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INTRODUCTION1
As Timothy Mitchell has suggested, the state is difficult to define and its elu-
siveness should be explored as a clue to the state’s very nature.2 While the
state might be embodied by a certain institutional and functional “nature”, it
does not have a universal essence: context makes a difference. At the risk of
oversimplification, one may nonetheless suggest that the state is simultane-
ously a powerful conceptual abstraction, a keyword spanning social sciences
and humanities, a contested social process, and a transforming and histori-
cally contingent assemblage of social practices, discourses, rules, power, and
symbolic and material forms of governance and institutions.3 This assem-
blage is best understood as a process which is continually characterised by
the contextual forms of territory-territoriality which are manifestations of the
structuration of power relations across and between scales, scales which are
also produced and reproduced via this process.
255
256 Sami Moisio and Anssi Paasi
Geopolitics as a practice has for a long time been associated with territo-
rialisation of political space: “building” and performing states as definitive
bounded territories, constructing domestic order through different govern-
mental techniques, and constituting the “international” as the “inter-state”.
State, territory and sociospatial relations are thus reciprocally constituted.
Such techniques imply a demarcation between inside and outside, a divide
that was a long-taken-for-granted, widely accepted element in IR studies and
political geography. Respectively, geopolitics was the key spatial idea used
to depict the military and economic rivalry embedded in the imagined state-
centric world order. If a bounded state was seen as a shield safeguarding
national economies, geopolitics was the vehicle used to manage “nation’s”
relations in the wider world.
So influential has the geopolitical constitution of the state and the resul-
tant statism been since the nineteenth century, that, as John Agnew notes, ‘in
the modern political realm, lived space has been almost invariably associated
with the idea of state-territoriality’, and in this view ‘politics is about modes
of government within and patterns of conflict and cooperation between the
territories or tightly bounded spaces of modern states’.4 Another related idea
once taken for granted but challenged today is the notion that states are
separated by boundaries, and that inside these power containers states have
spread their impact, control and bureaucracy to every corner of the territory
and civil society. However, sovereignty is not necessarily neatly contained
territorially and indeed it never has been. Agnew maintains that political
space cannot be reduced to state space for two reasons: first, ‘states are
always and everywhere challenged by forms of politics that do not conform
to the boundaries of the state in question’, and, second, ‘state boundaries are
Geopolitics of Changing State Spaces 257
the Keynesian welfare state, which first began to occur in the 1970s and
continues today.17 The spatial transformation of the state is conceptualised
as a gradual erosion of the Keynesian political practices which were geared
around the national as the focal political scale. Spatial Keynesianism, which
dominated the post–Second World War era, was epitomised by a distinct
geopolitical calculation that was intertwined with the emergence of the
“national” welfare societies in Europe.
One of the key messages of the state re-scaling literature has been that,
since the 1970s, the founding regulative practices of spatial Keynesianism
have been gradually replaced by a Schumpeterian competition state spa-
tiality, which is ultimately based on internationalisation of policy regimes
and the associated transfer of certain functions and responsibilities of the
“national-state” to other scales of governance ranging from supranational to
local/regional.18 The importance of this view lies in its capacity to illuminate
that the territorial formations of the state are not static or pre-given but rather
are historically (re-)construed and characterised by both relative stability and
periods of rapid change. In such a view, the spread of neoliberalism as
the hegemonic ideology across global and national spaces has brought into
existence new privatising regulatory arrangements, spatial projects as well
as forms of governance conceived around major city-regions. This, in turn,
has strengthened the role of “national champions” in state strategies and
projects, which are increasingly predicated upon the politics of economic
competitiveness rather than social equalisation.
In this section, we discuss two topics which bring together many of the
issues touched up in this special section, and which will very likely remain
central in the study of the geopolitics of changing state spaces in the future.
First, the geopolitics of city/state relations is a topic which is at the core of
current debates on the spatiality of globalisation.19 Many of the articles in
this collection emphasise that city/state (power) relations should be at the
core of any analysis of the geopolitics of changing state spaces. Second, we
will discuss the transnationalisation of state spaces.
vocabulary of the state. In her article, Gillian Bristow studies the discourse
of regional competitiveness and inquires into how it, together with the dis-
course of resilience, has operated in the recent regional policy making in
the UK. She treats these discourses as instrumental constituents of neoliberal
governance of the state. Bristow also discusses the possibility of shaking the
foundations of the discourse of competitiveness through what she calls a
critical regionalist perspective.
As part of the ongoing attempts to foster the state’s international
competitiveness, the spatiality of the state is constantly remade through state-
orchestrated arrangements which tie different types of cities with broader
state strategies. It is therefore crucial to continue investigating the projects
and strategies that arise from cities, and how these position and construct
cities with regard to different socio-spatial processes (such as innovation poli-
cies); i.e., how city-regional processes are impregnated with unique scalar
practices and performances. The article by Anni Kangas analyses discus-
sions prompted by the recent decision to expand the borders of the Russian
capital Moscow. The article particularly focuses on the way in which the
idea of Moscow as a potential “global city” functions within the discus-
sions concerned with transforming Moscow so as to connect Russia to the
global networks of investments, people and success. Kangas approaches the
geopolitics of the global city as a circulating form of neoliberal governmen-
tality. On the basis of her analysis of the Russian discussion, she outlines
the ways in which neoliberalism becomes particularised in the context of
“Big Moscow” as it gains backing from authoritarian forms of politics or
historically rooted forms of cultural understanding.
