Geographical Political Economy Research Articles

Regional inequalities, dependency, and knowledge base

Using the knowledge base theory, which classifies knowledge into analytical, synthetic, and symbolic types, this paper aims to analyze Brazil's spatial pattern of knowledge distribution in two periods, corresponding to a growth and a downturn phase. The methodology relies on occupational data segmented by knowledge types. Results show that the core region still creates a conducive environment for symbolic, synthetic, and analytical knowledge types, although the regional gap is reducing. Such a spatial pattern can only be understood as an intrinsic outcome of interconnections between Brazil's regional formation process and its position in the global economy. This paper contributes to the discussion on regional disparities by interpreting the results drawing on aspects of the evolutionary economic geography (EEG), the Latin American dependency theory, and the geographical political economy (GPE), together with the hypothesis of uneven and combined development.

Legal geographies of capitalism beyond states and markets

How do we understand the role of law and lawmaking in the geographical political economy of capitalism? Ilias Alami's article examines foreign investment screening mechanisms to gauge contemporary shifts, inquiring if these legal changes amount to a reworking of globalization or a post-neoliberal assertion of state power over the market. If lawmaking has always been necessary for capitalist economies, Alami's attention to the laws governing investment suggests other narratives of the present. Rather than a story about neoliberalism and its aftermath, we might think about a longer history of law as a tool shaping the geographies of investment.

Precarity and agency in youthspaces of work: The case of food delivery platform workers in Athens, Greece

The growth of digital platforms is spawning new, if often precarious, forms of work. One such type of work that has particularly grown in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, is that of digital platform-facilitated on-demand food delivery services. Such deliveries are often undertaken by younger workers. Given this, here we explore the following research questions: (i) what forms of labour precarity are found and reproduced in the physical and digital spaces that young food delivery platform (FDP) workers create and inhabit?; and (ii) what types of agency do FDP workers develop within these spaces in order to navigate – and sometimes resist – precarity? Drawing upon concepts from critical Youth Studies, Geographical Political Economy and Labour Geography, the article develops the concept of precarious youthspaces of work to investigate the connections between youths’ everyday lives and the production of space. To do so we present a qualitative study conducted in Athens, Greece, that sought to capture the multifaceted working arrangements of FDP workers, both offline and online. Our analysis reveals that FDP workers suffer various forms of labour precarity which they must navigate. But such workers are not just accommodating to precarity. They have also generated forms of collective oppositional agency that are reshaping local labour markets. However, whilst their agency has sometimes generated solidarity and robust collective movements it has also led to divisions that have limited cooperation amongst FDP workers.

Towards a geographical political economy understanding of platformization

In the last ten years digital platforms have emerged as an important theme in academic discourse and various subdisciplines of geography and adjacent research areas. Whether in the fields of social media, urban transport, industry cloud services or gig work, platformization is therein often discussed as a more-than-economic phenomenon engaging in a conflictive relationship with public interest, sovereignty, regulation and the state. However, while the concept of the platform has become ubiquitous, the integration of and dialogue between various broadened definitions are less often practiced. In our short paper, we argue that for further addressing this intricate relation between platforms, power and sovereignty an engagement with the platform concept and its integration through a political economy understanding is key for two reasons: Firstly, an overarching concept of platformization transcending the political/economy binary is necessary to be able to problematize the reification of normalized economic practices lying at the heart of the phenomenon. Secondly, there is a pragmatic reason for developing a geographical political economy perspective on platformization as it can serve as a common ground for an engaged pluralism within and beyond the discipline of economic geography. Based on a systematization of existing definitions this paper therefore combines insights from political economy perspectives, urban platform research and research on platform labor to propose a working definition stimulating a reflection on the platform discourse thus far and strengthening strategical-relational thinking on platform power in future research.

