Multiscalar institutional complementarity and the scaling of clusters
Economic geographers have become strongly focused on two scales over the last 25 years : the local and the global. That’s why they mostly ignore the growing literature on the so-called variety of capitalism thesis that, contrary to what the glocalisation thesis claims, stresses a persistent continui...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Société Royale Belge de Géographie and the Belgian National Committee of Geography
2009-03-01
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| Series: | Belgeo |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/7815 |
| Summary: | Economic geographers have become strongly focused on two scales over the last 25 years : the local and the global. That’s why they mostly ignore the growing literature on the so-called variety of capitalism thesis that, contrary to what the glocalisation thesis claims, stresses a persistent continuity of national forms of capitalism and national forms of the state in the era of globalisation. In this variety-of-capitalism literature the concept of institutional complementarity plays a key role. It means, among others, that one institution makes the other more efficient (and vice versa). In their studies on clusters economic geographers stress a strong “horizontal” institutional complementarity at the local level (although they do not use that concept) but largely ignore a “vertical” complementarity of local and national institutions. Adherents of the variety of capitalism thesis, on the other hand, stress a “horizontal” institutional complementarity at the national level but, being blind to geography, ignore a “vertical” institutional complementarity between the national and local level.In this paper I aim to bridge both bodies of literature and to explore the “vertical” institutional complementarity between national forms of capitalism and clusters. To give my arguments flesh and blood, I explore how and why the Dutch vegetables-under-glass cluster is interwoven with the national corporatist institutions, which is a key characteristic of the Dutch form of capitalism and state form. |
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| ISSN: | 1377-2368 2294-9135 |