Mutiscalar institutional complementarity and the scaling of clusters

Economic geographers have become strongly focused on two scales over the last 25 years: the local and the global. That’s why they mostly ignore the growing literature on the so-called variety of capitalism thesis that, contrary to what the glocalisation thesis claims, stresses a persistent continuity of national forms of capitalism and national forms of the state in the era of globalisation. In this variety-of-capitalism literature the concept of institutional complementarity plays a key role. It means, among others, that one institution
makes the other more efficient (and vice versa).
In their studies on clusters economic geographers stress a strong «horizontal» institutional
complementarity at the local level (although they do not use that concept) but largely ignore a «vertical» complementarity of local and national institutions. Adherents of the variety of capitalism thesis, on the other hand, stress a «horizontal» institutional complementarity at the national level but, being are blind to geography, ignore a «vertical» institutional complementarity between the national and local level.
In this paper I aim to bridge both bodies of literature and to explore the «vertical» institutional complementarity between national forms of capitalism and clusters. To give my
arguments flesh and blood, I explore how and why the Dutch vegetables-under-glass cluster is interwoven with the national corporatist institutions, which is a key characteristic
of the Dutch form of capitalism and state form.