Territorial Exaptive Resilience: How Peripheral Regions Repurpose Crisis into Opportunity

• In Event: Global and Transnational Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 12. Political Economy

Abstract

This presentation introduces the concept of territorial exaptive resilience, defined as a region’s capacity to repurpose existing resources and capabilities, originally developed for different functions, to create new growth opportunities in response to crises. Drawing on the evolutionary biology notion of exaptation (Gould & Vrba, 1982) and its application to resilience studies (Kollár & Kollár, 2020), we examine how Europe’s peripheral border regions respond to successive economic and geopolitical shocks. Using a novel composite index (the Territorial Exaptive Resilience Index, or TERI) constructed from subnational employment and GVA data across four crisis periods (2006–2023), combined with Bayesian multilevel multinomial regression and five in-depth case studies, our mixed-methods analysis reveals a persistent paradox: despite systemic structural disadvantages, peripheral border regions consistently demonstrate exaptive resilience by creatively reallocating resources across sectors, whereas more developed core regions predominantly exhibit adaptive resilience. The econometric model identifies institutional quality, local resilience, knowledge infrastructure, and targeted regional funding (particularly its interaction with border region status) as key determinants of exaptive capacity. Qualitative findings reinforce the quantitative results by illuminating three dimensions that enable this process: the mobilization of local actors and networks, institutional flexibility, and strategic investments in skills and infrastructure. These findings contribute to broader debates on regional inequality, the limits of path dependency, and the conditions under which disadvantaged communities transform constraints into developmental resources.

Author

• Dávid Kollár, Szazadveg Foundation