In the final section we will suggest some possible avenues for moving
beyond the dichotomy between territorial and relational thinking that has
Geopolitics of Changing State Spaces 263
NOTES
1. This theme section is based on a mini-conference on the Changing Geopolitics of State Spaces
which was held at the University of Oulu, Finland, in September 2011, as the closing seminar of the
project 128527; the section also contributes to project no. 140738, both funded by the Academy of
Finland. We thank all the participants of the seminar for discussion and comments. All the papers were
refereed by at least three reviewers. We are grateful for their insightful comments. We also thank the
editor of Geopolitics, David Newman, for his kind and patient support.
2. T. Mitchell, ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics’, American
Political Science Review 85/1 (1999) pp. 76–96.
3. As Painter and Jeffrey have suggested, the variety of state forms is large and the characteristics
of states are highly diverse. Respectively, they argue that it is difficult and even misleading to try to
construct a theory of “the” state. Instead, it is important to notice the gradual transformation of the state
(and, we would add, state space) and pay attention to historical and geographical differences in the
nature of states. J. Painter and A. Jeffrey, Political Geography: Second Edition (Los Angeles: Sage 2009).
The state also has different political connotations depending on the context. The contextual connotations
and the ways in which these are actualised in political practices remain important topics in political
geography.
4. J. Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (Philadelphia: Temple University Press
2005) p. 160.
5. Ibid., p. 161.
6. P. Taylor, ‘The State as Container: Territoriality in the Modern World-System’, Progress in Human
Geography 18 (1994) pp. 151–162.
7. P. Reuber, ‘Geopolitics’, in R. Kitchin and N. Thrift (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human
Geography (London: Elsevier 2009).
8. Mitchell (note 2) pp. 94–95; for applying this perspective in political geography, see J. Painter,
‘Rethinking Territory’, Antipode 42/5 (2010) pp. 1090–1118.
9. B. Jessop, ‘The Strategic Selectivity of the State: Reflections on a Theme of Poulanzas’, Journal
of Hellenic Diaspora 25/1–2 (1999) p. 54.
10. B. Jessop, ‘On the Originality, Legacy, and Actuality of Nicos Poulantzas’, Studies in Political
Economy 34 (1991) pp. 75–107.
11. M. Jones, ‘Restucturing the Local State: Economic Governance or Social Regulation’, Political
Geography 17/8 (1998) 959–988.
266 Sami Moisio and Anssi Paasi
12. S. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press 2008); C. Johnson, R. Jones, A. Paasi, L. Amoore, A. Mountz, M. Salter,
and C. Rumford, ‘Interventions on Rethinking “the Border” in Border Studies’, Political Geography 30
(2011) pp. 61–69.
13. B. Hibou, ‘From Privatising the Economy to Privatising the State’, in B. Hibou (ed.), Privatising
the State (London: Hurst & Company) pp. 1–46.
14. J. MacLeavy and J. Harrison, ‘New State Spatialities: Perspectives on State, Space, and Scalar
Geographies’, Antipode 42/5 (2010) p. 1040.
15. For an overview of this literature, see J. Shaw and D. MacKinnon, ‘Moving on with “Filling in”?
Some Thoughts on State Restructuring After Devolution’, Area 43/1 (2011) pp. 23–30.
16. For such an approach, see, e.g., J. Peck, ‘Neoliberalizing States: Thin Policies/Hard Outcomes’,
Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001) pp. 445–455.
17. See, e.g., N. Brenner, New State Spaces (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004).
18. See in particular, B. Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State (Cambridge: Polity Press 2002).
19. Recent geopolitical scholarship has also approached the city as a site of violence and of increas-
ing control. Stephen Graham discusses how contemporary “states are becoming internationally organized
systems geared towards trying to separate people and circulations deemed risky or malign from those
deemed risk-free or worthy of protection”. See S. Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism
(London: Verso 2010) p. 89.
20. See P. J. Taylor, ‘Problematizing City/State Relations: Towards a Geohistorical Understanding
of Contemporary Globalization’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 32 (2007)
pp. 133–150.
21. For a critique of this discourse, see J. Lovering, ‘Theory Led by Policy: The Inadequacies of the
“New Regionalism” (Illustrated from the Case of Wales)’, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research 23 (1999) pp. 379–395.
22. See, e.g., J. Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House 1984).
23. T. Fougner, ‘Neoliberal Governance of States: The Role of Competitiveness Indexing and
Country Benchmarking’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 37/2 (2008) pp. 303–326.
24. See, e.g., N. Brenner, J. Beck, and N. Theodore, ‘Variegated Neoliberalization: Geographies,
Modalities, Pathways’, Global Networks 10/2 (2010) pp. 182–222.
25. M. Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’, American Journal of Sociology 103
(1997) pp. 281–317.
26. M. Jones and A. Paasi, ‘Regional Worlds: Advancing the Geography of Regions’, Regional Studies
47/1 (in press).
27. A. Murphy, ‘Territory’s Continuing Allure’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers
(in press); A. Paasi, ‘Border Studies Reanimated: Going Beyond the Territorial-Relational Divide’,
Environment and Planning A 44 (2012) pp. 2303–2309.
28. Painter and Jeffrey (note 3).
29. M. Mann, ‘The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results’, European
Journal of Sociology 25 (1984) pp. 185–213.
30. J. Painter, ’Prosaic Geographies of Stateness’, Political Geography 25 (2006) pp. 752–774.
31. See, e.g., J. Peck and N. Theodore, ‘Recombinant Workfare, Across the Americas:
Transnationalizing “Fast” Social Policy’, Geoforum 41 (2010) pp. 195–208; R. J. Prince, ‘Policy Transfer,
Consultants and the Geographies of Governance’, Progress in Human Geography 36 (2012) pp. 188–203.
32. S. Moisio, ‘Geographies of Europeanization: The EU’s Spatial Planning as a Politics of Scale’, in
L. Bialasiewicz (ed.), Europe in the World: EU Geopolitics and the Making of European Space (Farnham:
Ashgate 2011) p. 24.
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