Illicit innovation and institutional folding: From purity to naturalness in the Bavarian brewing industry

Medical use of cannabis and cannabinoids containing products—regulations in Europe and North America

Johannes Glückler and Yannick Eckhardt

Journal of Economic Geography, 2022, vol. 22, issue 3, 605-630

Abstract: We take an institutional perspective to examine how innovation thrives under conditions of resistance. Specifically, we conceive illicit innovation as a process of successive institutionalization of a new practice in the face of contrary law. In the German federal state of Bavaria, the global movement of craft-beer brewing collides with a regional jurisdiction that prohibits precisely these brewing practices and instead protects the traditional institution of purity-brewing (Reinheitsgebot). Grounded on an embedded qualitative case study of brewers and industry representatives, we build a theory of institutional folding of new norms and practices over established ones. This way, creative brewers have succeeded in legitimizing new practices of naturalness-brewing (Natürlichkeitsgebot). Whereas the legal resistance has stimulated brewers to create an original counter-institution, the illicit innovation has also begun to change the institutional context of the beer industry in Bavaria.

Keywords: Illicit innovation; Bavaria; brewing; institutional change; institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B52 D02 L66 O3 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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