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Summary

Scalar policy analysis

Similar to spatial policy analysis, which theorises space in terms of epistemology rather than a geographical/territorial fixity, scalar policy analysis is the study of the importance of scale to the socio-political work of maintaining relations across time and space through creative practices of mediation, translation, assemblage, recontextualisation and hybridisation. Here, scales such as transnational, national, regional and local can be theorised in dynamic terms as ‘parts of multiple scalar and (also de-)territorial transformations, in which governmental power is constantly created or (de-)stablised’ (Hartong, 2018, p 2). This has given rise to a very specific field of study – the ‘politics of scale’ – which seeks to make sense of socio-political crises and developments both global and (sub)national from the perspective of scalar practices that shape the way in which discrete objects, relations and actors are held together and made to influence each other. Political economy scholars working in the field of scalar policy research, for example, note that scalar practices, such as globalisation or neoliberalism, work by enabling the interests and actions of elite groups of transnational actors to pursue new means of capital accumulation and class power through the rescaling or upscaling of work and consumption (see Harvey, 2005). Scalar practices, in other words, ‘establish and stabilise unequal relations within the capitalist world system’ (Kaiser and Nikiforova, 2008, p 539).

Here scalar practices refer to a variety of discursive and non-discursive techniques used by different actors and organisations to achieve political and economic ends through new forms of ‘territorialisation, place-making and network formation’ (Pemberton and Searle, 2016, p 78), be they governments using ‘scale’ to reimagine regional and local projects and spaces that accommodate the shift to governance or social-movement activists using ‘scale’ to facilitate interaction and coordination between subnational, national and international actors. As Fraser (2010) argues, different actors and organisations articulate and produce scale ‘to create some sort of advantage, to establish associations, connections, or solidarities across social divides, or to represent their interests (to be heard or seen) amidst oppressive or otherwise difficult conditions’ (p 332).