Statecraft, scalecraft and local government reorganisation in Wales

Pemberton, Simon

doi:10.1177/0263774x15610581

Cited by 16 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…3 Devolved regions in action: placing North Wales Wales has a complicated and difficult geography, which reflects the main centres of population being in the south with the cities of Cardiff and Swansea, and a mountainous physical geography to the north, which makes for more rural and dispersed population demographics (Lovering, 1983). This impacts on how policy is applied in Wales with regards to governance (Pemberton, 2016) as the WA attempts to address the problems created by this difficult geography. This, therefore, influences how investment is spread and attracted to Wales as well as how services are provided across the nation.…”

Section: Making Interstitial Spaces: the Growth Deal Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, the paper unpacks the specifics of the NWGD and focuses on how this is seeking to generate economic growth and how this more broadly sits within the devolved nation of Wales as a whole. Wales is a devolved nation within the UK (alongside Scotland and Northern Ireland) and has its own policy trajectory within certain parameters, economic development being one such area (Heley, 2013;Jones et al, 2016;Pemberton, 2016). This is important to comprehend, because with the development of two city-regions across South Wales, this has left a policy vacuum on economic development across the rest of Wales, which the paper highlights within the devolved subnational context of Wales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Urban growth strategies in rural regions: building The North Wales Growth Deal

2019

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This paper discusses the creation of a growth deal for North Wales (The North Wales Growth Deal-NWGD). North Wales is primarily a rural region within the UK, without a core-city or large metropolitan centre. The paper examines how this urban dynamic, fostered around a pushing of the agglomerative growth model out of the city-region, is being transferred largely across rural space and place in terms of how growth is envisioned and how policy is implemented. It contributes to regional studies knowledge by raising the importance of the non-metropolitan city-regional alternatives in the context of the (academic and policy) city-regional debate.

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Section: Making Interstitial Spaces: the Growth Deal Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Urban growth strategies in rural regions: building The North Wales Growth Deal

2019

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“…The paper presents the first attempt to illustrate how scalecraft features in the practices of policy. A small number of existing studies have already pointed to the usefulness of scalecraft in understanding how rescaling policies of statecraft play out in particular contexts (Pemberton, 2016;Pemberton and Searle, 2016). However, this paper has adopted a new approach to exploring scalecraft by engaging with the messiness and everyday dilemmas characterising the working lives of policy actors and revealing how crafting scale is a skill and strategy which policy actors draw on in their everyday work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The practice of scalecraft: Scale, policy and the politics of the market in England’s academy schools

Papanastasiou

2017

Environ Plan A

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This paper builds on geographical understandings of scalar practices and illustrates how they can enrich studies of policymaking, in particular for the area of education policy. It achieves this by integrating a focus on ‘scalecraft’ with an approach to ‘policy as practice’ featuring in critical policy studies. The paper draws on one of the few empirical studies of England’s academy schools policy and analyses the work of actors tasked with implementing the policy in two local authority case studies. Analysis presents a new critical perspective on the academies policy by revealing how policy actors’ work is underpinned by scalecraft practices. The analysis also reveals how scalecraft intersects with marketisation politics to create scalar tensions which profoundly shape the work of policy actors. The paper uses its analytical findings to conceptually develop the relationship between scalar practices and the politics of the market, and to propose new conceptual dimensions for understanding the practice of scalecraft.

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“…A significant concept that has emerged from examining the politics of scale is that of 'scalecraft'. Initially coined by Fraser (2010), the term scalecraft refers to how meanings of scale are not simply constructed by social actors, but that this process requires skill, creativity and strategy (Pemberton 2016;Papanastasiou 2017b). Scalecraft is an interpretive frame for understanding the practices of social actors, making it a category of analysis.…”

Section: Scale: a Fundamentally Political Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking scale in public administration: Scalecraft and frontline work in England's localism agenda

Papanastasiou

2017

Public Administration

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This article reviews how scale concepts feature in governance studies and demonstrates that scales are overwhelmingly used descriptively. Questioning the meaning of scales has been considered peripheral to pursuing the aims of public administration studies, and the article calls for this to change by conceptualizing scale as a political concept. Focusing on the localism agenda reflected in England's ‘academy schools policy’, the article empirically demonstrates the political nature of scale by identifying how ‘the local’ functions as a powerful political discourse. Analysis shows scales being used strategically by frontline workers, exposing scale as a malleable concept for resisting or supporting political agendas—a practice which is called ‘scalecraft’. Revealing contrasting meanings of the local enables analysis to suggest how and why localism has been met with contrasting degrees of controversy. The article suggests how this new approach to scale can be integrated in future studies of governance and frontline work.

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Statecraft, scalecraft and local government reorganisation in Wales

Cited by 16 publications

References 23 publications

Urban growth strategies in rural regions: building The North Wales Growth Deal

Urban growth strategies in rural regions: building The North Wales Growth Deal

The practice of scalecraft: Scale, policy and the politics of the market in England’s academy schools

Rethinking scale in public administration: Scalecraft and frontline work in England's localism agenda

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