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Mobile policies and policy streams: the case of smart metering policy in Australia

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-19, 04:06 authored by Heather LovellHeather Lovell
Geographers have become increasingly engaged with the notion of policy mobility. It is argued that in a globalised world policies have become more internationally mobile: we now live in an era of ‘fast policy’. Drawing on core concepts of mobility, neoliberalisation, and globalisation - and with a background primarily in geography and urban studies - policy mobility scholars have developed new ideas about how policies circulate internationally. In the process, however, theories of policy change developed within political science have been rather overlooked. In this paper it is shown how a political science theory with a shared interest in flows – the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) – is complementary to policy mobilities scholarship. Two issues in particular are illuminated by the MSA: first, what constitutes policy, and, second, the role of the nation state in structuring the possibilities for, and timing of, policy change. In turn, policy mobilities scholarship highlights the different geographies of the multitude of objects, ideas, problems, processes, organisations, and regulations that constitute policy. It also raises questions about the validity of analytically separating politics from policy proposals, as advocated by the MSA. These issues are considered using the empirical case of smart electricity metering policy in Australia, in the period 2000–2015.

Funding

Australian Research Council

History

Publication title

Geoforum

Volume

81

Pagination

100-108

ISSN

0016-7185

Department/School

School of Social Sciences

Publisher

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

Copyright 2017 Elsevier Ltd.

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Smart grids

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