Showing papers in "Territory, Politics, Governance in 2015"
TL;DR: The authors argue that the UK's problem of spatial economic imbalance is in fact a long-standing one, the very persistence of which raises key issues for our theories of regional development and policy, arguing that neither the new spatial economics, with its obsession with agglomeration, nor regional studies, with a plethora of concepts and paradigms but lack of integration and synthesis, offers a particularly convincing basis for devising policies capable of redressing the spatial imbalance in the UK economic landscape.
Abstract: In response to the crisis of 2008 and deep recession that followed, the UK government assigned key importance to the need to ‘spatially rebalance’ the economy, to reduce its dependence on London and the South East by ‘powering up’ northern cities. This paper argues that the UK's problem of spatial economic imbalance is in fact a long-standing one, the very persistence of which raises key issues for our theories of regional development and policy. It argues that neither the new spatial economics, with its obsession with agglomeration, nor regional studies, with its plethora of concepts and paradigms but lack of integration and synthesis, offers a particularly convincing basis for devising policies capable of redressing the spatial imbalance in the UK's economic landscape.
137 citations
TL;DR: This paper developed the concept of territorial urbanization in China through the historical conditions and research design problems of the Chinese administrative divisions in relation to comparative territorial thought, and developed a model of urban expansion in China.
Abstract: This article develops the concept of territorial urbanization in China through the historical conditions and research design problems of the Chinese administrative divisions in relation to comparative territorial thought. Subnational territories are not constitutionally guaranteed in China and the state maintains powers to establish new cities and enlarge and merge existing ones, and even eliminate others, with significant implications for geographically targeted economic development and governing powers. These territorial strategies, which administer urban expansion, rationalize government administration, and organize capital investment through continuing economic growth, are negotiated within the political system of the Chinese party-state and decided through non-transparent processes by the Chinese central government. Yet literature on urbanization in China often subsumes party-state territorialization practices under internationally recognizable epistemologies such as urban and regional planni...
100 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on universities in Canada to provide an integrative review of the changing sociospatial relations of cities and universities in an era of increasing neoliberal and globalized development agendas, recognizing that actors and decision-makers in government and academic bodies understand their links as a combination of both.
Abstract: Cities and universities have been active participants in the creation of new economic structures, but the sociospatial relationships between ‘town’ and ‘gown’, and the potential impact of deepening and diversifying the relationship on either side, are neither fully understood nor simple. In this paper, we focus on universities in Canada to provide an integrative review of the changing sociospatial relations of cities and universities in an era of increasing neoliberal and globalized development agendas. We treat these relationships in spatial and institutional terms, recognizing that actors and decision-makers in government and academic bodies understand their links as a combination of both. Our analysis destabilizes established normative understandings regarding the sociospatial structure and governance of the university and the interrelations between universities and urban space. Numerous spatial strategies demonstrate that universities' relations are multi-layered, multi-scaled and multiply top...
62 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that urban governance in metropolises in the global south has entered a territorial moment. And they pointed out that the shift away from Foucauldian disciplinary tactics, i.e. fixing people in place, classifying them into populations and acting upon them, is driven by political economic circumstances.
Abstract: This article puts forward the argument that urban governance in metropolises in the global South has entered a territorial moment. There is a subtle shift of emphasis underway in many Southern metropolises as municipal governments increasingly focus on transforming urban space rather than ‘improving’ populations. This shift away from Foucauldian disciplinary tactics—i.e. fixing people in place, classifying them into populations and acting upon them—is driven by political economic circumstances. Many of these cities have abundant reserves of capital and labor but they remain intractably disconnected; the former is invested in real estate and infrastructure, while a large number of urban residents struggle to sell their labor power for a wage. In this context municipal governments seek to manage the transformation of urban space, the urban governance strategies for which are presented here in a typology ranging from modest efforts to control places that were hitherto beyond the reach of the state th...
33 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors outline the history and configuration of these territorial islands, demonstrating the ways in which their diverse sources of authority articulate and overlap with each other, and emphasize that these processes are intrinsic to the very constitution, expansion, and legitimacy of modern state powe...
Abstract: Contemporary scholarship increasingly emphasizes that modern state sovereignty does not depend on the control of a strictly bounded and uniformly governed territory. Rather, authority now stems from a variety of different actors, within and external to states, who enact shared forms of power over different areas of national territory for different objectives. In Guyana, contemporary expressions of neoliberal governmentality, environmental conservation and the recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights, have recently emerged as alternative forms of territorial authority in the country's interior rainforest—an area that has historically posed challenges to steady state control. We outline the history and configuration of these territorial ‘islands', demonstrating the ways in which their diverse sources of authority articulate and overlap with—and often contradict—each other, thereby emphasizing that these processes are intrinsic to the very constitution, expansion, and legitimacy of modern state powe...
