Transnationalizing bureaucracies through investment promotion: The case of Informest

Abstract

This paper uses Bourdieu’s notion of field to discuss the historical process of transnationalization in national and local-level bureaucracies, due to the promotion of firms’ internationalization and value chains restructuring. By drawing on the case study of a single Italian state agency, Informest, analyzed within a larger field of public and private actors promoting Italian firms beyond borders, this paper makes the following contributions: (a) it critiques the too narrow notion of the “political” in political geography by claiming the need to include transnational firms and entrepreneurs among the actors shaping changes to the spatial reach of certain state bureaucracies, allowing them to operate across national borders to better serve firms; (b) it argues that Bourdieu’s notion of field is an effective theoretical tool to analyze synergies and mutual influences between bureaucracies and firms value chains; (c) in so doing, it places firms alongside foreign policy and domestic political struggles to explain the emergence of outward investment promotion as a field of transnational bureaucratic practice; (d) It highlights the need to not take bureaucratic organizations for granted; instead, it focuses on the broader (geo)political processes leading to the birth, growth, and occasional death of transnational bureaucracies. In so doing, it places the transnationalization of Italy’s bureaucracy in a specific geohistorical context.