Self-employment still forms an important element in the social structure of modern societies. However, the group of the self-employed has experienced an enormous economic and social change. After a long term decline until the beginning of the 1970s in almost all industrialised countries,...

The network metaphor abounds in the fields of regional development studies and of research on forms of subnational government. Unlike the analysis of strategic networks (Powell; Sydow; Staber), of policy networks (Mayntz/ Marin; Kenis/ Schneider) and of policy domain networks (Knoke/ Pappi/...