Globalisation or ‘glocalisation’? Networks, territories and rescaling

Abstract

This paper argues that the alleged process of globalisation should be recast as a process of ‘glocalisation’. ‘Glocalisation’ refers to the twin process whereby, firstly, institutional/regulatory arrangements shift from the national scale both upwards to supra‐national or global scales and downwards to the scale of the individual body or to local, urban or regional configurations and, secondly, economic activities and inter‐firm networks are becoming simultaneously more localised/regionalised and transnational. In particular, attention will be paid to the political and economic dynamics of this geographical rescaling and its implications. The scales of economic networks and institutional arrangements are recast in ways that alter social power geometries in important ways. This contribution, therefore, argues, first, that an important discursive shift took place over the last decade or so which is an integral part of an intensifying ideological, political, socioeconomic and cultural struggle over the organisation of society and the position of the citizen. Secondly, the pre‐eminence of the ‘global’ in much of the literature and political rhetoric obfuscates, marginalizes and silences an intense and ongoing socio‐spatial struggle in which the reconfiguration of spatial scale is a key arena. Third, both the scales of economic flows and networks and those of territorial governance are rescaled through a process of ‘glocalisation’, and, finally, the proliferation of new modes and forms of resistance to the restless process of de‐territorialisation/re‐territorialisation of capital requires greater attention to engaging a ‘politics of scale’. In the final part, attention will be paid to the potentially empowering possibilities of a politics that is sensitive to these scale issues.

But what I especially wish to make of it, is a machine to launch your brother's grand projects … We establish it in order that it may assist the financial and industrial companies which we shall organise in foreign countries … [Know then] that I hope to double, quadruple, quintuple this capital as fast as our operations extend! That we must have a hail of gold, a dance of millions, if we wish to accomplish over yonder the prodigies we have predicted! Ah! I won't say there will be no breakage—one can't move the world, you know, without crushing the feet of a few passers by. )Zola [1891] 1994, 119)

The recent debate over the alleged increasing globalisation of the world economy, however intellectually stimulating it might be, appears to be increasingly like a discussion over the sex of the angels )Rayp 1995). Internationalisation, mundialisation, delocalisation, international competitiveness, cultural hybridisation and other more or less fashionable concepts are marshalled into a plurality of heavily mediatised discourses. The plurality of ways in which these words and their abstract definitions are used often produces a Babylonian confusion that seems to serve specific interests and power positions )Hout 1996). I shall argue in this article that )1) an important discursive shift has taken place over the last decade or so which is an integral part of an intensifying ideological, political, socioeconomic and cultural struggle over the organisation of society and the position of the citizen therein; )2) the pre‐eminence of the ‘global’ in much of the literature and political rhetoric obfuscates, marginalises and silences an intense and ongoing socio‐spatial struggle in which a key arena is the reconfiguration of spatial scale, or the arenas around which socio‐spatial power choreographies are enacted and performed )Swyngedouw 1997a; 1997b; 2000a) )I conceive scalar configurations either as regulatory order)s) or as networks, whereby ‘regulatory order’ refers to geographical‐institutional arrangements )like states, regional/local forms of governance, or transnational organisations like the European Union), while ‘networks’ refer to the spatial or geographical arrangements of interlinked economic activities); )3) both the scales of economic flows and networks and those of territorial governance are rescaled through a process of ‘glocalisation’ and )4) the proliferation of new modes and forms of resistance to the restless process of de‐territorialisation/re‐territorialisation of capital requires greater attention to engaging a ‘politics of scale’.

Crucial to this argument is the idea that social life is process based, in a state of perpetual change, transformation and reconfiguration )see Harvey 1996). Starting analysis from a given geographical scale, such as the local, regional, national or global, seems to me, therefore, to be deeply antagonistic to apprehending the world in a dynamic, process‐based manner. This has profound implications for the significance of spatial scale. I conceive scalar configurations as the outcome of socio‐spatial processes that regulate and organise social power relations, such as the contested making and remaking of the European Union or the process of state devolution or decentralisation. The emergence of new territorial scales of governance and the redefinition of existing scales )like the nation‐state) change the regulation and organisation of social, political and economic power relations. Over the past few years, a plethora of research has been published on the social construction of scale and the deeply contested scalar transformations of the political economy of advanced capitalist societies )Dicken et al. 2001; Herod and Wright 2002; Howitt 1993; Smith and Dennis 1987; Swyngedouw 1992a; 1997a; 1997b; 2000b). Emphasis has been put on the making and remaking of social, political and economic scales of organisation )Brenner 1998; Collinge 1999; Cox 1998; Delaney and Leitner 1997; MacLeod and Goodwin 1999; Marston 2000, Silvern 1999), of regulation )Boyle 2000; Berndt 2000; Brenner 1997; Leitner 1997; Swyngedouw 1992a), of social and union action )Herod 2001; Sadler 2000; Walsh 2000; Waterman and Wills 2001) and of contestation )Castree 2000; Miller 1997; Towers 2000). In addition, attention has been paid to the significance of differential scalar positionings of social groups and classes in the power geometries of capitalism )Kelly 1999; MacLeod 1999; Swyngedouw 2000a), and on scalar strategies mobilised by both elites and subaltern social groups )Brenner 1999; Herod, 1991; Swyngedouw 1996a; Zeller 2000). In other words, it has been suggested that the social power that can be mobilised is dependent on the scale or spatial level at which social actors operate. Consequently, the success or effectiveness of social and political strategies for empowerment is related to the ways in which geographical scale is actively considered and mobilised in struggles for social, political, or economic resistance or change.

Conceiving the current reordering of political and economic life from a scalar perspective permits one to recast the alleged process of globalisation in ways that is more sensitive to the spatiality of the process, the centrality of the political domain, and the shifting relations and geometries of power.

The Mythical Reality of the ‘Global’: Globalisation as Ideology and Practice

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country … In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self‐sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one‐sidedness and narrow‐mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. )Marx and Engels 1952, 72).

