Locality as a meso-level of institutional analysis: theoretical foundations

The article substantiates the theoretical and methodological status of locality as an autonomous level of analysis in political processes. The relevance of this task stems from the need to overcome static hierarchies in the social sciences, where the local has traditionally been viewed as a subordinate element of state or global systems. The model proposed in the article draws on the theoretical advances of two research traditions — political geography and constructivist approaches to institutions. The combination of these traditions enables a research approach in which locality is conceived as an active meso-level of analysis, where local institutional orders are produced through everyday institutional work. Such conceptualization helps move beyond the micro-macro dichotomy in institutional analysis while adding a spatial dimension to it, in which the local ceases to be the periphery of politics and instead becomes the most dynamic field of institutional change. Within this optic, the local level is seen as a heterarchical environment where formal structures and informal practices coexist in a horizontal mode of organization. The approach can be applied to the study of administrative reforms (such as border reforms or the redistribution of competences) and the localization of state policies. In the proposed view, these processes appear not as mere technical optimization or passive adaptation, but as political struggles over the distribution of resources and, crucially, over the construction of meanings.

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