Precarious Youthspaces of Work and Diverse Economies in the EU South: A Conceptualization Attempt

Youth disengagement is widespread in the less developed regions of advanced capitalism, and precarity is constantly (re)produced in the youth labour markets there. In this context, ‘diverse economies’ such as the social economy (SE) and the digital platform-induced sharing economy (DPSE) have emerged as policy solutions to pressing social, economic and environmental challenges, particularly in the south of the EU. However, most relevant studies examine labour in these new economies without considering the socio-spatial and political factors at play. This article proposes a spatially sensitive conceptualization of the relationship between youth disengagement and employment in the SE and DPSE. Drawing on key concepts from critical geography and geographical political economy, as well as recent research on the spatiality of youth, the article suggests that contemporary ‘precarious youthspaces of work’ are created by—and embedded in—‘dismantled techno-spatial fixes’ and discusses the reciprocal relationship between such youthspaces and diverse economies.

The role of municipal ownership for urban net-zero path creation

Particularly within recent years, the rising number of city actors worldwide declaring climate emergencies and pledging commitments to carbon neutrality has sparked a spatial turn in broader sustainable transition thinking, noting the importance of the local level for governing sustainable transitions. Using a Geographical Political Economy approach, this paper critically engages with path creation theory and sustainable transitions literature to explore the potential of urban net-zero carbon transitions in a multi-scalar governance framework. The main argument is that municipal ownership across sectors has a fundamental role in sustainable transitions at the city level. This paper makes a distinct conceptual contribution to sustainable transitions literature by drawing on path creation theory to illustrate how municipal ownership is a central tenet of path creation by bringing together local actors and enabling political capacity and agency to control and strategize integrated sustainable urban pathways. Using the transport and energy sectors in Nottingham in the UK, it applies the Path Creation Framework in an urban setting to illustrate that municipal ownership stimulates a positive path creation through three main arguments. First, municipal ownership enables a positive embeddedness and historical legacy in the provision of sustainable urban energy and transport services; second, it facilitates the establishment of skills and expertise that positively reinforces urban political capacity for the pursuit of urban sustainability; and third, it stimulates the creation of innovative urban projects for sustainable and equitable pathways.

Youth employment amid successive crises and the low-carbon transition: The case of Εurozone coal regions

Over the last decade, the EU has entered a phase of transition to a low-carbon economy, which has led to a decline in the competitiveness of coal. Despite efforts to restructure their energy sectors, coal regions continue to struggle with the lingering effects of the 2008/09 Global Crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, which affect their economies and decarbonisation trajectories. In this context, the paper examines the role of youth in the local labour regimes (LLRs) of Eurozone coal regions. Drawing on perspectives of Geographical Political Economy and Political Ecology, the transition from coal to renewable energy is conceptualised as a new socio-ecological fix, reflecting capitalist mechanisms seeking novel avenues for profiting while maintaining established power asymmetries and inequalities. The study employs a mixed methods approach to examine the exacerbated structural challenges faced by youth. Firstly, by analysing secondary macroeconomic, (youth) employment and demographic data, key differences between the LLRs of the coal regions of six Eurozone countries are highlighted. Secondly, a qualitative analysis of Western Macedonia in Greece, one of the most lagging coal regions, is carried out. The analysis is based on primary data collected in focus groups and interviews with key informants, energy workers and locals in the period 2021-2022. Findings suggest that uneven development, labour flexibilisation, and lack of economic diversification hinder the entry of young people into the labour market and contribute to their out-migration from coal regions, thus the latters' role in shaping the changing energy landscape remains marginal.

On the tailor-made water governance mechanism for Taiwan's semiconductor industry

This study explores a new governance mechanism aimed at regional integration and explains how this mechanism can achieve optimal governance of water resources through the division of labour in politics and the economy. This study adopts political economic geography as the research approach. The data used in the analysis were obtained from official documents, interviews and field investigations, and its authenticity was interactively checked via triangulation. The results show that ‘spatial shifts’ were the driving force behind water redistribution. The division of labour between politics and the economy eliminates obstacles to water distribution through the mutual adjustment and division of underground rhizomes; ‘creative destruction’ and ‘destructive creation’ are alternately used to achieve dialectical progress. This study concludes that in this case, the process of regional integration simultaneously generates circular mechanisms in which political power and economic productivity are consolidated.

