Book Review - The politics of scale in policy: scalecraft and education governance

Abstract

My background in urban studies and my time as a doctoral candidate under the supervision of geography Professor Brendan Gleeson placed me in a position to support Papanastasiou’s notion of taking space seriously in policy analysis. However, this book does much more than draw our attention to the theoretical need to consider space in policy: It provides a compelling account of the dominance of scale as a policy and analytical category in European education policy and governance, while also offering a practicable, poststructuralist framework for problematising this ‘scalecraft’ and to bring political geography to play in policy studies. This original contribution demonstrates an empirically grounded approach to what some critical social scientists have been calling for: a move beyond one-dimensionalism to consider the multiple ways sociospatial relations are constituted and organised (e.g. Jessop, Brenner, and Jones 2008). While focused on Europe, overall this book offers both methodological and conceptual insights that might be readily transferred to other studies through the framework of ‘scalecraft.’