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i rms and other agents as creating their own 'regional' selection environments through
i rm-specii c divisions of labor across sectors and across spaces, acting also to promote
particular institutional regimes over others and thus attempting to tilt the balance of
power in their favor.
4. Conclusion
An evolutionary model of change of ers a theoretically rich framework for analysis
within economic geography. Like most theoretical models, evolutionary accounts high-
light specii c aspects of the real world at the expense of others. At a general level, evolu-
tionary approaches to the economy appeal to us for the following reasons. First, models
of evolution pertain to open, complex systems that may include socio-economic systems.
Within these systems the future is unpredictable and, hence, the economy neither gravi-
tates towards some predetermined equilibrium state nor progresses 'naturally' to some
higher state. Second, the notion of equilibrium, a system at rest, is antithetical to an
evolutionary model of economic change where uncertainty generates continuous experi-
mentation and search for advantage. An evolutionary approach to economic geography
thus focuses on dynamics, on the processes that create and destroy spatial assemblies
of political-economic activity, the institutional relationships that shape much of that
activity and its geographical heterogeneity. Third, evolutionary explanations are based
on a population approach that celebrates the diverse characteristics and behaviors of
individual agents and shows how macroeconomic order can emerge from the seemingly
chaotic actions of myriad competitors. That order does not have to be generated by
appeals to perfect information and rationality, as in the core neoclassical arguments that
underpin general equilibrium. Fourth, an evolutionary approach is concerned with the
behaviors of individual agents and their inter-relationships within environments that
both constrain, and are shaped by, those agents. Because the dynamics of evolutionary
economic change are linked to the domains of activity within which political-economic
agents operate, the actions of those agents may only be understood through their loca-
tion in both historical and spatial dimensions. Fifth, it is important to recognize that
the actions of individual agents occur within contexts that are shaped by broader insti-
tutional structures that are themselves created and that evolve over time. Some of these
institutions are more durable than others, such as the capitalist mode of production. A
critical element of an evolutionary economic geography is understanding how and where
these institutions are created, and how they are maintained.
We identii ed a number of dif erent approaches within evolutionary economics and
argued that generalized Darwinism has most to of er economic geography. Generalized
Darwinism rests on the key evolutionary processes of variety, selection and continuity.
The way that these processes operate within the domain of problems typically examined
by economic geographers must be developed within that i eld of study. While we do not
claim that metaphorical inspiration from evolutionary biology is completely unhelpful,
we do claim that careful development of the core principles of generalized Darwinism
within economic geography helps shed light on key agents and institutions of change, on
the characteristics of those agents, on the characteristics of the natural and social envi-
ronments within which competition operates and on which of those characteristics exerts
most leverage across the dif erent processes that shape dif erential growth and uneven
spatial development. We go on to argue that while a number of researchers within eco-
