Towards city statecraft

A new theorisation is introduced to explain city governance and infrastructure based upon a geographical political economy conception of city statecraft. Critically reviewing Jim Bulpitt’s original statecraft ideas and their recent take-up in local, regional and urban studies, it forges a more integrated geographical, political and economic understanding, opens up the sub-national level beyond the “low politics†of local government, and focuses upon the agency of state actors across multiple geographical levels and units. City statecraft explains how distinct governing forms, practices and arrangements are mixed and mutated involving national and local state and other actors in particular temporal, spatial and institutional settings. Operationalising this approach to researching financialising city statecraft and infrastructure, the critical case of England in the UK as a lens onto wider processes in an international setting is explained and justified.