Economic Geography as Dissenting Institutionalism: The Embeddedness, Evolution and Differentiation of Regions

This paper endorses recent pleas for an ‘institutional turn’ within economic geography. In particular, it reveals and connects the coherence and distinctiveness of dissenting institutional economics as a way of thinking for economic geography. Economic geographers have recognized this tradition but its continuity and compass is not fully appreciated. To provide such an appreciation, this paper argues that the paradigmatic distinctiveness of dissenting institutionalism rests especially on its recognition that real world economies are embedded, have histories or evolve, and are different. The discussion is based around these three cornerstone principles of embeddedness, evolution and difference. For the future, greater attention to the region as an institution, albeit a complex one, along with greater attention to the synthesis of multi‐dimensional processes that are normally analyzes as separate conceptual categories, is encouraged.