Governance, institutional fragmentation, and the evolution of regional resilience under compound disruption

Regions increasingly confront compound disruptions arising from climate volatility, market instability, demographic change and structural economic transition. While research on regional resilience has identified key structural determinants shaping regional responses to shocks, less attention has been given to how governance arrangements and institutional fragmentation condition the interaction of these determinants under compound disruption. This article examines how regional resilience forms through the interaction of economic, social, infrastructural and institutional capacities within fragmented multi-level governance systems. Drawing on qualitative evidence from northwestern Victoria, Australia, an agricultural region experiencing overlapping climate stress, labour shortages, infrastructure constraints and accelerated renewable energy transition, we extend Sutton et al.’s (2023) determinants framework through an evolutionary perspective. The analysis demonstrates that resilience arises not from isolated structural attributes but from the dynamic alignment of multiple determinants across governance scales over time. Findings show that short planning horizons, fragmented policy coordination, infrastructure constraints and contested local legitimacy limit the translation of adaptive capacity into structural transformation. Conversely, where governance arrangements enable coordination across institutional actors and policy domains, adaptive capacity can be mobilised to support industrial diversification and path creation. The article contributes to regional resilience literature by showing how compound disruptions accumulate and interact over time, activating and intensifying interdependencies among resilience determinants. These interactions shape adaptive capacity and, in turn, influence whether regional trajectories reinforce vulnerability, enable adaptation or support structural reorientation.