La Pensée Unique: Globalisation as a Western Discursive Orthodoxy

A rather remarkable discursive shift has taken place over the past decade and a half or so. The 1960s and 1970s were dominated by political‐economic theories and political activist movements that were inspired by a strongly internationalist analysis and agenda, based on the view that capitalism has been—from its very beginning—a geographical project of spatial expansion and spatial integration )albeit in highly uneven ways). Internationalisation and globalisation are now presented as processes that are decidedly new and profoundly altering the power geometries in the world economy )Massey 1999; Amin 2002). Although many of the early analyses were crude and often regurgitated uncritically internationalist literature, dating back to the early days of the century )Lenin, Luxemburg, Hilferding), the literature was nevertheless acutely aware of the long‐standing internationalism of capitalism. ‘Globalisation’ was not the buzzword then; instead there were rather more politically inspired concepts such as imperialism and neo‐imperialism, neocolonialism, uneven development, the new international division of labour and the like. Many students of the time surely remember reading A.G. Frank, Cardoso and Furtado, Baran and Sweezy, Emmanuel, Samir Amin, Ernest Mandel, Baran and Sweezy, Muller or Braverman, among many others.

During the 1980s, a rather dramatic discursive shift took place in much of the literature and political rhetoric )O'Brien 1992; Group of Lisbon 1994; Ohmae 1995). The world economy had moved—or so it seemed—from the Westphalian nation‐state order to fundamental and irrevocably new forms of organisation that transcended the traditional state‐based and state‐dominated world system. ‘Globalisation’ emerged as the rhetorical vehicle and analytical device used to describe this allegedly important shift in the economic and political organisation of the world economy and the concept soon moved into the cultural domain too )Featherstone et al. 1995). The propagation of this globalisation ideology has become like an act of faith. Virtually every government, at every conceivable scale of governance, has taken measures to align its social and economic policy to the ‘exigencies’ and ‘requirements’ of this new competitive world )dis)order )see Peck and Tickell 1995; 2002) and the forces of a new ‘truly’ free‐market based world economy. In light of the real or imagined threat of owners of presumed )hyper)mobile capital relocating their activities, regional and national states feel increasingly under pressure to assure the restoration of a fertile entrepreneurial culture. Fiscal constraint has to be exercised, social expenditures kept in check, labour markets made more flexible, environmental and social regulation minimised, etc. This, then, is heralded as the golden path that will lead regional and national economies to the desired heaven of global competitiveness and sustained growth.

This is quite an impressive discursive shift from the 1960s/1970s mindset, whose broadly leftist internationalist rhetoric was replaced, in the 1980s/1990s, by a neoliberal discourse of market‐led internationalism and globalisation. This discursive shift deserves close scrutiny in terms of its ideological content and its relationship to the ‘real’ economy. The discourse of neoliberal internationalism has become, as French intellectuals labelled it, a Pensée Unique, a hegemonic, incontestable and virtually naturalised and self‐evident set of arguments and beliefs. This hermetic field of vision defies critique and dissidence, such that alternative visions or voices are marginalised and silenced, or meet with formidable resistance. This monolithic imagination, in turn, flattens the political spectrum and renders the political articulation of alternative positions difficult, if not impossible. La Pensée Unique has become the hegemonic academic canon and standard political recipe of an international elite of economists and policy analysts. This combines with a cosmopolitan cultural‐economic elite of corporate managers, financial fund managers, consultancy businesses, service providers and the like. A national political elite, both left and right of the traditional political spectre, finds in these arguments an excuse to explain away their inadequacy to link political programmes with an increasingly disenfranchised and disempowered civil society, since dissident voices and alternative political projects do no longer find expression through the standard political arenas. Globalisation is, in fact, a triadisation that leaves out much of the world and much more so today than was the case in the 19th or, especially, the early parts of the 20th century. Of course, this ideology of globalisation is a decidedly Western construct, with Japan its reluctantly adopted stepchild. The ethnic conflict that has engulfed the Great Lakes region in Central Africa confirms how the image of a global village is but a simulacrum of a reality. While indicating a reduced global interdependency, it also shows the total disintegration of a region that until fairly recently )mid–1970s) was connected to other parts of the world in a myriad of ways. Sub‐Saharan Africa would no doubt benefit from some form of greater global integration. To put it in the old language, today, much of Africa does not even have the luxury any more of being exploited by global capital.

Globalisation as a Political Strategy

In light of the above, invoking globalisation has become part of a powerful political‐economic ideology through which capital–labour relationships and relative class power positions are shifted in profound ways. While neoliberalism's ascent in the 1980s revolved around strategies of ‘rolling back the state’ and engaging in what Gramsci would call a war of position, the 1990s and beyond have been characterised by a much more pervasive ‘roll‐over’ by the state and other forms of governance aimed at politically instituting neoliberalism as an uncontested and incontestable dogma )Peck and Tickell 2002). This war of manoeuvre is today decisively in the camp of capital, usually with strong state support, and centres around social wage issues such as direct and indirect labour cost, labour market rigidities, public debt and public spending, trade liberalisation, privatisation, neoliberal re‐regulation, etc.

The hegemony of the globalisation ‘thesis’ extends from the conservative right to even those who claim to pursue a more inclusive, democratic and socially progressive agenda )such as, for example, Petrella's ‘Limits to Competition’ )Group of Lisbon 1994) or Tony Blair's vision of the New Britain). This ideology becomes a vehicle for suppressing possibilities of resistance and the formulation of alternative trajectories. As any good historical geographical analysis would easily point out, resistance and the construction of alternative visions and strategies have always been profoundly geographical affairs. It is not surprising that the most radical contemporary movements that attempt to confront this hegemony of vision often feed off a distinctly geographical ferment in which the reclamation of territorial identity and homogeneity finds fertile ground among those who feel deeply and bitterly disempowered by the disabling strategies pursued by those occupying the loci of power. The top score of the National Front in the recent elections in France is a worrying illustration of this.

Globalisation as Practice

Capitalism has always been a decidedly geographical project and globalisation has been part of the capitalist enterprise from at least 1492, if not before. In fact, in many ways, the world economy and culture of the late 19th‐ and early 20th‐century world were as globally interconnected as, and in some ways more so than, the present time. Even a cursory reading of the cultural, economic and geographical accounts of those days would make this abundantly clear in the same way as a more sober statistical comparative analysis would illustrate.

