What Drives Interlocal Cooperation in Economic Development? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Interlocal Industrial Parks in China’s Yangtze River Delta

Recent studies suggest that influence of contextual conditions and cooperative arrangements on interlocal cooperation should be best understood as part of configurations. This study enriches this nascent perspective by developing a configurational theoretical framework and explores how contextual conditions (institutional proximity, geographic proximity, organizational proximity) and cooperative arrangements (goal interdependence, resource complementarity, collaborative structure) combine to influence interlocal cooperation in economic development. A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is used to analyze 34 interlocal industrial parks (IIPs) in the Yangtze River Delta of China. The results show two first-order equifinal configurations and six second-order configurations that lead to the success of IIP. The findings underscore that success conditions of interlocal cooperation in economic development work in configurations, not in isolation, and contribute meaningfully to debates pertaining to specific conditions.