David Scott

My research investigates how marketization and managerialization shape the organization and governance of contemporary society, and the political consequences of these processes. Primarily, my work has focused on two key expressions of this trend: 1) the projectification of governance, and 2) the increased reliance on the production of knowledge and expertise as tools of governing.

 
Projectification of Governance

A central focus of my research has been the rise of projectification as a dominant mode of organizing public policy and administration. In my PhD thesis called (Dis)assembling Development: Organizing Swedish Development Aid through Projectification, I examined how project-based forms of governance have come to shape Swedish development aid. Drawing on assemblage thinking, I analyzed how development projects are "assembled" through sustained coordination efforts between stakeholders; activation of expertise in the form of models and best practices; creation of markets; and the adaptation of aid activities to a form of “project time”. My analysis shows how the project format works as a depoliticized form of governing through which bureaucratic and managerial logics displace political conflicts and struggles. A shorter version of this argument appears as a chapter in the book Projectification of Organizations, Governance and Societies: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Implications.

After finishing my PhD thesis, I have continued to study projectification in different contexts. In a project funded by the Swedish Research Council (in which I was not the main applicant), I examined how women’s organizations working in international development translate their activism to fit the technocratic and bureaucratic demands of the project format, effectively “projectifying feminism”. This study (co-authored with Malin Rönnblom) was published in European Journal of Politics and Gender and was selected by the journal in 2023 for its Gender and International Relations student reading list.

Currently, I am extending my research on projectification in the context of green industrial transformation in Northern Sweden. In an ongoing research program funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, I study how local municipalities’ efforts to create sustainable cities are shaped by projectification.

 
The Production of Knowledge and Expertise

A second, and partly overlapping, strand of my research focuses on how knowledge and expertise - fueled by calls for more “evidence-based” policy - are produced and used as governance tools. I have mainly studied the practical labor invested in generating and circulating various forms of knowledge. In a study of the World Bank’s “Gender Innovation Laboratories”, I unraveled the work of designing, implementing, and reporting so-called “impact evaluations”, and how they do not represent the problem of gender inequality in a neutral way but as a problem in need of technocratic and decontextualized knowledge. This type of knowledge production therefore risks depoliticizing gender equality work being conducted in international organizations. Findings from this study (co-authored with Elisabeth Olivius) were published in International Studies Quarterly.

Building on these insights, I have proposed a theoretical framework for examining the various forms of knowledge production - evaluations, analyses, audits, production of indicators etc. - that permeate international development. Drawing on the “practice-theoretical turn” in International Relations scholarship, I argue that development research should become more attentive to the routinized and mundane practices of producing knowledge and how they make development problems knowable and governable. This theoretical framework is elaborated in an article published in Global Studies Quarterly.

 
Theory and Methodology

I often use power-critical approaches rooted in poststructuralist theory in my research. I am particularly interested in how approaches such as discourse theory, governmentality studies, and assemblage thinking can be translated into empirically grounded research strategies, and how they can be mobilized to critically analyze the diffuse and decentralized systems of power characterizing organization and governing in modern society. I find these approaches particularly apt for examining how these forms of governing contribute to fixing and stabilizing reality so it appears natural and uncontestable.

I have a particular interest in assemblage thinking and have mobilized it in several articles. For a Swedish political science audience, where the concept has largely remained unfamiliar, I have also introduced it and contextualized it, including through a Swedish-language contribution to a special issue of Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift, in which I elaborate and demonstrate its analytical value.

I have taught in the following courses:

Political Science A, Political Participation

Political Science B, Thesis Course

Political Science C, Thesis Course

Spatial and Social Planning Programme, Methods and Thesis in Social Science 

Feminist Perspectives on Politics

International Security

Political Participation (distance course)

Power Critical Analysis

Policy Analysis

I have an M.A. in Political Science consisting of studies in Political Science and Spanish at Karlstad University. Before starting my PhD studies, I worked with evaluation of Swedish development aid and with risk and crisis management research.

Scott, D. (2025). Opening up the black box of knowledge production in international development: An intervention from a practice-theoretical perspective. Global Studies Quarterly 5(1), 1-6. 

Scott, D. (2023). Entering the world of project making: Mobilizing assemblage thinking to unpack projects as political constructions. In Fred, M. & Godenhjelm, S (eds.). Projectification of Organizations, Governance and Societies: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Implications (pp. 57-73). Palgrave MacMillan.

Scott, D. & Olivius, E. (2023). Making gender known: Assembling gender expertise in international organizations. International Studies Quarterly 67(2).

Scott, D,. & Rönnblom, M. (2022). Projectifying feminism: Exploring the conditions for feminist politics in international development aid. European Journal of Politics and Gender 5(2), 250-266.

Scott, D. (2021). (Dis)assembling development: Organizing Swedish development aid through projectification. Karlstad: Karlstad University Studies.