Playing the scales: A strategy adopted by resistance coalitions for public value creation

This study contributes to the literature on public value from the perspective of resistance movements by describing the strategic actions local actors engage in across spatial scales when confronted by larger-scale hegemonic threats. The study uses a longitudinal participatory approach to examine how local actors organized against a new, state-imposed, and EU-framed regulation that threatened local forms of value creation and livelihood on the Croatian peninsula of Pelješac. The study finds that the appropriation of the dominant organizational logic allows local actors to ‘play the scales'. In so doing, they accomplish the trans-scalar protection of public value creation on the local scale over time. They do so by constructing a translocal alliance that grabs different elements from different local scales. These elements are then used to build a trans-scalar strategy that becomes central to the protection of public value creation. The trans-scalar strategy exerts pressure from various scales and via different actors in the translocal alliance against hegemonic norms and discourses. The findings further suggest that the capacity to play the scales derives from how the dominant organizational logic is repurposed. Playing the scales implies that local actors use knowledge acquired through the translocal alliance to protect public value on their own political scale. This study thus offers a fresh organizational perspective on the emancipatory alternatives needed to protect public value creation in local settings.