Rethinking Path Creation: A Geographical Political Economy Approach

By D. Mackinnon, Stuart Dawley, A. Pike, A. Cumbers. Economic Geography, 2019

389 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract A burgeoning strand of evolutionary economic geography (EEG) research is addressing questions of regional path creation, based on the idea that place-specific legacies and conditions play a critical role in supporting the emergence of new economic activities. Yet there has been little effort thus far to take stock of this emerging body of research. In response, the aims of this article are to offer a fresh synthesis of recent work and to develop a broader theoretical framework to inform future research. First, it presents a critical appraisal of the state of the art in path creation research. In an effort to address identified gaps in EEG research, this incorporates insights from sociological perspectives, the global production networks approach, and transition studies. Second, the article’s development of a systematic theoretical framework is based on the identification of key dimensions of path creation and their constitutive interrelations. This contribution is underpinned by a geographical political economy (GPE) approach that provides the ontological basis for the integration of the five key dimensions of path creation within an overarching framework and the positioning of regional processes in relation to the broader dynamics of uneven development. Informed by GPE, the argument is that knowledgeable actors, operating within multiscalar institutional environments, create paths through the strategic coupling of regional and extraregional assets to mechanisms of path creation and associated markets. To inform further research, the article outlines four concrete propositions regarding the operation of path creation processes in different types of regions and explores these through case studies of Berlin and Pittsburgh.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b55d6563b513783cedd107d66501bd5a4f2c556a

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Citations in the corpus

Towards a comprehensive understanding of new regional industrial path development (2019, background): “…their potential negative impact (e.g., through increasing competition between regions over mobile assets, disinvestments and decoupling processes from global production networks; MacKinnon et al., 2018a) on new path development in core and non-core regions (MacKinnon, 2012; Trippl et al., 2018).”
New energy spaces: Towards a geographical political economy of energy transition (2020, background): “Regional political economy’s record of work on the local state and its role in urban and regional path creation provides an effective framework for thinking about the emergence of renewable energy spaces, and the links between low-carbon economies and prior regional forms of industrial organization ”
Regional worlds: from related variety in regional diversification to strategic coupling in global production networks (2020, background): “Unrelated diversification refers to new path creation and the possible emergence of entirely new sectors or products (see also Dawley et al., 2019; Frangenheim et al., 2020; Harris, 2020; Hassink et al., 2019; MacKinnon et al., 2019; Trippl et al., 2018).”
The dark side of regional industrial path development: towards a typology of trajectories of decline (2019, methodology): “Following MacKinnon et al. (2019) and Trippl et al. (2019), we recognize the need to also pay due attention to the role played (or not played) by different types of actors, including firms and non-firm actors (such as universities, regional development agencies, labour unions, policy actors, and so…”
New directions for RIS studies and policies in the face of grand societal challenges (2021, background): “This often involves modifying broadly defined regional assets and place-based structures through agentic processes (MacKinnon et al., 2019; Trippl et al., 2020).”