29 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the scope for resistance to neoliberalism in subnational regions that have become politically empowered via decentralization and explore the tension between liberalization and decentralization.
Abstract: This article examines tensions between two governance trends that have impacted subnational regions across the global south in recent decades: liberalization and decentralization. Although both trends diminish the prerogatives of the central state, a shift in focus from national to subnational scales reveals important contradictions between the two trends. Through an in-depth examination of the Peruvian case, the article explores the scope for resistance to neoliberalism in subnational regions that have become politically empowered via decentralization. Pushed by their constituents, subnational elected officials have sought to contest and disrupt the neoliberal mining policies that were adopted by Alberto Fujimori's authoritarian government over two decades ago and that his successors have maintained in the years since re-democratization. The national government has responded to this opposition by defending neoliberalism from substantive challenges and by adopting new strategies to discipline subn...
25 citations
TL;DR: An episode of outdoor marijuana cultivation policy-making and the struggles over the definition of community in a conservative exurban California county is analyzed, which illuminates territorial production across illegal/legal lines and has implications for understandings of liberal rule of law, political possibility, and the practice of citizenship.
Abstract: As governments worldwide justify the transformation of marijuana governance from one police power (law enforcement) to others (e.g. public health, zoning), the place of marijuana in lawful society is transforming rapidly. No venue in California is more central to this than land-use regulatory bodies, which decide how marijuana rights, practices, and relations become territorial. Land-use powers, as a declaration of the state's police power, require a definitional rendering of ‘community’. This article analyses an episode of outdoor marijuana cultivation policy-making and the struggles over the definition of community in a conservative exurban California county. From debates on fences, property line setbacks, rental terms, and nuisance complaints to racial and economic anxieties and the roaming stigma of crime, marijuana advocates confronted a powerful logic of private property and the moral-aesthetic propriety it implies. Despite the subordination of advocates’ claims to the terms of private prope...
24 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and oral histories collected in Grays Ferry, Philadelphia is used to understand the intimate practices of the drug war in US inner cities.
Abstract: The ‘war on drugs’ has been an important discursive and juridical tool for maintaining a spatialized order in the city. Scholars have gone to great lengths to document the victimization and exploitation of this war's ‘victims’ – primarily black and brown young men in cities across the globe. While applying a spatial analytic to understand the global effects of the ‘war on drugs’, it is also necessary to attend to the drug economy's situated, micro-practices of territory, politics, and governance. This paper contributes such an understanding by applying a feminist and urban geopolitical frame to understand the intimate practices of the drug war in US inner cities. It draws from a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and oral histories collected in Grays Ferry, Philadelphia, and offers a discursive analysis of local newspapers and policy documents to understand the framing of Grays Ferry as the front line of the ‘war on drugs’. Through such a framing the city block becomes a site of contestation as...
22 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an approach to sub-national development that re-thinks the relationship between capital and space from the ground up, and develops further his intuition that political factors are an important but underplayed element in uneven spatial development is presented.
Abstract: In his opening plenary address at the 2014 Regional Studies Winter Conference, Professor Ron Martin observed that there is a distinct growing apart of Northern and Southern UK cities and regions in terms of output, productivity and growth. Further, that regional science has been unable to fully explain this divergence through the development of holistic theories of sub-national economic development that are more nuanced and realistic than highly abstract New Economic Geography and Urban Economic approaches. This paper responds to Professor Martin's challenge in outlining an approach to sub-national development that re-thinks the relationship between capital and space from the ground up, and develops further his intuition that political factors are an important but underplayed element in uneven spatial development. The world systems approach, which seeks to explain under-development by describing hegemonic structures across international and multi-ethnic space, is revisited and revised in an attemp...
20 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how the spatialization of the drug phenomenon operates as an official strategy of intervention, and how illicit phenomena like the illegal drug trade are rendered in spatial terms in order to become amenable to specific kinds of state intervention.
Abstract: In late 2010, WikiLeaks made public hundreds of private communications between US State Department facilities in Mexico and Washington, DC. The documents contain frank observations made by US bureaucrats and officials about Mexican politics and government, but are especially pointed in their treatment of Mexico's declared ‘War on Drugs', which, since 2006, has been the focus of unprecedented negotiation, cooperation, and tension between the two governments. With a few notable exceptions, geographers have largely stayed away from the study of illegal practices, and relatively little research in this area employs an explicitly spatial analytic. In this paper, we examine how the spatialization of the drug phenomenon operates as an official strategy of intervention – illicit phenomena like the illegal drug trade are rendered in spatial terms in order to become amenable to specific kinds of state intervention. This requires considerable boundary work, and we draw from the WikiLeaks archive to explore h...
