Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

No survey of economic geography would be complete without a consideration of the state. States shape economic landscapes. They seek to regulate the flows of goods, money, energy, people, and information that produce economic geographies. They are major economic actors in their own right, employing large workforces, producing and consuming goods and services, and marshaling large financial and other economic resources in pursuit of state strategies. They play an important role in the production of economic space from state-sponsored local economic development initiatives to efforts to define and promote “national economies,” and from the construction of multinational economic territories to dealing with the destabilizing implications of globalization. At the same time, states are, in turn, deeply affected by changing economic geographies. They depend for their resources on the economic prosperity of their territories, and are thus vulnerable to spatially differentiated processes of investment and disinvestment over which they usually have (at best) limited influence. Their ability to govern, and especially their ability to govern democratically, is affected by their legitimacy, which in turn is tied to their fragile attempts to deliver economic success and social welfare. Each of these is affected by economic geography: the spatial unevenness of economic growth and decline produces ... log in or subscribe to read full text