Structure,opportunity,and agency:Green path development in latecomer regions
As green development becomes a global landscape,regional green pathway development and sustainability transition are of increasing interest to economic geographers.Exploring the development of green paths in latecomer regions can not only enrich the understanding of the structure-agency relationship in existing economic geography studies,but also provide useful policy insights for latecomer regions to break through the"regional innovation paradox"and realise green transformation.Mainstream economic geography studies have mainly approached new path development from the structural perspective of regional development foundations,with a pessimistic narrative that peripheral/latecomer regions are"unable to innovate".Recent economic geography studies have begun to incorporate broader perspectives of sustainability transitions,innovation systems,industrial catch-up and global production networks,attempting to understand new regional path development through the lens of exogenous forces and human agency.Nonetheless,existing research lacks sufficient understanding of the full features and advantages of latecomer regions,and fails to pay attention to the specificity of green industries and the role of local collective agency in the green path development of latecomer regions.Green windows of opportunity(GWO)bring enormous opportunities for green path development in latecomer regions,but whether they can be utilised depends on the interaction of regional development foundations,industry-specific resources and local collective agency.Based on a review of the research progress in regional new path development,this paper analyses the characteristics and advantages of latecomer regions in green new path development,puts forward a heuristic framework from the perspective of structure-opportunity-agency to deductively depict the main influencing factors and their interactions in the development of green paths in the latecomer regions.In the dimension of structure,the regional foundation has a strong influence on the direction and capacity of green path development in latecomer regions.In the dimension of opportunity,GWOs can create a demand for reinterpreting the region's existing foundations,changing local incentives,and providing industry-specific resources.Structures and opportunities can only define the direction of new pathways and the possibilities for pathway development in latecomer regions,while local collective agency is decisive for whether and how green pathways can be realised in these regions.Finally,this paper suggests an agenda for future research.
latecomer regionsnew path developmentstructure-agencygreen window of op-portunitysustainability transitions
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维普
