Policy activism and regional path creation: the promotion of offshore wind in North East England and Scotland

This paper argues for a broad evolutionary political economy understanding of local and regional path creation. We adopt a multi-actor and multi-scalar perspective, focusing on the roles of the state and regional policy interventions in mediating the creation of growth paths. The framework interprets attempts in North East England and Scotland to support path creation in the offshore wind sector through evolutionary inspired contextual policies. We demonstrate that the realisation of the these policies remains crucially conditioned by the dynamic and complex interplay between the national political economy of energy market regulation, industrial policy and inter-regional asymmetries in the governance of economic development.