Economic Geography

Evolution, institutions, regulation
Another set of alternative approaches explored by economic geographers such as
Amin (1999), Dunford (1990) and MacLeod (1997) relates to various strands of
heterodox political economy and a nexus of evolutionary, institutional and regu-
lationist approaches, often linked to theorisations of the state and to concerns
with the non-economic foundations of the economy and its socio-spatial ‘embed-
dedness’. In some cases these have clearly identifiable Marxian roots (notably
strands of regulationist approaches) while in others, the origins lie more in
explicitly non-Marxian approaches to political economy – which is indicative of
the variety within as well as among these approaches. Irrespective of this variabil-
ity, the central concern of these approaches is to elucidate the spatially and tempo-
rally variable forms that capitalist economies, their geographies and their
development trajectories can take. As such, they seek to identify the variety of
mechanisms and processes through which diverse capitalist economies become
possible and are (re)produced. 
The development of such ‘middle range’ theoretical concepts allows an elab-
oration and extension of existing concepts and ideas within Marxian political
economy and a more subtle account of the historical–geographical specificity of
capitalist economies. Consideration of evolutionary, institutional and regulation-
ist approaches allows for a fuller and more nuanced elaboration of the under-
standing of the economic geographies of capitalism and the uneven character of
capitalist development and how this is constituted. In short, and at the risk 
of some over-simplification, Marxian political economy, via its value theoretical
approach, explains why, but such ‘middle range’ approaches clarify how, the
uneven geographies of capitalism are constituted as they are (see Hudson 2001).
From a public policy perspective, identification of these mechanisms and
processes potentially allows the developmental paths of economies to be steered
so as to avoid – or at least postpone – a variety of systemic crises that could
threaten the accumulation process.