Local Entrepreneurialism and State Rescaling in Turkey

Abstract

The paper examines the links between the rise of local entrepreneurialism and state rescaling in a neo-liberal context. The thrust of the article is that the agency of localities, increasingly manifested in the form of local entrepreneurialism, emerges through the political activism of a local bourgeoisie, in pursuit of a multiscalar local accumulation strategy. The article focuses on the spatial interest representation strategies of the local bourgeoisie introducing the concept of scalar strategies of representation, to examine in what ways the broader state rescaling process contributes to the formation of local agency and how this agency influences state rescaling. The city of Gaziantep, Turkey, constitutes its empirical focus.

The emergence of a multiscalar growth regime and scalar tension: the politics of urban development in Songdo New City, South Korea

“…This attempt to form a local agency (Bayirbağ, 2010) failed, blocked by harsh objections from the city government. This incident epitomized the complexity of the institutional environment of the Songdo project today, highlighting the shift from local initiatives and national reluctance to national dominance and local resistance.…”

Similar Processes, Divergent Outcomes

“…For a similar analysis of how two different Turkish provinces have responded to neoliberal economic and political restructuring, see Ataöv and Eraydın (2011). Bayırbağ (2012) also adopted this mode of bottom-up approach that emphasizes local agency in his analysis of local entrepreneurialism in the city of Gaziantep in Turkey. 2.…”

La région entre attentes européennes et trajectoire nationale

“…La régionalisation permettrait en quelque sorte une recentralisation de certaines prérogatives, mettant en place un mode de gouvernement à distance selon la formule R. Epstein (2009). Cette transformation du pouvoir étatique se manifeste à travers la promotion des échelles locales qui, en parallèle d'un retrait de l'Etat, investissent de plus en plus des champs de l'action collective qui ne leur étaient pas dévolus, analysé en terme de re-scaling de l'Etat (Bayirbağ, 2010). Les Agences de développement sont le lieu de rencontre de ces multiples acteurs mobilisés à différentes échelles.…”