The strength of weak lock-ins: the renewal of the Westmunsterland textile industry

Modern theoretical concepts in economic geography are used to try to explain the positive sides of geographical clustering of industries. Of the few theoretical concepts which are used to try to explain the negative sides of clustering, that is, the decline of old industrial areas, evolutionary regional economics, in general, and the lock-in concept, in particular, are promising ones. Lock-ins have been furthest developed by Grabher in his study on the steel and coal-mining complex in the Ruhr Area, Germany. They can be considered as thick interfirm, institutional, and cognitive tissues aimed at preserving existing industrial structures and therefore unnecessarily slowing down industrial renewal. It is particularly in regions with political lock-ins in which the legacy of manufacturing endures. On the basis of a study on the restructuring of the textile industry in Westmunsterland in Germany, in this paper I analyse whether these kinds of lock-ins can also be observed in regions with strong concentrations of the textile industry, an industry that strongly differs from the above-mentioned steel and coal-mining complex. I show that the impact of lock-ins can be regarded as relatively weak in the textile region of Westmunsterland. Partly because of that, industrial renewal has been relatively successful, which in turn has kept lock-ins weak.