Australian adaptation of UK dealmaking: towards state rescaling?

Place-based funding deals are inter-governmental contracts focused on boosting economic growth and productivity. Informed by policy adaptation scholarship, we compare the policy and practice of City Deals and dealmaking in the UK and Australia to consider the implications for scalar power relations. In the UK, local government is compelled to engage in dealmaking and the rescaling to the supralocal, city-regional level it incentivises. Thus, central-local state relations have been upscaled whilst city-regional powers are highly constrained. In Australia, deals enable the federal government to engage in the ostensible policy domains of state government, but purposive state rescaling is absent. However, the Australian case indicates an appetite for more formalised forms of supralocal governance, should the state tier concur, revealing that dealmaking has opened up alternative ways of working and that local as well as higher tiers of government play a role in shaping rescaling.