Of course, many of these accounts have always prioritised time and history over geography. The latter was usually understood as contextual and passive. Spatial or geographical strategies were rarely considered as vital and formative in explaining the dynamics of internationalisation. At best, the feeble attempts to take space seriously really resulted in replacing the process of class exploitation and domination by processes of spatial exploitation and domination in which class alliances in one territory exploited class alliances in other territories )Harvey 1995). Despite the proclaimed internationalism of much work on the left, most historical materialist analysis was clearly bound up with the national state and class formation. From Lenin's account of the class struggle in Russia to more recent and innumerable accounts of the formation of working classes and class relations in an equally large number of different places, all presented the illusion of a geographically sensitive historical‐materialist analysis. Yet, much of this literature failed to incorporate the fundamental premise that capitalist geographical dynamics are inherently tied up with processes of territorialisation, de‐territorialisation and re‐territorialisation and have been so for a long time )Harvey 2003). My quotes from the Communist Manifesto and from Zola's novel indicate as much. I have in recent years rarely come across definitions of globalisation that are significantly better than, let alone differentfrom, the one offered by Marx and Engels, written more than a century and a half ago. In the current phase of profound shake‐up of these geographical processes, ‘globalisation’ is invoked as short‐hand to summarise these processes of de‐territorialisation and re‐territorialisation, but in such a way that makes them equally a‐spatial or a‐geographical and, as such, profoundly disempowering. It is too easily forgotten that while capital expands its geographical reach and breaks through all manner of geographical barriers, new boundaries are created while older ones are broken down or become more porous.

As Hirst and Thompson )1996; 1999), among others, have pointed out, the process of globalisation is perhaps not as pervasive and total as many make it out to be. They show how—at least until 1913—international interdependence in terms of global trade and foreign direct investment )FDI) was significantly higher compared with the subsequent period of national ‘Fordist’ development )1925–73). It is only in recent years that we have begun to approach again )at least in relative terms) the conditions of integration that characterised the world economy at the turn of the 20th century. This is, of course, not to say that nothing new has happened. The essence of capitalism is, as Schumpeter showed a long time ago, about perpetual creative destruction in which ‘everything that is solid melts into air’, but this always happens through geographical change and geographical restructuring. As Harvey )1995, 5) pointed out, ‘the adoption of the term “globalisation” signals a profound geographical reorganisation of capitalism, making many of the presumptions about the “natural” geographical units within which capitalism's historical trajectory develops less and less meaningful )if they ever were)'. We have to begin to see how the dynamics of capitalism are about the perpetual reconfiguration of space and spatial organisation in which space is a constitutive moment.

If I am not mistaken, the term ‘globalisation’ was first coined in the financial press, and not surprisingly so. If anything, the de‐territorialisation/re‐territorialisation of financial markets has been by far the most significant economic‐regulatory change. ‘Real’ capital flows )i.e. those associated with international trade and FDI) dwarf in comparison with flows of purely financial capital. Where total world trade in 1994 amounted to circa US$4.3 trillion )on an annualised basis), total average daily turnover in the financial markets in 1996 skyrocketed to a gigantic US$1.4 trillion, 90% of which was broadly moving around the earth in search of speculative gain )Swyngedouw 1996b). In 2003, this has increased to well over US$2 trillion. This profound internationalisation and de‐nationalisation of money in the aftermath of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system and the subsequent monetary disorder has become, as it were, a pars pro toto to stand for the globalisation of the whole economy.

Furthermore, the technological and information revolution has increased and intensified cultural globalisation. As mentioned before, while global media flows have become more dense, the actual direct interchange in economic terms with many of the remote places that fill our TV screens on a daily basis has actually disintegrated. The image of the global village may have become a standard cultural icon of the time, but many places have in fact suffered from a diminished interdependence. Of course, the speed of commodity flows has accelerated and this in itself propelled the process of de‐territorialisation and re‐territorialisation to new heights. Undoubtedly, this acceleration of the ease by which people and commodities overcome the barrier of space is unprecedented.

Arguably the most profound geographical restructuring that has taken place lies in the combined process of acceleration of working class formation in many parts of the world, the hyperurbanisation process that still continues at an intensifying pace, and the mass movement of people )and mainly workers) across space. Of course, this brings with it growing cultural, ethnic, gender and other differentiations among the working class )something that much of recent analysis really does not take into account), but also intensifies the geographical processes that are so central to the current restructuring.

It is in this context not surprising, therefore, to find a great number of geographical tensions, conflicts and struggles arising in many parts of the world, many of which are not even remotely emancipatory, liberating or empowering. Consider, for example, the formidable barriers erected to dissuade migrating labour forces to move freely in search of a livelihood. It is not only events such as the labour unrest in South Korea, the emergence of the first European‐wide strike and workers' action against the closure of the Brussels Renault factory )a closure that had everything to do with overproduction in the sector and little with globalisation), the genocide in Central Africa, the resistance against the draconian austerity programme in France, Italy and Germany, and the rise of anti‐internationalist and deeply regionalist struggles that bring out the profound spatial tensions and contradictions that arise out of the maelstrom of spatial transformations wrought from recent changes in the organisation of capital circulation processes, but also from the recent waves of plant closures, company restructuring and bank collapses.

Scale, Governance and the Mediation of Power

The political economy of capitalism is, as alluded to above, a process of continuous transformation of its temporal and spatial horizons. The molecular strategies of capital as mobilised by a myriad of atomistic actors produce rhizomatic geographical mappings that consist of complex combinations and layers of nodes and linkages, which are interconnected in proliferating networks and flows of money, information, commodities and people. The flows that shape and define these networks are of course local at every moment )Latour 1993). Over the past few years, the networked ordering of the economy has become simultaneously more localised or regionalised, on the one hand, and transnationalised, on the other. Authors as diverse as Krugman )1995), Ohmae )1995) and Scott )2000) have pointed out that economic growth is predicated upon locally and/or regionally networked clusters of companies that are globally organised and active. Whether one considers the archetypical example of Silicon Valley, the geographical clusters of companies in ‘the Third Italy’ or the concentration of financial services in Manhattan or the City of London, each illustrates this process of intense territorial concentration combined with a global reach and outlook. In other words, a scalar transformation of the networks of economic organisation has taken place. Of course, the tensions, conflicts and socio‐spatial power geometries that infuse the networks render them inherently unstable, permeable and prone to conflict.

In addition, these economic )and partially cultural and social) networks cannot operate independently from or outside a parallel political or institutional organisation, i.e. a set of territorially constructed institutional arrangements that simultaneously provide some social coherence while permitting and encouraging the extended rearrangement of these economic networks )Jessop 2002). In other words, the economic moment requires its own ‘outside’ in order to function. Without territorially organised political or institutional arrangements )like the state or other forms of governing) that regulate markets, money and ownership, and organise security and parts of service delivery, the economic order would irrevocably break down.

