Options for Moving beyond the Canonical Model of Regional Path Dependence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Ron Martin's recent critique of the canonical model of regional path dependence constitutes a significant original contribution to evolutionary economic geography, and is likely to open up a whole new range of promising directions of theoretical debate and empirical research. In the first part of my commentary, I highlight and discuss the following two assumptions implicit in his work: (1) broader and less restrictive models are better than narrow and restrictive ones; and (2) economic geographers are better served by a model that emphasizes change than by one that emphasizes continuity. In the second part of my commentary, I suggest that Martin's own alternative model could be further developed by: (1) replacing the binary distinction between ‘path as movement to stable state’ and ‘path as dynamic process’ with a continuum; (2) avoiding, with the help of mereology, the hasty generalization to regional economies of processes of change originally theorized in the context of institutions; and (3) tracing the implications for evolutionary economic geography of the recent analytical work on contingency — a hitherto under‐theorized concept that has been central to evolutionary reasoning in general, and to the problematic of lock‐ins in particular. Résumé La récente critique du modèle canonique des sentiers de dépendance régionaux qu’a présentée Ron Martin constitue un apport original important pour la géographie économique évolutionniste, laissant présager de nouvelles orientations prometteuses pour le débat théorique et la recherche empirique. La première partie de ce commentaire souligne et analyse deux hypothèses implicites dans son travail: les modèles généraux et peu contraignants sont meilleurs que les modèles limités et restrictifs; les géographes économiques ont intérêt à utiliser un modèle qui s’attache au changement plutôt qu’à la continuité. Dans la seconde partie, il est suggéré que le modèle de Martin pourrait lui‐même être développé selon trois axes: remplacer par un phénomène continu la perspective binaire du sentier vu soit ‘comme un mouvement vers un état stable’, soit ‘comme un processus dynamique’; en s’appuyant sur la méréologie, éviter de généraliser hâtivement aux économies régionales les processus de changement conçus à l’origine dans le cadre d’institutions; repérer comment la géographie économique évolutionniste peut être affectée par les récents travaux analytiques sur la contingence — notion peu théorisée jusqu’ici, mais centrale pour la logique évolutionniste en général, et la problématique des blocages (lock‐ins) en particulier.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".