Signaling Hinterlands and the Spatial Networks of Digital Capitalism

This article develops the concept of signaling hinterlands to explain how digital social networks extend and shift the interconnections between a metropolis and its hinterlands. The relationship between metropolis and hinterlands—the multiple, overlapping, networked geographies on which cities rely—is a long-standing area of geographical inquiry. This dynamic reflects networks of densely and more sparsely populated places connected by asymmetric relations, thus far primarily envisioned as physical goods-related production activities. How do these relationships change in a geographical political economy centered around digital technologies? We argue that digital technologies expand the productive capacity of the hinterlands, reshaping the dynamics between places within and beyond the metropolis. With digital social networks and digital platforms, places can gain value through their potential to signal and amass social, cultural, and economic capital. Signaling hinterlands reflect the simultaneously cultural, symbolic, technological, political, and economic relations involved in networking places under digital capitalism. We leverage Google Maps visitor posts to document the interconnections between the San Francisco Bay Area metropolis and Calla Lily Valley, a rural locale that we argue has become a digitally induced hinterland. Mapping postings from users who recorded visits to Calla Lily Valley, we examine how digital traces re-create and alter the asymmetric relations between rural and urban, metropolis and hinterlands in the digital economy.

Youth labour markets in the Southern European Union, 2009-2021: deciphering trajectories of resilience through a decade of consecutive crises

ABSTRACT This paper adopts a Geographical Political Economy perspective to critically investigate how successive economic crises occurring from 2009 onwards (including the COVID-19 pandemic) affected youth labour markets in Greece, Italy, and Spain. To do so, it first calculates a Resilience Index for three youth employment types (total, part-time, and temporary employment). It then employs Shift-Share Analysis to quantify the effect of national trends, sectoral dynamism, and local characteristics upon total youth employment changes. After identifying those regions that have exhibited resilience or lack thereof and the underlying reasons for their trajectories, the paper outlines a typology of regional youth labour markets’ resilience and examines their dynamics. Specifically, the paper examines the effect of path dependencies, structural deficiencies, and labour polarization on resilience outcomes, concluding that each has steered in different ways the regional youth labour markets examined towards either bouncing back shortly after recessive shocks or developing mechanisms of adaptation amidst recession. Closing, the paper discusses the role of work flexibilization in shaping resilience, finding that whilst it may contribute to coping/adaptation capacities under certain conditions it does not guarantee them.

Deindustrialization and the Real-Estate– Development–Driven Housing Regime. The Case of Romania in Global Context

Abstract The article examines how deindustrialization as economic restructuring and housing regime changes evolved interconnectedly in Romania during the Great Transformation from state socialism to neoliberal capitalism. This article also explores how they acted as conditions for the emergence of a real-estate-development-driven housing regime (REDD-HR) alongside other factors. The analysis is from the perspective of the geographical political economy on the variegated pathways of these phenomena across borders and secondary statistical data collected by two research projects conducted in Romania in the past two years. In the Eastern semiperiphery of global capitalism or a country of the Global Easts with a socialist legacy, after 1990, the state restructured the economy by privatizing industry and public housing. During state socialism, the housing regime supported industrialization-based urbanization, whereas deindustrialization-cumprivatization in emerging capitalism facilitated the appearance of real estate development. On the one hand, the article enriches studies on deindustrialization by highlighting the role of housing in the transformation of industrial relations; on the other hand, the paper revisits housing studies by analyzing deindustrialization as a process with an impact on the changing housing regime. Altogether, deindustrialization-cum-privatization and the changing housing sector are analyzed as prerequisites of the REDD-HR.

In what way a ‘Guarantee for youth’? NEETs entrapped by labour market policies in the European Union

ABSTRACT Following the economic crisis of 2008/2009, the European Union developed the Youth Guarantee (YG) Action Plan to tackle youth labour market disengagement by ‘fostering employability’ and ‘removing barriers’ to employment. The current study adopts a Geographical Political Economy approach to analysing the YG's underpinnings and the conditions that differentiate its application on a regional level to explore whether – and, if so, how – the YG helps young people in the Southern EU to enter the labour market. The article introduces the first comparative, cross-regional investigation of the YG programme, targeting the NUTS-II regions of Spain and Italy. It uses mixed methods, supplementing quantitative analysis with in-depth interviews with key informants. We show that in Spanish and Italian regions the YG is closely entwined with socio-spatial inequality and labour precarity, which is reflected in the growing rates of temporary employment and inactive youth. Crucially, we conclude, such outcomes are not simply the result of the institutional/operational misapplications of the YG, as is often assumed. Rather, these misapplications are systematically reinforced by the mechanics of labour flexibilisation within a recessionary and crisis-prone environment, one whose geographical unevenness means that the YG is playing out in quite different ways in different places.

