State, Strategy, and Scale in the Competitive City: A Neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Governance of ‘Global Sydney’

Pauline M McGuirk
Additional contact information
Pauline M McGuirk: Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia

Environment and Planning A, 2004, vol. 36, issue 6, 1019-1043

Abstract: In this paper I argue that a neo-Gramscian strategic relational approach (SRA) offers the relational and constructivist perspectives necessary to enhance our concrete and theoretical understandings of urban governance. Moreover, I argue for the utility of using discourse as a productive entry point for neo-Gramscian analysis. Taking a discursive approach to a case study of the governance of ‘global Sydney’ since the mid-1990s, I explore how engaging a neo-Gramscian SRA can connect theoretically informed explanation of the practical accomplishment of urban governance to its broader politico-economic embeddedness and to the territoriality of the state. I explore how the activation of Sydney's governance via the hegemonic project of producing the ‘competitive city’ is shaping a contingent and scaled state form—with a specific (and scaled) institutional form, regime of representation, and range of interventions. Additionally, I consider how counterhegemonic claims and currents shape this process. The relational and constructivist perspectives of the neo-Gramscian SRA ensure that, at all times, urban governance is understood both as a multiscalar production and as a political construction. The result of neo-Gramscian analysis, then, is more theoretically informed and theoretically informative studies of the situated practice of urban governance.

Date: 2004
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a36131 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:36:y:2004:i:6:p:1019-1043

DOI: 10.1068/a36131

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().