ABSTRACT
In the course of the 2003 election campaign in North Rhine–Westphalia, the designated Minister of Economic Affairs stressed that the old government had one hobby, ‘clustering’, and she promised to push a change and terminate cluster policies in case of an election victory. Indeed, her party won, yet one year later they initiated one of the most ambitious and far reaching cluster project in Europe. There are many reasons for politicians to be sceptical about the cluster approach: So far, no genuine evaluation clarifying the overall benefits of cluster politics exists, serious doubts arise on whether clustering makes sense for all regions, or simply the political logic of being different in terms of distinctiveness from opposite parties, other regions or countries. It is especially the latter aspect, combined with the European and world-wide prominence of cluster policies, which makes it difficult to elaborate counter-concepts, as the cancellation of cluster policies entails the risks of being uncoupled from the debate, networks and funding. It is argued later in this chapter that such ‘concept resilience’ is a proximate case of the ‘self-organisation’ of a policy instrument.
