Creating regional industries : path creation and offshore wind in the U.K.

Abstract

This thesis contributes to evolutionary economic geography theory relating to the process of regional industrial path creation. The research provides an important point of departure within the literature by exposing and explaining how institutional environments enable or constrain path creating agency. In particular, the enquiry focuses on the role of multi-scalar institutions in mediating the interplay of actors, assets and mechanisms to create new regional industrial paths relating to sociotechnical transition, specifically offshore wind, in Glasgow and Humberside. The research analyses how regional and extra-regional institutional environments shape the timing, scale and nature of this causal interplay and subsequent industrial path outcomes. By adopting this approach, a more comprehensive account of regional industrial path creation and its effect on regional development is generated which gives due cognisance to both endogenous and exogenous causal factors. Although the research focuses on lagging regions, the findings have relevance across regional types. Finally, the multi-scalar and multi-actor perspective exposes and explains the role of differing state actors and state institutions in facilitating regional path creation.