Social Concertation and Local Development: The Case of Industrial Districts

It is often believed that industrial districts result from an entirely spontaneous process of economic development. On the basis of in-depth study of several Italian industrial districts, in this paper it is argued that the competitiveness and the dynamism of industrial districts' firms are dependent from social integration. Social integration, however, is usually the result of a conscious co-ordination among the local institutions: i.e. the 'high road' to competitiveness is not the outcome of market mechanism, but of a combination of market and concerted collective action among the representatives of the principal district categories and the local establishment.