Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and Natural Resources 2026 number 2

The article evaluates the potential for expanding the analysis of the territorial organization of production and settlement using an institutional approach. A counter movement by economists and sociologists toward geography as a science exploring the diversity of the environment external to institutions has been noted. In geographical studies, the institution itself rarely becomes the subject of spatial analysis; it primarily serves as an attribute of the object of study. It is demonstrated that the geographical view on institutions suggests two directions of research: the reflection of territorial characteristics in the nature and forms of certain institutions; and the spatial variability of institutions themselves, determined by the properties of the territory. The economic-geographical analysis primarily uses formal institutions, i.e., legalized norms and organizations. Informal behavioral stereotypes appear in socio-geographical works without corresponding generalizations as institutions, most often when studying rural areas. A comparison is made with the views of foreign scholars on the institutionalization of economic geography, identifying three directions for the development of the institutional analysis. The first one is the study of the evolution of the economic landscape, since institutions are characterized by inertia and maintain dependence on the previous path. Within the framework of this direction, the predisposition of local economies to innovation is considered. The second direction is the study of the embeddedness of economic action in local social structures, i.e., dependence on networks of communication with the local community. The third direction is increasing the importance of the local level in economic and geographical research, differentiating the locations where certain norms, rules, and interaction networks operate. Using the principles of evolution, embeddedness, and differentiation within the institutional approach, it is possible to develop a theoretical and methodological basis for studying the causes of various spatial processes, including population outflow from strategically important regions and the incomplete implementation of major investment projects, as well as for formulating an ideology of the territorial economic development based on endogenous resources under the conditions of an expected reduction in federal support funds.