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through mutation and adaptation or by accumulating resources that change the internal
dynamics of the system. The issue of system 'resilience' also i gures prominently in this
approach. While this framework is still in its infancy, and thus far has been primarily
ecological in focus, its core ideas have been argued to be applicable to a wide range of
social, political and economic contexts. Certain of its notions resonate with those from
the theory of complex adaptive systems, and like the latter it is concerned with processes
not unrelated to those of path dependence. The emphasis on dif erent scales and speeds
of change, and their interaction, would seem of particular potential relevance to the sort
of open, non-equilibrium conception of path dependence that we have argued for here.
If the objective of a path dependence approach to understanding regional growth
and development is to uncover and make sense of the specii c historical mechanisms
and chains of events that have produced a particular economic landscape (rather than
some other possible coni guration), then the idea of path dependence should not, in our
view, be circumscribed by chaining it to any form of equilibrium thinking. To do so
is to severely restrict its potential as an evolutionary concept. A rethink of the notion
of path dependence may well be required to ensure it does not fall prey to 'intellectual
lock-in' that seems to bind so much of economics - even some versions of evolutionary
economics - to equilibrium thinking.
Notes
1. This contribution builds on our earlier paper, Martin and Sunley (2006). Ron Martin's research for this
chapter was undertaken while holding a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
2. In economics, ideas akin to 'path dependence' can in fact be traced back more than a century, to Carl
Menger's (1883 [1985]) analysis of 'institutional emergence' and Thorstein Veblen's (1898) concept of
'cumulative causation' in the evolution of habits and conventions. And the closely related concept of
'hysteresis' has also been around since the mid-1970s (see Cross, 1993; Elster, 1976; Franz, 1990; Katzner,
1993). Outside of economics we i nd the concept being applied to topics as diverse as decision-making and
social behaviour (Anderlini and Ianni, 1996; Goldstone, 1998); industrial organisation (Antonelli, 1997);
power generation technologies (Cowan, 1990); pest control programmes (Cowan and Gunby, 1996);
industrial technology strategies (Araujo and Harrison, 2002; Ruttan, 1997); technological leadership
(Redding, 2002); corporate governance (Bebchuk and Roe, 1999); legal systems and social institutions
(North, 1990); historical sociology (Goldstone, 1998; Mahoney, 2000); corporate organisation (Sydow et
al., 2005); and politics and state intervention (Bridges, 2000; Dimittakopoulos, 2001; Magnusson, 2001;
Pierson, 2000). This proliferation of path dependence ideas can itself be interpreted as a rel ection of what
some have referred to as a 'historical turn' in the social and cognate sciences (Abbott, 2001; Howlett and
Rayner, 2006; Mahoney and Rueschemeyer, 2003).
3. This logic had in fact been anticipated somewhat earlier by Storper and Walker who argued that
'Localized technological change in an industry can be understood, like all industrial development, as an
evolutionary path in which each step moves one way from a past that cannot be recovered and that limits
future directions' (1989, p. 113).
4.
In focusing on the role and meaning of path dependence as an evolutionary concept, we by no means wish
to imply that the other issues concerning the notion of path dependence set out in Table 3.1 are second-
ary or unimportant: far from it. But arguably the role of path dependence as an evolutionary concept
is the most fundamental. For a discussion of the other issues raised in Table 3.1, see Martin and Sunley
(2006).
5.
While there are many dif erent dei nitions of such an equilibrium, according to Setteri eld (1997), an
equilibrist methodology of this sort is typically characterised by two distinctive features: i rst, the specii -
cation of a model of structural equations conditioning endogenous variables on exogenously given 'data'
- usually a set of variables and coei cients whose values are imposed on the system from without; and,
second, the construction of such models so as to yield stable equilibria, that is points to which the system
will return following some initial displacement.
6.
The historical sequence,
h
(
t
)
x
, could also include the past values of other external factors, say
y
, that have
also shaped the development path of
x
.
7.
For example, the same seemingly irresistible attachment to equilibrium is to be found in Page's (2006)