Geography and the critique of mainstream economic theory: the legacy of J.A. Hobson

This paper aims to explore the work of John Atkinson Hobson (1858–1940) in political economy, emphasising his geographical perspective. Hobson, known mainly for his theory of imperialism and as a heretic in economics, was one of the first to discern the uneven geographical dynamics of capitalism and the socio-economic implications of accumulation, considering all the interrelated spatial scales, from the local to international. The main argument is that he applied a form of geographical-historical analysis, and thus, he could be acknowledged as a pioneer in spatial-economic thought or in what geographers today call the geographical political economy approach.

Public funding and destination evolution in sparsely populated Arctic regions

This paper examines the role of public funding in transforming tourism pathways in sparsely populated Arctic destinations, comparing Northern Sweden and Finnish Lapland. Our theoretical framework considers destination path plasticity and moments of change through the lens of geographical political economy to understand patterns of uneven development. This perspective helps explain how regional development funding driven by multi-scalar political priorities and global markets set structural conditions for tourism. We present a spatial analysis of public funding between 2007 and 2021 for private firms and public projects, complemented by document analysis and expert interviews. We find that public funding in Finnish Lapland has largely reinforced ‘Arctification’ and export-driven tourism in a few locations. In Northern Sweden, it has focused more on redistributing resources to micro-businesses and broader socio-economic development in lagging regions, yet with limited impacts on changing dominant tourism pathways. Public projects improved knowledge creation and networking among public and private actors but were largely unable to consolidate emerging pathways in the long run. Overall, regional development funding supported incremental change around existing pathways and had limited transformative effects in response to shocks or disruptive moments due to the rigid nature of funding programmes.

“Why Change?” Monopoly and Competition in the Southeastern U.S. Electricity System

Although much of the U.S. electricity system moved to deregulated markets in the late 1990s, states in the southeastern United States—home to the nation’s largest, most valuable, and most polluting utilities—chose to retain regulated monopolies. In this article, we draw on interviews with regulators, environmental organizations, lobbyists, and utility executives to examine how utilities in the southeastern United States have maintained their position as monopolies in the face of calls for competition in the 1990s and again in the 2020s. We ground our inquiry in geographical political economy, with attention to the role that law plays in balancing monopoly and competition in electricity provision and capitalism more broadly. Our research suggests that the cultural political economy of energy regulation in the Southeast has played a central role in enabling electric utilities to maintain their monopoly position, with utilities using their relationships with regulators to parlay their monopoly preference into narratives of monopoly-as-consumer-protection. We therefore offer insights regarding long-debated mechanisms of regulatory capture, highlighting how the structure of public utility law creates opportunities for political and personal relationships to overpower general ideological commitments to competition. These findings demonstrate how law is deployed as a mediating tool of capitalist relations.

Green and just regional path development

ABSTRACT Path development and path creation are prevalent concepts in efforts to understand regional economic change and innovation. A recent focus has been on ‘green’ path development: industrial change associated with environmentally beneficial products and services. This provides a moment to take stock of the path development literature to date and ask: What or who is it for? In this article we use the concept of just transition to explore ways that (green) path development concepts could be more attuned to concerns for human and environmental well-being as opposed to economic growth and innovation as goals in themselves. Building from Geographical Political Economy approaches and injecting complementary cultural economic and sociological perspectives, we generate a conception of green and just path development. This conception builds a more variegated understanding of path development as a theory of change, focusing on negotiation, struggle, inclusion and exclusion in path development processes, and leaning to a stronger orientation towards outcomes for people and places, especially implications for work and communities. This matters for understanding what the purpose of investigating path development is, and what counts as ‘success’ in evaluating path development processes.