It has always been the terrain of the political where these tensions were fought, mediated and negotiated, resulting in ever‐changing forms of territorial or geographical organisation and the emergence of territorially shifting forms of governance. For a long time and still today, the national state has been singled out as the pre‐eminent locus for the crystallisation and resolution of these tensions and conflicts. This has been and still is an important scale for the regulation and negotiation of social, economic and cultural life and for the articulation of the aforementioned processes of de‐territorialisation/re‐territorialisation. Yet, the historical geography of capitalism and its restless wrestling with the more enduring characteristics of social and political space have always made existing forms of territorial organisation porous, unstable and prone to transgressions and transformations. The production of space through the perpetual reworking of the networks of flows of capital circulation and accumulation discards existing spatial configurations and scales of governance, while new ones are produced. For example, as soon as the Westphalian order was completed by the mid 20th century, it had already begun to transcend itself as national boundaries became more porous and both sub‐ and super‐national scales of governance and organisation became more prominent )Brenner et al. 2003).

This deconstruction and reconstruction of spatial scales that are often taken for granted as naturalised units for social existence )much of which is perpetuated in some of the geographical and international relations literature, which often unproblematically singles out particular scalar forms—such as the local, the regional, the national or the global—as the pivotal terrain for analysis) reshuffles social power relationships in important ways. During the 20th century, it was undoubtedly the national state that became the emblematic expression of the pre‐eminent political form of territorial organisation.

In the present context of a significant process of rescaling, in which not only the scale of the national state but also other scales of governance and of regulation of social conflict and social reproduction are reshuffled, the ideology of an ungovernable and largely abstract process of global reorganisation takes hold easily. As pointed out above, this ideology has become a powerful weapon in the struggle over the content, democratic accountability and forms of power that emerge in the new scalar configurations that are under construction. It is exactly this revamping of spatial scales and their nested articulation that I believe is central to the current process of geographical reorganisation and may provide a more fertile terrain for coming to grips with the political economy of contemporary change )see also Swyngedouw 1997a).

The Reconfiguration of Scale and the Process of ‘Glocalisation’

Defining Scale: The Dialectic of Territorialities and Networks

In the remainder of this paper, the current process of transformation will be considered from the vantage point of the reorganisation of the geographical scales of economic and political life. In particular, the tensions between the rhizomatic rescaling of the economic networks and flows on the one hand and the territorial rescaling of scales of governance on the other will be the central leitmotiv. Before I can embark on this, I shall briefly summarise the central themes of a ‘scalar’ perspective:

1.	Scalar configurations, conceived off either as regulatory order)s) or as networks, as well as their discursive and theoretical representation, are always already a result, an outcome of the perpetual movement of the flux of socio‐spatial dynamics. The theoretical and political priority therefore resides never in a particular geographical scale, but rather in the process through which particular scales become constituted and subsequently transformed. There is a continuous tension between ‘scales of regulation’ and ‘scales of networks’. As the latter contract and expand through processes of de‐ and re‐territorialisation, the former emerge as institutionalised territorial compromises that mediate processes of cooperation and competition. Consider, for example, how the contested making and remaking of the European Union constitutes exactly such territorial compromise between territorial ‘ordering’ and the competitive reorganisation of economic and social networks.
2.	Struggling to command a particular scale in a given socio‐spatial conjuncture can be of eminent importance. Spatial scales are never fixed, but are perpetually redefined, contested and restructured in terms of their extent, content, relative importance and interrelations. The continuous reshuffling and reorganisation of spatial scales are integral to social strategies and serve as the arena where struggles for control and empowerment are fought.
3.	A process‐based approach to scale focuses attention on the mechanisms of scale transformation through social conflict and political‐economic struggle. These socio‐spatial processes change the importance and role of certain geographical scales, reassert the importance of others and on occasion create entirely new scales. These scale redefinitions in turn alter the geometry of social power by strengthening the power and the control of some while disempowering others.
4.	Smith refers to this process as the ‘jumping of scales’, a process that signals how politics are spatialised )1984); in other words, how scalar political strategies are actively mobilised as parts of strategies of empowerment and disempowerment. As the scalar ‘gestalt’ changes, the social power geometry within and between scales changes.
5.	There is a simultaneous, ‘nested’ )like a Russian doll) yet partially hierarchical relationship between territorial scales, while networked scales can relationally stretch or contract )Jonas 1994, 261; Smith, 1984; 1993). Clearly, social power along gender, class, ethnic or ecological lines refers to the scale capabilities of individuals and social groups. Engels has already suggested how the power of the labour movement, for example, depends on the scale at which it operates, and labour organisers have always combined strategies of controlling place)s) with building territorial alliances that extend over a certain space )[1845] 1968).
6.	Scale configurations change as power shifts, both in terms of their nesting and interrelations and in terms of their spatial extent. In the process, significant new social, economic or political scales are constructed, while others disappear or are altered.
7.	Scale also emerges as the site where cooperation and competition find a )fragile) standoff. For example, national unions are formed through alliances and cooperation from lower‐scale movements and a fine balance needs to be perpetually maintained between the promise of power yielded by national organisation and the competitive struggle that derives from local loyalties and inter‐local struggle.
8.	Processes of scale formation are cut through by all manner of fragmenting, divisive and differentiating processes )nationalism, localism, class differentiation, competition and so forth). Scale mediates between cooperation and competition, between homogenisation and differentiation, between empowerment and disempowerment )Smith 1984; 1993).
9.	The mobilisation of scalar narratives, scalar politics and scalar practices, then, becomes an integral part of political power struggles and strategies. This propels considerations of scale to the forefront of emancipatory politics.

Scale Transformations

In sum, spatial ‘scale’ has to be theorised as something that is ‘produced’; a process that is always deeply heterogeneous and contested. If the capacity to appropriate place is predicated upon controlling space, then the scale over which command lines extend will strongly influence this capacity to appropriate place. More importantly, as the power to appropriate place is always contested and struggled over, then the alliances social groups or classes forge over a certain spatial scale will shape the conditions of appropriation and control over place and have a decisive influence over relative socio‐spatial power positions. All this suggests that the continuous reshuffling and reorganisation of spatial scales are an integral part of social strategies and struggles for control and empowerment. In a context of heterogeneous social, cultural, economic and ecological regulations, organised at the corporeal, local, regional, national or international level, mobile people, goods and capital and hypermobile information )networked) flows permeate and transgress these scales in ways that can be deeply exclusive and disempowering for those operating at other scale levels )Smith 1988a; 1988b). Geographical configurations as a set of interacting and nested scales )the ‘gestalt of scale’) become produced as temporary stand‐offs in a perpetual transformative, and on occasion transgressive, socio‐spatial power struggle. These struggles change the importance and role of certain geographical scales, reassert the importance of others, sometimes create entirely new significant scales, but—most importantly—these scale redefinitions alter and express changes in the geometry of social power by strengthening the power and control of some while disempowering others )see also Swyngedouw, 1993; 1996a). This is exactly the process that Smith refers to as the ‘jumping of scales’, a process that signals how politics are spatialised by mechanisms of stretching and contracting objects across space )1993):

