Fuzzy concepts, scanty evidence, policy distance: the case for rigour and policy relevance in critical regional studies

By M. Danson. 2007

569 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/816226d859bd0ffb0e7fb7ae15d2737878493726

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Citations in the corpus

Polycentric Puzzles – Emerging Mega-City Regions Seen through the Lens of Advanced Producer Services (2008, background): “These are currently used very loosely, indeed they can be characterized as ‘fuzzy concepts’ (M arkusen , 1999 ) that render the conceptualization of a polycentric ‘global city-region’ rather problematic.”
Creative Cities, Cultural Clusters and Local Economic Development (2009, background): “Concepts of creativity and culture in geography, however appealing, are not a theory yet and are not unambiguously testable (McCann 2007; Markusen 2003).”
Cooperation in the Innovation Process in Developing Countries: Empirical Evidence from Zhongguancun, Beijing (2006, background): “This understanding of innovation is reflected in many modern theories that explain the regional clustering of industries and regional growth using concepts such as innovative milieus, regional network approaches, and industrial districts (Markusen, 2003; Mohannak and Turpin, 2002).”
Institutional Entrepreneurship for Knowledge Regions: In Search of a Fresh Set of Questions for Regional Innovation Studies (2011, background): “…may partly be due to the fact that, while regional development studies have so far focused quite a lot on identifying the generic knowledge-based regional development model(s) and institutions behind them, the actual actors have remained in the shadows, as famously criticized by Markusen (1999).”
Entrepreneurial ecosystem research: present debates and future directions (2018, unknown): “In reality, the concept has been used diversely in literature, making it rather ‘chaotic’ (Martin and Sunley 2003) or ‘fuzzy’ (Markusen 1999).”
Green entrepreneurship in the sharing economy: utilising multiplicity of institutional logics (2019, methodology): “The coding process operated as an interplay between theoretical preconceptions influencing the analysis and inductive reasoning influencing conceptual development (Markusen 2003; Miles et al. 2014).”
Regional innovation systems: Current discourse and unresolved issues (2005, background): “This new form of territorial organization, which has been described by Markusen as ‘fuzzy’ [54,82], and whose policy relevance has been questioned [83], is neither clear nor readily operational.”
Building Trust in Economic Space (2006, background): “Moreover, recent conceptual developments (eg, institutional thickness, communities of practice, relational proximity, or learning regions) remain, to some, ‘fuzzy’, vague, or difficult to apply from a policy-making perspective (Markusen, 1999; Martin and Sunley, 2001; Morgan, 2005).”
Defining the Creative Economy: Industry and Occupational Approaches (2008, background): “Users don’t really "know it when they see it," a function of both elasticity in writers' conceptualizations and lack of transparency in data used to document it (Markusen, 2003).”
How to unlock regional economies from path dependency? From learning region to learning cluster (2005, background): “, 2000), leaving it to be a fuzzy concept, that is a concept characterized by both lacking conceptual clarity, rigour in the presentation of evidence and clear methodology and difficulties to operationalize (Markusen, 2003).”
Towards the Resilient Region? (2010, background): “Its use within policy documents has been that of a loosely defined metaphor or buzzword, whilst in academia it remains a promising, albeit relatively ‘fuzzy’, concept still under development (Markusen, 1999).”
What Kind of Entrepreneurship Drives Regional Development in European Non-core Regions? A Literature Review on Empirical Entrepreneurship Research (2013, unknown): “…competitiveness such as “(new) industrial district” (Piore & Sabel, 1984; Sabel, 1989), localized “flexible production systems” (Glasmeier, 1991; Markusen, 1996, 1999; Robertson & Langlois, 1995; Saxenian, 1100 D. Baumgartner, M. Pütz & I. Seidl 1991) and “innovative milieux” (Crevoisier,…”