Legislative Constraints on Gubernatorial Capacity for State Industrial Policy: Evidence from Oregon's Regional Strategies Program

This article explores how state industrial policy is shaped by the division of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government, using the case of Oregon's Regional Strategies industrial policy initiative. Tensions founded in localism and regionalism, concern with having its prerogative usurped, and partisan politics led the state legislature to circumscribe the authority Oregon's governor was seeking to implement the Regional Strategies initiative. The consequences surfaced during implementation; key industrial policy tenets pertaining to making choices between locations and industries, technical decision making, planning, and the reorganization of state government to provide for the concerted delivery of economic development services were subordinated to concerns about administrative expediency and equity in the allocation of state benefits. Oregon's Regional Strategies program points to the legislature as a source of important constraints on gubernatorial performance in an industrial policy domain that calls for strong executive capacities.