Agency and actors in regional industrial path development. A framework and longitudinal analysis

Despite significant interest in regional industrial restructuring in economic geography, surprisingly, scarce attention has been paid to the changing role of agency over time. The current paper develops a framework for understanding the role of multiple types of actors and the agency they exercise for regional industrial path development. The framework is employed in a longitudinal study of industry development in Värmland, Sweden, from forestry towards a bio-economy. The analysis highlights how actors exercise very different types of agency in different periods of regional industrial path development