Institutions and economic change

Harald Bathelt and Johannes Glückler

Chapter 4 in Concise Introduction to Relational Economic Geography, 2026, pp 43-55 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Institutions, understood as stable patterns of interaction based on shared normative beliefs, are crucial to understand how actors can interact with each other and why economic interaction varies from place to place. Any technical or social division of labor requires that workers and firms speak the same language, have a common understanding of the production process, act according to a joint set of rules, and develop reasonable expectations of how their partners will respond. Given the crucial importance of institutions, it is surprising how little consensus exists about what institutions are and how to study them. In this chapter, we offer a relational understanding of institutions and propose to use the ‘institutional context’ as an analytical framework that allows us to make sense of deviating understandings of institutions across different academic fields.

Keywords: Institution; Institutional actor; Institutional change; Institutional context; Institutional hysteresis; Regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781802204971
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781802204988.00012 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21167_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().