Framing regional scalecraft: insights into local government advocacy

ABSTRACT

Uneven development invokes statecraft by multiple tiers of government centred on tackling problems, appearing competent and winning elections. Scalecraft, as a particular form of statecraft, can involve regional inter-local government collaboration. To avoid overstating the existence, effectiveness and/or impact of grounded examples, attention must be directed upward towards how regional scalecraft entwines with higher levels of government, outward towards the role of non-state actors and downward towards the local government foundations of regional collaboration. Interview-based evidence is presented from the Geelong city-region, Australia, where a regional alliance has attracted substantial commendation, notably in the context of co-occurring government regional machinations. Notwithstanding such commendation analysis points to bounded and evolving forms of regional advocacy, parallel lobbying by non-state actors, and instabilities forthcoming from councillor scrutiny and a short-lived democratically elected mayor. Beyond documenting multi-level commitments to regional action, regional scalecraft research must acknowledge advocacy-based efforts to forge stronger inter-government alignments. Recognition of effective network-building actions should not, however, distract attention from the existence of alternative place-based spatial imaginaries. Nor should common scalar endeavours detract from the potential for government tiers to engage in diverse forms of statecraft and in doing so contribute to regional-level instabilities and disjuncture.

KEYWORDS:

• Regional development
• local government
• multi-level government
• statecraft
• scalecraft
• advocacy
• Geelong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank the interviewees who provided their time and input into this research, the three referees for their critical comments and the editors for their support. Responsibility for any errors lies with the author.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.