REGIONAL INVOLVEMENT IN DEFENSE INDUSTRY RESTRUCTURING IN

Based on intensive interviews with industrial and regional actors, this article shows that in two smaller European countries, Belgium and the Netherlands, regional defense conversion efforts have not been common or markedly successful. Defense industrial activity, while regionally con-centrated, employs only a small share of the workforce and is predominantly owned by foreign defense concerns without much commitment to the regions. Furthermore, defense downsizing has taken place amid a more generalized, ongoing structural crisis that militates against special defense industrial programs. Organized regional responses are as apt to oppose defense spend-ing cuts as to pursue conversion. Nevertheless, there have been some successes. European Union KONVER funds for regional and industrial diversification, though not always sought or properly deployed, have encouraged diversification. Since the end of the cold war in 1987, worldwide defense spending has fallen by close to 40 percent (Bonn International Center for Conversion 1998). Conse-quently, the defense industry went through a dramatic restructuring process in large parts of the world. In Europe, smaller countries were differentially affected. Between 1984 and 1991, expenditures for military equipment decreased by 23 per