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thereby focusing on some of the issues that need to be addressed in any attempt to con-
struct what Scott calls an 'ontology of regional growth and development that is rooted in
the idea of path dependent economic evolution' (2006, p. 85).
Immediately, a central question has to be confronted: what sort of evolution - of a
technology, and industry, or a local economy - is implied by the idea of path depend-
ence? As articulated by its leading exponent, Paul David, the conception is one in which
the contingencies of historical accident act to select between multiple (and perhaps com-
peting) possibilities and then various feedback forces come into operation that serve to
reproduce the selected particular technology or industry, a situation that he argues can
be thought of as the contingent selection of, and lock-in to, one of a number of possible
multiple equilibrium states. In his model it takes an exogenous shock to disrupt that
equilibrium state, so that economic evolution takes the form of successive punctuated
equilibria. David refers to this conception as 'strong history' (see also Castaldi and Dosi,
2004).
We have argued, however, that this conception is overly restrictive, too 'strong' we
might say, and that David's very notion of 'path-dependent equilibrium economics' is
itself something of a contradiction in terms. Of course there are examples of this sort of
selection and lock-in of a technology and even an industry to a stable, self-reproducing
state; but even such instances need not represent equilibrium situations. According to
complexity theory, for example, it is possible for a system to exhibit stability or inertia
even though it is 'far from equilibrium'. Moreover, examples of technologies, industries
- let alone whole local or regional economies - being in a stable and self-reproducing
unchanging state are not the norm. Most technologies, industries and local and regional
economies follow development paths that evolve over time, in a path-dependent manner.
The idea of multiple equilibria, to our mind, fails to capture this process. We have sought
to argue, therefore, for a richer interpretation of path-dependent economic evolution,
one that does not require or necessitate notions of equilibrium.
Instead, we conceive of the idea of path dependence as entirely consistent with pat-
terns of economic evolution in which technologies, industries, institutions, and regional
economies adapt and mutate over time without ever reaching or tending towards any
equilibrium. David, no doubt, would criticise this view as one of 'weak history' and
argue that it is not, therefore, path dependence. But, arguably, it is a history that accords
with much of observable reality. Whereas in David's view of path dependence, history
to all intents and purposes ceases once the system in question becomes locked into its
'equilibrium state', in our conception history continues to unfold, in a path-dependent
manner. This means that the focus of analysis centres on how economic evolution takes
place along paths, and on whether and in what ways such paths undergo 'life-cycles', and
on how old paths are replaced by new.
In fact, in searching for this sort of path dependence ontology, we believe economic
geographers could benei t from looking outside the interpretation found within econom-
ics to the wider discussion of path dependence and historical change that has taken place
in recent years, not only across the social, political and policy sciences, but also in the
i eld of ecological studies.
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As Mahoney (2000, 2006) and Howlett and Rayner (2006)
argue, path dependence is but one of a number of possible models of historical change for
socio-economic contexts, and social scientists have introduced important modii cations
to the idea of path dependence that go beyond what the economics discipline currently
