Theories and Policies of Regional Development from the Perspective of Territory and Network: Focusing on the Balance Between Market and Society

Abstract

This paper attempts to survey various theories and policies on regional development in economic geography and adjacent fields, and to schematize them in terms of both the classification of perspectives on how space is understood and the balance between market and society. In this paper, perspectives on space are divided into categories of territory and network. Territorial perspective focuses on a territory, such as a country or region, and examines the economic activities within that territory, while network perspective focuses on the network of economic actors that extends beyond territories, and how they are connected.

These arguments can also be divided into those that emphasize the market and the resulting economic growth and those that consider the negative aspects of the market and emphasize social factors. Firstly, from a territorial perspective, the author considers spatial and urban economics, institutional and evolutionary economic geography, and the endogenous development model from the standpoint of the balance between market and society. Secondly, from a network perspective, global value chain/global production network studies, and post-development theory are also examined in terms of the balance between them. Finally, the relationship between them is shown schematically where the horizontal axis represents the balance between market and society and the vertical axis represents perspectives on space. The author hopes that this will contribute to deepening the discussion on regional development and related policies.