Geographies of policy knowledge: The state and corporate dimensions of contemporary policy mobilities

Situated within geographical scholarship on policy mobilities, this article aims to direct attention to the state and corporate dimensions of corporate policy mobilizations as terrains that require further conceptual development. It argues that doing so is important for two reasons. First, it shows that national states should not be seen merely as functional and institutional infrastructures across and through which policies circulate, since national state policymakers also operate as active agents of policy mobilization across space and scale, especially in contexts of strong, centralized governance. Second, it illustrates how the economic dimensions of corporate actors engaged in mobilizing policy deserve more sustained analyses for a better conception of how firms' capitalist agendas shape their participation as policy transfer agents. We suggest that a relational economic geography perspective provides a set of conceptual tools actors, networks, and value to unpack the corporate rationalities and knowledge-sharing processes of firms. Drawing on research conducted on the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Ecocity, we show how national state policymakers and transnational conglomerates are active agents in circulating urban sustainability expertise across space. An appreciation of these geographies of policy knowledge across the state and corporate domains of policy mobilization is a first step towards grasping these varied registers of expertise, and their implications for the form and content of policies on the move. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.