This )stretching process) is a process driven by class, ethnic, gender and cultural struggles. On the one hand, domineering organizations attempt to control the dominated by confining the latter and their organizations to a manageable scale. On the other hand, subordinated groups attempt to liberate themselves from these imposed scale constraints by harnessing power and instrumentalities at other scales. In the process, scale is actively produced. )Jonas 1994, 258)

The historical geography of capitalism exemplifies this process of territorial ‘scalar’ construction of space and the contested production of scale. Capitalists have usually been very sensitive to and have skilfully strategised around issues associated with the geographical scale of their operations, while paying careful attention to the importance of controlling greater spaces in their continuous power struggle with labour and with other capitalists. Similarly, effective oppositional strategies have equally been sensitive to issues of scale. Consider, for example, how environmental movements have occasionally been successful in mobilising local issues into performative political strategies at higher scales.

Scale emerges as the site for control and domination, but also as the arena where cooperation and competition find a fragile stand‐off. For example, national unions are formed through alliances and cooperation from lower‐scale movements. A fine balance needs to be perpetually maintained between the promise of power yielded from national organisation and the competitive struggle that derives from local loyalties and inter‐local struggle. Similarly, cooperation and competition among capitals is also deeply scaled )Herod 1991; Smith and Dennis 1987). Of course, the process of de‐territorialisation/re‐territorialisation shatters spatial scales and new‐scaled configurations emerge as boundaries are transgressed and new frontiers erected. During periods of great social, economic, cultural, political and ecological turmoil and disorder, when temporal and spatial routines are questioned, broken down and reconfigured, important processes of geographical rescaling take place that interrogate existing power lines while constructing new ones. Over the past twenty years or so, this is exactly what seems to have happened. The new political‐economic and cultural‐ecological conditions have once again shattered existing boundaries, produced new ones and rearticulated spatial scales in ways that are at times promising and at others disturbing. These new scale formations are never socially neutral. Both scales of regulation/reproduction and of production have changed, but while social regulation tends to have moved to the individual, the private or the bodily, some scales of production and reproduction )but by no means all) have asserted a greater spatial reach and extent. In the next section, some of the central transfigurations of scale and the emerging new ‘gestalt of scale’ will be documented.

The ‘Fordist’ Production of Scale and Its Contradictions

The pivot of West European ‘Fordist’ regulation centred on the national state. This was the pre‐eminent scale at which conflicts were contested and compromises settled )Swyngedouw 1990; Altvater, 1993; Jessop 1993a; 2002). The foundations of the Fordist state and the social regulation of labour relations resided specifically in the struggle of the labour movement to transcend local shopfloor struggle and to ‘jump scales’ through gaining increasing power at the level of the state. Similarly, the Keynesian view of macro‐economic policies constructed a precarious but increasingly important bond between the state and national private capital. An institutionalised tripartite setting was created whose main focus was on treading a fine line between competition/struggle on the one hand and cooperation/compromise on the other, particularly around the production/consumption nexus.

Quite clearly, command over the accumulation process remained firmly in the hands of private capital that took an outspoken agglomerated urban‐regional form, while the reproduction process became increasingly centred on the nuclear family and its associated sexual/gender divisions. The regulatory homogenisation across national space of a series of socioeconomic aspects )wages, social policy, state intervention, socioeconomic norms, rules and procedures) was articulated with a highly uneven local and regional development process. Although ‘the local state’ scale lost much of its power, it remained the arena for a whole host of centrally important ‘community politics’. Consequently, the national state became, both in theory and in practice, the pre‐eminent and almost naturalised scale through which both subnational and international processes were articulated and understood.

This state‐based regulation altered the form and structure of competition, partly as a result of the greater scale at which individual capitals began to operate. The productivity/consumption nexus permitted a steady expansion of the ‘national’ economy. However, the gradual internationalisation of production and accumulation contributed to more intense competition in the international arena )Moulaert and Swyngedouw 1989). This growing internationalisation of production—particularly from the mid–1950s onwards—amidst a mosaic of nationally regulated consumption spaces would prove to be a fundamental dilemma. While the networks of capital ‘jumped scales’ for the organisation of production through both intensification and extension of their flows and networks, consumption and reproduction remained fundamentally nationally regulated. In addition, the regulation of the various functions of money operated at a variety of scales. During the inter‐war period, money was predominantly nationally regulated, without an international anchoring value. The collapse of the financial system in the early 1930s reinforced calls for some form of international cooperation to prevent beggar‐thy‐neighbour devaluationary policies without, however, sacrificing international competition.

The Bretton Woods agreement embodied such compromise; a compromise that remained shaky, contested and subject to change as the economic internationalisation process accelerated during the post‐war period. Only the hegemonic power of the US could maintain some sort of relative cohesion. This compromise was anchored on the dollar–gold standard, which stabilised the international monetary system by providing a relatively secure container of value. However, while regulating the value of money was cemented into the rules of the Bretton Woods agreement and policed by the International Monetary Fund )see Swyngedouw 1992a; 1996b; Leyshon and Tickell 1994), credit or the issuing of money, in contrast, remained firmly at the level of the nation‐state. In short, different forms and functions of money were regulated at different scales, which, of course, would result in serious tensions and friction due to the conflicting nesting of these various spatial scales.

In short, ‘Fordism’ was not a condition or stable configuration. Rather, it refers to a dynamic, contested and always precarious process of socio‐spatial change during which a nested set of new or redefined spatial scales were produced. During the decades of the making and breaking of Fordism, new scale forms and new tensions between scales have gradually emerged. Out of this maelstrom scales have been redefined, restructured and rearticulated.

