On contributions of the ‘Scalar Approach’ in explaining the rise of cities and regions Mustafa Kemal Bayırbağ Mustafa Kemal Bayırbağ’s article discusses the contributions the scale approach offers in understanding the increasing significance of cities and regions as sites of policy-making and as political actors. The article begins with a critical evaluation of the popular perspective on this phenomenon, and benefiting from the openings introduced by the concept of scale, proceeds to discuss how a marxist framework of analysis with a hegemony perspective could be constructed. The main argument is that rise of localities is a part and product of the re- scaling process of the capitalist state. Yet, this is not an external response to the transformation of the capitalist state. The re-scaling of the capitalist state indicates that the hegemonic balance of power, including the local interests defined around a certain capital accumulation strategy has been transforming. In this sense, local interests are in a position to directly shape the re-scaling process of the capitalist state. Yet, this becomes possible through the construction of the locality as a political actor by these interests. In the neoliberal context, the social group which assumes this role is the dominant fraction of the local bourgeoisie. At this point, the scale literature makes an important observation: agents and institutions established at the local and non-local scales with different interests increasingly interact with each other at the local scale and stretch the boundaries of local politics to non- local scales. For this reason, political mobilisations aiming to establish their locality as an agent can become successful only by pursuing an effective politics of scale aimed at influencing the non-local agents and the processes producing non-local scales. In this sense, to be able to comprehend the increasing important of localities as policy-makers, the question of local politics needs to be closely investigated. That sort of a research project should concentrate particularly on the changing role of institutions like labour unions and business chambers in local politics, and the political strategies of scale they follow, due to the fact that they are located on the hegemonic boundary between the state and civil society, now re- drawn with the re-scaling of the capitalist state.