Energy justice for whom? Territorial (re)production and everyday state-making in electrifying rural Indonesia

This article seeks to examine the material implications of the emergence of an energy justice (energi berkeadilan) vision in Indonesia, paying particular attention to the state’s spatial practice to achieve such a vision in the form of rural electrification programs including the deployment of off-grid decentralised renewables. Informed by semi-structured interviews, participant observation and secondary data analysis, we contribute to the growing conversations on geographical political economy of energy transitions by closely attending to the multiple space-making processes characterising the Indonesian government’s pursuit of their energy justice vision. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s ideas on state space and territory, we begin by unravelling the historical connection between the rise of energy justice vision and the Indonesian state attempts to maintain and expand its territorial reach through rural electrification, as evidenced throughout the country’s contemporary political economies and its earlier history of postcolonial struggles. We simultaneously unpack various legal mechanisms and instruments underpinning the government’s efforts to deliver energy justice promises by way of universal electricity access, demonstrating the centrality of such strategies in the (re)production of state territories. Through inquiring how energy justice is mobilised by (and for) the Indonesian state, our study illustrates that such everyday state-making processes entail a calculative technique as another form of territorial intervention that obscures the reality of socio-spatially uneven and fragmented electricity access in rural Indonesia. Such findings, we suggest, reveal the contradictions in the state’s repositioning as a main enabler of energy access provision and, more broadly, a socially just energy transition.

Spatialities of being a young NEET in an era of turbulence: a critical account of regional resilience across the Mediterranean EU South

ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between young individuals that are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs) and regional resilience across the Mediterranean European Union South. It attempts a significant contribution to the literature since academic readings on youth studies have partly overlooked potential interlinkages with regional resilience, while regional studies have neglected to assess the resilience of the young cohorts of the labour force. The paper builds on a geographical political economy approach and employs a mixed-research method, calculating regional resistance and recovery indices and drawing upon informed expert interviews. It scrutinises labour market resilience in terms of youth employment and NEETs against the 2007/08 crisis and documents which regions have been (less) resistant to youth unemployment and inactivity. Thereupon, it locates four factors of low resilience in regional youth labour markets, namely structural deficiencies, path-dependence, labour market segmentation and informal practices.

Disaster-Resilient Communities on Flood Plains and Their Agricultural Regeneration: A Case Study in Meinong Plain, Taiwan

Taiwan’s near-mountain alluvial plain is a high-risk area with frequent disasters, and residents have become more tolerant of the compound disasters that occur with overall environmental changes associated with the development of urbanization in recent years. This paper presents a case study of a near-mountainous alluvial plain in Southern Taiwan. The Hakka ethnic group is the main community in the study area and also the main research object. This case study illustrates the disaster resilience of the community to natural and artificial disasters. This study adopted two research approaches, namely historical geography and political economic geography, as well as community resilience theory. Research methods including case study, secondary literature analysis, fieldwork, and interviews were used. Through text analysis, it was found that (1) the community’s awareness of disaster avoidance was rooted in the experience of reclamation in the early 17th century; (2) communities have experienced artificial disasters caused by political and economic intervention, which have been transformed into disaster awareness and community resilience; (3) cumulative artificial disasters have a greater impact on communities than unpredictable natural disasters; and (4) the energy of community resilience and agricultural regeneration is based on the duality of disasters.

The 2007/08 capitalist crisis evolution in Greece: A geographical political economy perspective

The 2007/08 capitalist crisis severely affected the socio-economic conditions in the majority of the developed economies. In the spatially uneven mosaic of the crisis’ effects, the European Union peripheral economies recorded a deep recession. This paper explains why Greece is the European Union country that was most acutely affected, seeking to theorize the political economy of crisis evolution. It does so, by adopting a Marxist perspective on the crisis in Greece to examine the interplay of base (structures) with superstructure (institutions), linking production with society, culture, regulation and politics. It highlights the specificities of the Greek political economy and the particularities of the application of the neoliberal project in Greece.