Rescaling ‘Glocal’ Disorders: The Post‐Fordist Conundrum

What is generally referred to as ‘post‐Fordism’—a problematic generic term that now seems to cover almost everything and thus nothing in particular )see Amin 1994)—is a series of a highly contested, deeply contradictory and variegated processes and power struggles that often revolve around scale, the control over particular scales, the content of existing scales, the construction of new scales and the articulation between scales. Indeed, the so‐called ‘crisis of Fordism’ implies a significant territorial rescaling of a series of regulatory practices )see Moulaert et al. 2001; Peck and Tickell 1994; Jessop 1994a). In particular, regulatory codes, norms and institutions are spatially shifted from one scale to another. These rescalings are invariably highly contested and the outcome varies considerably from scale to scale, both horizontally and vertically. The nature, substance and configuration of the new scales and their ‘nesting’ attest to changing relative power positions of social groups and classes. Nevertheless, the accumulation imperative )which is, of course, always place bound) and the quest to sustain the circulation of capital seems to be of paramount importance, although the specific mechanisms through which this takes places can vary enormously from one scale to another. The overall pattern is one that I have termed elsewhere ‘glocalisation’ )Swyngedouw 1992a; 1992b; see also Luke 1994) and refers to )1) the contested restructuring of the institutional level from the national scale both upwards to supra‐national or global scales and downwards to the scale of the individual body or the local, urban or regional configurations and )2) the strategies of global localisation of key forms of industrial, service and financial capital. In what follows, we shall first consider the networked rescaling of the economy and then move on to articulating the territorial rescaling of scales of governance

Rescaling Economic Networks/Rescaling Territorialities of Governance

The Rescaling of the Economy

The economic success of cities and regions is highly dependent on the local sectoral and institutional configuration and on the framework of governance in which regional or urban economies are embedded. As locational opportunities expand and locational capabilities increase, so does the importance of ‘local’ characteristics of cities and regions in maintaining or asserting their global competitive advantages. Indeed, the enduring economic success of regional configurations such as Ile de France, London, Bavaria, Flanders, Randstad Holland and others suggests that competitive success is indebted to specific and historically created forms of territorial and socio‐institutional organization )Swyngedouw 2000a). These regional economies are characterised by often highly specialised local or regional fillières that are embedded in local institutional, political or cultural frameworks. They often cooperate locally but compete at a global scale )Salais and Storper 1993; Swyngedouw 2000c). A variety of terms have been associated with such territorial economies, such as ‘learning regions’ )Maskell and Malmberg 1995), ‘intelligent regions’ )Cooke and Morgan 1991), milieux innovateurs )Aydalot 1986), ‘reflexive economies’ and ‘competitive cities’ (Philo and Kearns 1994), etc. At the same time, new organisational strategies have been identified, such as the ‘embedded’ firm )Grabher 1993), vertical disintegration )Scott 1988), strategic alliances and so forth. Similar processes can be identified in the service sector )Moulaert and Djellal 1990).

Surely, such territorial production systems are articulated with national, supra‐national and global networks. In fact, intensifying competition on an expanding scale is paralleled exactly by the emergence of locally/regionally sensitive production milieux. Yet, these localised or regionalised production complexes are organisationally and, in terms of trade and other networks, highly internationalised and globalised. The insertion of firms in a dense network of particular regional production milieux is part and parcel of a strategy of globalisation and global integration. In fact, the ‘forces of globalisation’ and the ‘demands of global competitiveness’ prove powerful vehicles for the economic elites to shape local conditions in their desired image: high productivity, low direct and indirect wages and an absentee state )Group of Lisbon 1994). Companies are simultaneously, intensely local and intensely global.

These ‘glocalising’ production processes and inter‐firm networks cannot be separated from ‘glocalising’ levels of governance. The rescaling of the regulation of wage and working conditions or the de‐nationalisation/privatisation of important companies and public services throughout Europe, for example, simultaneously opens up international competition and necessitates a greater sensitivity to subnational conditions. The bureaucratic regulation of the wage nexus at the scale of the national state )something that the labour movement struggled hard for throughout most of the 20th century) became more problematic as a significant part of the production system super‐nationalised. The globalisation of the firm and of the economy paralleled a decentralisation of the regulation of wage and other working conditions. The lowering of the scales of the regulation of work and of social reproduction coincided with an increasing scale in the organisation of the economy and the forces of production. This is just one of many possible examples of the growing separation between the networked scales of production and the territorial scales of regulating reproduction.

This internationalisation process also questioned traditional forms of oligopolistic competition and inter‐firm collaboration within states, which was increasingly replaced by global strong competition between ‘glocalising’ companies. The nesting and articulation of geographical scales becomes internalised in firm and inter‐firm networks that reach from the local to the global and back again. Surely, success in these matters is always fleeting and permanent restructuring and reorganisation are central to maintaining a competitive position in a world where boundaries are shattered )while new ones are created). This became particularly acute as a number of cities, regions and countries became increasingly less competitive and felt the sting of de‐industrialisation and crisis, while others prospered relatively.

Differentiation and fragmentation at all levels became the corollary of internationalisation, globalisation and the creeping imposition of a total)ising) commodity culture. As Debord argued a long time ago, the commodity as a heterogeneous and perpetually changing and expanding spectacle has attained the total occupation of social life )1970). The tensions between a set of decidedly local/regional cultures, the growing inter‐ and intra‐regional disparities and the fragmentation, pulverisation and proliferation of bodily, local, regional or national identities in a homogenising global cultural landscape and consumption norm prompted more intense resistance to the imposed cultural norms, which revolved increasingly around the tyranny of a spreading market‐Stalinism )Robertson 1995).

Perhaps the most pervasive process of ‘glocalisation’ and redefinition of scales operates through the financial system )Swyngedouw 1996b). When the Bretton Woods agreement broke down in 1972 as a result of the tensions associated with differential territorial scalings of regulating money on the one hand and the expanding scale of production and trade on the other, the global financial order was shattered. In the interstices of this mosaic, new global–local arrangements, new money flows and new geographical configurations would emerge. As Jeelof )1989) has already pointed out, the volatility in the money markets made production planning extremely risky and uncertain. The internationalisation of production and world planning of production chains and input/output flows, which characterised much of the post‐war international division of labour, became a high‐risk strategy. Different locations of production as well as sites of production and sites of commercialisation were located in different currency zones and subject to often rapid and dramatic relative exchange‐rate fluctuations. This made a shambles of long‐term corporate strategic location planning.

