Harald Bathelt / Ulrich Dewald
Relational aspects of regional economic support and cluster policy
Pages 163 – 179

The recent debate about the application and interpretation of cluster concepts is characterized by increasing skepticism. The literature has particularly criticized the fact that policy formulation is often only vaguely related to the academic discussion and evidence regarding clusters. Part of this confusion can be traced back to the fuzziness of the original cluster concept developed by Michael Porter which claims to be applicable to the competitiveness of both national industry bundles and inter-linked regional industry networks. As a consequence, policies which are declared as cluster policies can be quite heterogeneous. In this paper, we argue for a closer link between cluster conception and cluster policy. It is shown that an understanding of clusters as multidimensional industry configurations is advantageous in developing and advancing a relational cluster policy. A multidimensional cluster approach, which highlights the role of agency in economic interaction, focuses on the action space of cluster agents, and goes beyond the regional and national scale. It avoids simplifications and deterministic interpretations that can result from using aggregated data or from treating regions as if they were agents. Instead, the approach recognizes that external relations of cluster actors are core in understanding and explaining the success of clusters. We will emphasize this by laying out elements of a relational cluster policy.


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