Geographies of knowledge: centres and peripheries of local government studies in Europe

Geography of academic knowledge production is not even across the world. In particular, the impact of studies on other researchers is not evenly distributed in geographical space – some studies are more often read and quoted from others. The paper looks at the spatial concentration of the impact of local government studies in European countries, both the current situation and trends over last decades. Conceptually, the study refers to dependency theory (Wallernstein, Prebish) applying concept of global core, peripheries and semi-peripheries to academic life. It defines the basic features of centrality and peripherality in circulation of academic knowledge. Empirically the paper concentrates on local government studies, which are often peripheral in their position to “mother disciplines” (political science, economics, geography, sociology etc.) which exerts specific pressure on scholars conducting their research on local governments. On the basis of bibliometric data referring to both visibility and impact of published research, the index of centrality (based on five variables) is constructed for academic local government studies in 23 European countries (17 countries of Eastern Europe and 6 countries of Western Europe, including two in Scandinavia).