Failure of Institutional Instruments for Strategic Development of Latvian Regions

The research problem is failure of institutional instruments for strategic development of Latvian regions which, being well-organised into the system both on the EU and national level, cannot help Latvian regions sustain balanced strategic development. The aim of this article is to provide overview of the existing pan-European and intranational institutional instruments, which may be used for strategic development of Latvian regions and to find out why the use of these instruments hinders achieving their main goal - balanced strategic development of Latvian regions. The research is based on the method of analysis of legislation enactments, documents and official information of the EU and Latvian institutions, dynamic analysis of statistical data describing strategic development of Latvian regions, and logical analysis. The authors use the methodology of institutional economics and the resource approach to strategic regional development to prove the hypothesis that Latvian regions do not transfer the resources that are provided by the EU and intra-Latvian institutional instruments into their own assets and capital, which can be used for strategic development. As a result of their research, the authors have come to the conclusion that Latvia, which has both its own institutional instruments and the EU institutional instruments for the purpose of strategic regional development, currently has unbalanced long-term development of its regions, and it may be explained by domination of separate political interests instead of professionalism in the Latvian policy of regional development, weakness of Latvian civil society, and passivity of Latvian regions in the use of institutional instruments of strategic development.