Collective Order and Economic Coordination in Industrial Agglomerations: The Technopoles of Southern California

We begin by remarking upon the pervasiveness of nonmarket institutional arrangements in capitalist economic systems. We then sketch out some typical generalized forms of collective order and economic coordination in industrial agglomerations—quasi-integration, voluntary associations, informal business cultures, and governmental institutions. With the aid of simple statistics we describe the growth of the high-technology industrial agglomerations (technopoles) of Southern California since the 1950s. The specific regulatory tasks and institutions engendered by this growth are reviewed in detail with special reference to transactional economies, innovation and technology transfer, labor supply, land development, and lobbying and local economic growth. We conclude with a brief discussion of some of the problems and predicaments experienced by high-technology industry in Southern California and in the USA in the current (neoconservative) policy environment.