Yury Aleksandrovich Pustovoyt,
Candidate of Political Sciences, Associate Professor, National Research Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia; Novosibirsk National Research State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Local Government Structures in the Context of M. DeLanda’s Theory of Assemblage: Emergence, Stabilization and Development Features
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2026-1-10
The article is based on the ontology of complex societies by M. DeLanda as well as the ideas of D. Gerber and D. Wengrow on the alternative ways of constructing power relations in the history of mankind. It proposes to consider a categorical apparatus that allows detecting connections between the type of city and the type of power relations reproduced in it. To determine the framework of the city and its possible combinations with other human and non-human components, the theory of assemblages developed by M. DeLanda is taken as a basis. According to it, the city acts as a “not a single integrity”, a dynamic construction that arises in the course of interaction of various assemblages: people, networks, organizations and infrastructure components (buildings, streets and channels for the movement of matter and energy flows). Drawing on the results of the discussion in American science in the 1960s, the results of modern Russian research and the conclusions of M. Haugaard on the nature of power, it is proposed to operationalize possible types of local power through the concept of “political and administrative regime of the city”. Three complexes of markers are highlighted in it: the level of political competition, compliance with administrative standards, and connectivity of infrastructure. The first two parameters allow to imagine combinations of power relations as poles of a continuum from the “control regime” (no competition and no administrative transparency) to the coordination regime. Focusing on the historically established types of urban assemblages identified by M. DeLanda, such as central cities and port cities, the hypothesis on the relationship between the emergence and stabilization of regimes with complexes of geographical urban conditions, strategies of political actors, and the emergence of infrastructure that meets their goals is tested using historical material from ancient urbanized settlements. The collected historical material confirms that in central cities, local power relations will most likely stabilize as a “control” regime, and in cities that are hubs of trade networks it will do so as a “coordination” regime.
Publishing: 28/02/2026
The article has been received by the editor on 07/07/2025
How to cite: Pustovoyt Yu.A. Local Government Structures in the Context of M. DeLanda’s Theory of Assemblage: Emergence, Stabilization and Development Features // Historical Courier, 2026, No. 1 (45), pp. 126−137. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2026/ISTKURIER-2026-1-10.pdf]
Links: Issue 1 2026
Keywords: local power; urban regime; assemblage; city; elites; infrastructure