A new mosaic of uneven development emerged in which the financial sector itself, now liberated from the cocoon of fixed exchange rates, would itself become an key arena for capital accumulation and feverish expansion. The ‘liberalisation’ of the global financial system signalled the end of an integrated monetary world space and, consequently, reaffirmed a mosaic of different national moneys. Most currencies would fluctuate in relative value vis‐à‐vis each other, depending on the combination of national economic and monetary policies on the one hand and international money flows on the other. Attempts to regulate money at new supra‐national, subglobal )such as the successive attempts to stabilise currencies within the European Union) and geographical scale levels proved to be extremely difficult and rife with geostrategic tensions and inter‐state rivalries. Of course, national monetary and economic policies matter, but in ways that are profoundly different from the mechanisms that operated during the Bretton Woods era. In particular, monetary policy began to figure as a key vehicle in economic growth policies as Keynesian domestic demand‐based expansion policies began to give way to strategies aimed at expanding international trade and at achieving an improved competitive position in the global market place )Drache and Gertler 1991).

More importantly perhaps, the liberated money markets and the volatility of the international money markets created a new market environment. Buying and selling currencies and speculating on exchange rate fluctuations allowed for the development and rapid growth of a speculative foreign exchange )Forex) and, from the mid‐1980s, a burgeoning derivatives market )see Swyngedouw 1996b). Interestingly enough, making money by buying and selling money and speculating on future currency values )however near this future may be) became a prime vehicle for accumulation. Money as expressions of value‐in‐motion and capital as claims to future )labour) time established an arena for frenzied financial activities. Speculating on future values and the buying‐of‐time proceeded through the creation of new spaces and spatial relations. For example, the Forex market grew from a modest US$15 billion in 1970, when most deals were directly related to settling trade, to well over US$2 trillion today.

The bulk is driven by constant hedging, arbitrage and speculative position‐taking in the international financial markets, which are organised as extensive networks of nodal points and inter‐nodal flows. Almost all deals involve spatial transfers of money as well as changes in the relative positions of a state's currency values )which, in turn, influence interest rates, buying capacity, competitive positions, trade flows, monetary and fiscal policy and so forth). This volatility enables speculative gain, while the flows of money further contribute to reaffirming these fluctuations. The bumpy history of the European Monetary Union, for example, illustrates how the confrontation of national demands and global financial integration and strategies result in perpetual tensions and continuous friction )Gros and Thygesen 1992; Leyshon and Thrift 1992). The hotly contested implementation and adoption of the euro is an example of how a particular politics of scale is inserted in this emerging new scalar gestalt of money.

The Rescaling of the State and Other Institutional Forms

What seems to be of great importance in this context of a glocalising economy, culture and politics is the changing position of the scale of the state. While this was although by no means the only pivotal scale for the regulation and contestation of a whole series of socioeconomic and class practices in the post‐war period, the relative position and importance of the state are shifting in decisive ways. In a context in which the capital/labour nexus was nationally regulated while the circulation of capital spiralled out to encompass ever larger spatial scales, there was a concerted attempt to make the ‘market imperative’ the ideologically and politically hegemonic legitimisation of institutional reform. This took shape through a variety of processes that combined )1) the ‘hollowing out’ of the national state with )2) more authoritarian and often softly but sometimes openly repressive political regimes. Let us consider just a few of these key rescaling processes and identify the shifting power geometry associated with this ‘glocalisation’ of the state or other institutional or regulatory forms.

First, the regulation of capital/labour relations tended to devolve from some kind of national collective bargaining to highly localised forms of negotiating wages and working conditions. The UK, for example, has moved a long way towards this and continuous pressure is exercised to make unions and workers accept ‘local’ pay deals. Similar movements have been documented elsewhere )see Cox and Mair 1991; Ohmae 1995), but, depending on particular political configurations, resistance to these movements toward downscaling has been more successful in some countries, such as Sweden and Germany, than in others. Second, the ‘Schumpeterian Workfare State’ )see Jessop 1993b; 1994b; Peck and Jones 1994) has either abolished a series of institutionalised regulatory procedures to leave them organised by the market )Christopherson 1992) and, consequently, by the power of money. Alternatively, they are replaced by more local )‘local’ can take a variety of spatial scale forms from local constituencies or cities to entire regions [or a combination of them]) institutional and regulatory forms. Needless to say, this ‘jumping of scales’ alters relative power positions as inter‐local cooperation is replaced by inter‐local competition. This increases the power of those that can ‘jump scales’ vertically or horizontally at the expense of those whose command of scale is more limited. Third, the restructuring of and often outright attack on national welfare regimes equally leads to a downscaling )in size and space) of public money transfers, while privatisation permits a socially exclusive form of protection, shielding the bodies of the powerful, while leaving the bodies of the poor to their own devices.

In short, the hollowing out of the welfare state rescales relations to the level of the individual body through powerful processes of social, cultural, economic or ethnic exclusion. Fourth, the interventionism of the state in the economy is equally rescaled, either downwards to the level of the city or the region, where public/private partnerships shape an entrepreneurial practice and ideology needed to successfully engage in an intensified process of inter‐urban competition )Harvey 1989) or upwards to supra‐ or trans‐national scales. The latter is manifested in albeit highly contested and still rather limited attempts to create a super‐national form of governance )such as, for example, the European Union). In a different sort of way institutions such as NAFTA )North American Free Trade Association), GATT )General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and others provide testimony to similar processes of upscaling the form of governing. Furthermore, a host of informal global or quasi‐global political arenas have been formed. The Organisation of Petroleum‐Exporting Countries )OPEC) may have been among the first and most publicised quasi‐state organisations, but other examples abound: the G–7 meetings, the Group of 77, the Club of Paris and other ‘informal’ gatherings of ‘world’ leaders attempt to regulate )parts of) the global political economy. Of course, the competitive rivalry among these ‘partners’ prevent some form of effective cooperation that could otherwise ultimately lead to some frightening form of a global authoritarian state‐form.

Fifth, in addition to the socially deeply uneven, socio‐spatially polarising and selectively disempowering effects of the ‘jumping of scales’ that exemplifies this ‘glocalisation’ of the state or of other forms of governance, this rescaling of governance often takes place through disturbingly undemocratic procedures by an increasingly authoritarian governing apparatus. The double rearticulation of political scales )downward to the regional/local level; upward to the EU, NAFTA, GATT, etc.; and outward to private capital) leads to political exclusion, a narrowing of democratic control and, consequently, a redefinition )or rather a limitation) of citizenship. In short, the ‘glocalisation’ or territorial rescaling of institutional forms leads to more autocratic, undemocratic and authoritarian )quasi‐)state apparatuses )Swyngedouw 1996a; 2000a; 2000b).

