Una perspectiva institucionalista sobre el desarrollo económico regional

In the last few years, the successes harvested by the regional development strategies followed by some prosperous regions, such as Baden Württemberg or the Third Italy, have boosted the discussion on local economic intervention. These strategies have been based on mobilising the endogenous potential of the regions through efforts to upgrade a broadly defined local supply-base, defending the idea that the "wealth of regions" is the prime source of development and renewal. The conceptual nucleus of this orientation recognises the collective or social foundations of economic behaviour and, for this reason, such an orientation could be described as an institutionalist perspective on regional development. This article develops such an institutionalist perspective by bringing together strands of policy action scattered across the literature, as well as suggesting new strands. The importance for competitiveness of territorial proximity is emphasised and new orientations for regional policy are proposed based on a particular conceptualisation/abstraction of the economy and its territoriality.