing and
supporting ecologically sustainable society. As the overarching policy aim is economic
growth, areas of activity reflect this by their concentration on business and enterprise
development, access to knowledge and information technology, resource centres for growth;
technology transfers; tourism and culture: as well as forms of environmentally adjusted
production and recycling. The focus thus is on the pursuit of economic growth through
suitable political sub-objectives, but the themes of the SWOT are reflected in the actual
content of the programme and hence do not remain in the sphere of rhetoric alone.
One elementary question here has to do with the overall quality of the programming
document and its components. But how well designed is an “optimally well designed”
tool: can we already at this point identify some particular criteria to be applied while
searching for an answer to that question?
Our work hypothesis here has been evolutionary. In order to be optimally well
designed a tool must be as good as possible, given the prevailing prerequisites. As the
operational environment is a political one, the prerequisites as critical quality
constraints are negotiated and agreed upon by the actors facilitating the programming
process itself. From this it follows that a document made public as a (1) programmatic
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