In sum, although the degree of change and the depth of its impact are still contested, it is beyond doubt that the 19th/20th‐century political formations of articulating the state/civil‐society relationship through different forms of representative democracy, which vests power in hierarchically structured transcendental state‐forms, is complemented by a proliferating number of new institutional forms of governing that exhibit rather different characteristics )Baiocchi 2001; Curtin 1999; Taylor 1999). The traditional state‐form in liberal democracies is theoretically and practically articulated through forms of politics that legitimise state power by vesting it within the political gift of citizens. The new forms of governance exhibit a fundamentally different relationship between power and citizenship and, consequently, constitute a new form of governability )Swyngedouw et al. 2002).

Contrary to state‐based arrangements, which are hierarchical and top‐down command‐and‐control forms of setting rules and exercising power )but recognised as legitimate via socially agreed conventions of representation, delegation, accountability and control), governance systems are presumably based on horizontal, network and interactive relations between independent but interdependent actors that share a high degree of trust, despite internal conflict and oppositional agendas, within inclusive participatory institutional or organisational associations )Schmitter 2002). These are systems of negotiation and convenant that operate beyond the state, albeit not independently from the state. The participants in such forms of governance partake )or are allowed to partake) in these networked relational forms of decision making on the basis of the ‘stakes’ they hold with respect to the issues these forms of governance attempt to address )see Schmitter 2002, 62–63). These new forms of governance fundamentally transform state/civil‐society relations )see Swyngedouw et al. 2002).

Mobilising Scale Politics

Engaging, restructuring and occupying places while metabolising physical and social nature takes places through conflicting socio‐spatial processes. The transformative continuation of socio‐spatial relations that operate through deeply empowering/disempowering mechanisms produces a nested set of related and interpenetrating spatial scales that define the arenas of struggle where conflict is mediated and regulated and compromises are settled. Socio‐spatial struggle and political strategising, therefore, often revolve around scale issues, and shifting balances of power are often associated with a profound rearticulation of scales or the production of an altogether new ‘gestalt of scale’. The socio‐spatial transformations that have characterised the past two decades or so are testimony to such scale restructurings through which older power relations are transformed. The disturbing effects of these recent ‘glocalisation’ processes suggest that the spaces of the circulation of capital have been upscaled, while regulating the production/consumption nexus has been downscaled, shifting the balance of power in important polarising or often plainly exclusive ways. The rescaling of the state and the production of new articulations between scales of governance, in turn, redefines and reworks the relationship between state/governance and civil society or between state power and the citizen.

The social struggle, therefore, that has been waged over the past decades revolved decidedly around scale issues. It seems to me deeply disturbing, however, to see the power of money and an homogenising imperialist culture take control of ever larger scales, while very often the ‘politics of resistance’ seem to revel in some sort of ‘militant particularism’ )see Harvey 1996) in which local loyalties, identity politics and celebrating the different Other)s) attest to an impotence to embrace an emancipatory and empowering politics of scale. To be sure, identity, difference and place loyalty are central in any emancipatory project, but solidarity, inter‐place bonding and collective resistance demand a decidedly scaled politics. In fact, empowering strategies in the face of the global control of money flows and competitive whirlwinds of ‘glocal’ industrial, financial, cultural and political corporations demand coordinated action, cross‐spatial alliances and effective solidarity )Harvey 2003). Strategising around the politics of scale necessitates negotiating through difference and similarity to formulate collective strategies without sacrificing local loyalties and militant particularisms.

Opposition groups, whether organised around working class, gender, environmental or other politics, are usually much better and empowering in their strategies to organise in place, but often disempowered and fragmented when it comes to building alliances and organising collaboration over space )Harvey and Swyngedouw 1993). In short, what is disturbing in contemporary politics of resistance is not that the paramount importance of scale is not recognised, but rather that opposition groups have failed to transcend the confines of a ‘militant particularism’ or ‘particular localism’. The angst for negating the voice of the Other has overtaken the resistance to the totalising powers of money of capital. Ironically, the retreat from collaboration and coalition formation out of fear of perverting the Other's identity and of annihilating difference swings the leverages of power, of marginalisation and exclusion, decidedly in the direction of the totalising and homogenising forces of global commodification and repressive competition, controlled by ‘glocal’ elites.

An inclusionary politics of scale necessitates a vision and strategy in which the current one‐sided obsession with a politics of identity in which the body has become a central site is replaced by a rescripting and reconstruction of group affinities. Resisting the totalising and globalising forces of money and capital accumulation demands forging ‘scalar’ alliances that are sensitive to geographical difference and uniqueness. The successful struggle of the South Korean labour movement in the first months of 1997 to contest the imposition of more flexible labour regulations )necessary—so the autocratic state insisted—to maintain South Korea's international competitive stance) and their success in producing a national alliance of opposition forces suggest how a politics that is sensitive to issues of scale can bring a substantial leverage to contest socially regressive regulatory reforms. The sprawling proletarianisation in South‐East Asia and elsewhere that is increasingly resistant to control by the market‐Stalinist regimes that often deny even basic citizenship rights in these places begins to produce a set of alliances that might transcend the idiosyncrasies of local resistances through a ‘jumping of scales’ that could begin to undermine the power of capital to command space. In Europe, the closure of the Brussels Renault plant saw the first successful supra‐national labour mobilisation. In the wake of the shockwaves that the unexpected closure of the plant sent through European civil society, the first European‐wide strike was organised as well as the first European labour march in Paris to protest Renault's strategies. The recognition of how scalar strategies can be utilised and how alliances across space can be built will affect the balance of power and prompt a revision of entrepreneurial strategies. The Renault fight may have been lost, but neither Renault nor any other multi‐location company will contemplate enacting the scenario of the Brussels closure again. These politics of scale can often forge highly unique and often unlikely alliances. The German consumer boycott of Shell in the aftermath of its double socio‐ecological disaster )the Brent Spar and the genocide of the Ogoni people in Nigeria) equally suggests how mobilising scale politics proves to be a potentially successful strategy in efforts to force different social, political or ecological configurations.

This is squarely where the challenge in Europe resides as well. The fight for representation in key European decision‐making forums, increased power for the European parliament, a more inclusive voting system that defines rights of citizenship even for those without a European legal nationality, the construction of tripartite forms of negotiation at European level, international workers' representation on the board of international companies and a European‐wide redistributive fiscal system are, among others, small pointers in the direction of an empowering politics of scale that can reshuffle power relationships and produce a ‘gestalt of scale’ respectful of citizenship rights and one that promotes inclusion and cooperation.