Regional resilience – resilient regions

Abstract

In autumn 2010, a special edition of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society was devoted to examining the term “regional resilience” and assessing its basic theoretical foundations and the empirical evidence that may support it. The editors noticed that more attention had been given to the concept of resilient regions in the past few years in international scientific publications. It is still a substantial question why the concept has become so popular. The term “resilience” originated in environmental and disaster studies and it describes the capability to adapt and renew under unfavourable conditions. In economics, resilience has been defined in terms of a return to a fixed and narrowly defined equilibrium or, in the more liberal version, to multiple equilibria. However, in social sciences, especially in regional sciences, resilience seems to have become accepted because of its connection with regional adaptation. It is closely related to evolutionary economics and evolutionary economic geography, too. The purpose of this research is to introduce regional resilience as a promising concept to explain differences in regional economic strength. An attempt is made to explore and analyse the meaning of regional resilience in detail and define the different points of view in relation of the term through some illustrative examples. Before introducing the theory of resilience, the term is differentiated from those of elasticity and flexibility. The theoretical background and possible interpretations of resilient regions are presented. This part is connected with the path dependency theory. The connection of resilience and adaptive capacity is dealt with in some detail. While describing the theoretical elements, a four-phase adaptive-cycle model of regional economic resilience is presented. Finally, the potential application of this model to Hungary on the basis of international empirical investigations is discussed, and a graphic example of a case of regional resilience in Hungary is produced. For this, a significant accounting result of joint ventures, i. e. earnings before taxes, is analysed. An analysis of resilience in relation to profitability is presented on the level of Hungarian counties in the period of 2000–2007. This research suggests that there are great differences between the Hungarian counties regarding the ability to regain profitability after periods of decline.