Bureaucratic Competition in the Policy Process

Recent scholarship has emphasized the important role that strategic bureaucratic actors play in the formulation of public policy. This study builds on that research by exploring the ways in which agencies strategically compete with one another over the content and character of public policy. Using insights from the literature that explicitly models bureaucratic competition, the study adapts an existing model of policymaking in subsystems to generate expectations about the causes and consequences of bureaucratic competition in the policy process. Finally, the article explores the utility of these propositions through a case study of a protracted policy battle over the management of natural resources in the western United States.     

Selling Urban Housing in London. Can High-density Urban Living Be Sold to a Sceptical British Public? Distinction,Mobility, and Control over Environment

Marketing materials from brownfield housing developments in London are analysed in order to evaluate the extent to which the British government's 'urban renaissance' goals can overcome public scepticism and a historical distaste for high-density urban living. A case study of Tunnel Wharf in Rotherhithe is presented along with a broader analysis of marketing materials from other developments. These marketing efforts suggest that urban living can be successfully sold to some segments of the British public, in large part by playing to cities' natural strengths. However, these sales pitches rely heavily on appeals to such themes as exclusivity and the ability to control one's environment, and thus raise broader questions about the viability and coherence of the urban renaissance vision. Specifically, it is suggested that the psychological response to increased urban densities may imply possible trade-offs between the preservation of countryside and the promotion of 'urbanity' in cities.     

Tacit knowledge transfer via interlocking directorates: A comparison of Canada and the United States

This paper explores geography as a contributing factor to knowledge transfer among Canadian and American firms. We argue that the knowledge networks of the two countries are moving in opposite directions. Canada's network is converging into fewer cities while the American network encompasses a greater number of cities. When the knowledge networks of Canada and the United States are explored, national and local boundaries are found to impede the movement of corporate knowledge. Prior to our discussion on its spatiality, the concept of knowledge is introduced and its relation to individuals and firms of the Canadian and American corporate network is examined.     

‘Thinking of the land in that way’: indigenous sovereignty and the spatial politics of attentiveness at Skwelkwek’welt

Grassroots Secwepemc attempted to stop the expansion of Sun Peaks resort on a site for Indigenous knowledge. I attend to the practice of Indigenous knowledge related to the confrontation and assert that Indigenous sovereignty and identity were outcomes. To make this argument, I investigate the space made for emotion, affect and intuition in the performance of Indigenous knowledge. From a relational materialist position, these more-than-representational forces play an important role in epistemology, ontology, ethics, and subjectivity. Identity therefore materialized in three ways related to feeling(s). As a result of their attunement to these forces, the Secwepemc understood that (non)humans underpin their material being and placed the collective on the political horizon. Furthermore, the practice of Indigenous knowledge encouraged an identity characterized by “attentiveness” to feeling(s) and to the activity of feeling itself. From the perspective of the struggles of subjugated knowledge, I also contextualize the attentiveness at the core of Indigenous knowledge practices as part of a more-than-representational and decolonizing spatial politics.