The role of public policy in regional resilience: An exploratory analysis of the Basque Country

Abstract

Regional resilience, which can be defined as the regional ability to resist, adapt to, and create new regional paths from an economic crisis or external shocks, is one of the most explored issues in recent years in the literature of evolutionary econom-ic geography. The latest advances in this topic show that resilience has a multi-dimensional character and among other fac-tors, give importance to the role that institutions and people play. Public policies as important elements of the regional insti-tutional context shape this ability to change. This paper focuses on understanding the relationship between innovation policy and regional resilience. For that purpose, the paper includes an historical analysis of the Basque Country region, an old indus-trial region that has been able to resist, recover and renew itself after different economic crises.