Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
3
The place of path dependence in an evolutionary
perspective on the economic landscape 1
Ron Martin and Peter Sunley
1. Introduction: creating space for history in economic geography - the new focus on
path dependence
Since the notion of path dependence entered the economics lexicon in the 1980s and early
1990s, particularly through the work of Paul David on the economic history of technol-
ogy (David, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1992, 1993a, 1993b, 1994), and that of Brian Arthur on
nonlinear, self-reinforcing economic processes (Arthur, 1988, 1989, 1994a, 1994b, 1994c,
1994d), it has assumed prominence as an evolutionary concept not only in economics
itself, but also across a wide range of social, organisational, technological and manage-
rial sciences. 2 Some even see the concept of path dependence as a major building block of
a new interpretative or epistemological paradigm.
Economic geography has also been swept up in this wave of 'path dependence think-
ing'. A number of leading theorists in the subject have argued that path dependence is
one of the fundamental features of the economic landscape. For example, according to
Richard Walker:
One of the most exciting ideas in contemporary economic geography is that industrial history is
literally embodied in the present. That is, choices made in the past - technologies embodied in
machinery and product design, i rm assets gained as patents or specii c competencies, or labour
skills acquired through learning - inl uence subsequent choices of method, designs, and prac-
tices. This is usually called 'path dependence' . . . It does not mean a rigid sequence determined
by technology and the past, but a road map in which an established direction leads more easily
one way than another - and wholesale reversals are dii cult. This logic applies to industrial
locations as well. (2000, p. 126) 3
Allen Scott (2006) is even more emphatic, and argues that any attempt to understand the
economic landscape:
must formulate the problem by reference to a dynamic of cumulative causation whose logic
is dei nable not in terms of some primum mobile or i rst cause, but in terms of its own histori-
cal momentum. This . . . points . . . to the importance of an ontology of regional growth and
development that is rooted in the idea of path dependent economic evolution and recursive
interaction. (p. 85)
Alongside these and other theoretical invocations, path dependence ideas and phraseol-
ogy have found their way into a growing body of empirical work in economic geography.
Thus the idea has been deployed in discussions of the persistence of regional disparities in
economic development; of the 'lock-in' of regions to particular economic specialisations;
the revival and reinvention of former local industrial coni gurations; and of the emer-
gence and self-reinforcing growth of 'high-tech' clusters (see, for example, Bathelt and
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