20 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the spatial practice of revolutionary movements is analyzed through three case studies: Tehran during the 2009 Green Movement, Prague during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and Paris during the 1968 student protests.
Abstract: Recent events have demonstrated that revolutionary movements continue to play an important role in shaping local, national, and international politics. This paper theorizes the spatial practice of revolutionary movements through three case studies: Tehran during the 2009 Green Movement, Prague during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and Paris during the 1968 student protests. Urban space provides the primary location of movement mobilization. Furthermore, urban mobilization activates the memory of past struggles and prior political events, and movements use these political memories to connect with an urban population and to justify the challenge to state power. Secondary spaces, defined as important civic or cultural spaces within the city, potentially contribute leadership and organization toward the goal of revolutionary transformation. This paper demonstrates that movements that are able to formally organize within secondary spaces, instead of relying only on a tactic of urban occupation, defined as...
TL;DR: This article argued that Radil and Flint's differing interpretation stems from an inappropriate application of social network analysis to a context characterized by profound divergences between de facto and de jure phenomena and patchy data availability.
Abstract: This paper presents an alternative reading of the evolution of the territorialization of state authority and security alliances in Africa's Great Lakes Region from that provided by Radil and Flint (2013). Rather than a general transformation in the direction of more territorially centralized states, patterns of state authority have remained variegated in the post-Cold War era, with continuing fracturing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is argued that Radil and Flint's differing interpretation stems from an inappropriate application of social network analysis (SNA) to a context characterized by profound divergences between de facto and de jure phenomena and patchy data availability. These observations suggest scepticism regarding the extent to which SNA can help overcome the epistemological rifts that divide studies on the geography of politics.
TL;DR: In the last few years there have been several ‘drug panics’ over new synthetic drugs such as mephedrone and the substituted cathinones as discussed by the authors, these new designer stimulants have become increasingly popular as substitutes for 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine and other ‘classic’ stimulants.
Abstract: In the last few years there have been several ‘drug panics’ over new synthetic drugs such as mephedrone and the substituted cathinones. These new designer stimulants have become increasingly popular as substitutes for 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine and other ‘classic’ stimulants. This paper discusses these compounds in the context of the substitutional effects caused by drug prohibition. As drugs are banned, new drugs crop up to replace them. This results in the diversification and proliferation of new drug markets, drugs, drug distributors, and drug consumers. Processes of illegalization are shown to have directly resulted in an explosion of new synthetic stimulant drugs, and irrevocably altered the conventional geographies of drug production, distribution, and consumption. The continuing prohibition of these new substances along with the ones they originally substituted for has had the effect of creating ever-evolving stimulant drug markets, which foster more dangerous conditions for users ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a publishing outlet for research on the politics of regional development and multilevel governance and provide an overview of the political economy of multi-party systems.
Abstract: One of the purposes of this journal is to respond to and provide a publishing outlet for research on the politics of regional development and multilevel governance. Studying the political economy o...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors look at the economic impact of secession through the lens of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and find that there has been no favorable economic impact on the newly independent countries.
Abstract: This paper looks at the economic impact of secession through the lens of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia It uses an econometric analysis covering the period between 1956 and 2011—including a series of factors linked to the independence process, socio-economic and structural controls, and the level of development—in order to assess whether (a) breaking away from the former Yugoslavia delivered an ‘independence dividend’ to the newly independent countries and whether (b) independence had a more favourable impact in richer, rather than poorer territories The results of the analysis underline that there has been no favourable economic impact of secession and that how secession was achieved is key in understanding the subsequent economic performance of the newly independent countries In cases of secession without conflict, independence did not have a noticeable impact on ensuing economic performance Secession achieved by conflict, by contrast, seriously dented growth prospects
TL;DR: A recent special issue of Territory, Politics, Governance brings together emerging scholarship that explores relationships between clandestine economies and the political geographies of law enforcement as mentioned in this paper. But these relationships demand greater critical attention by scholars.
Abstract: This special issue of Territory, Politics, Governance brings together emerging scholarship that explores relationships between clandestine economies and the political geographies of law enforcement. Such relationships demand greater critical attention by scholars. To give just one example, the 2011 United Nations’ World Drug Report estimated that the global illegal drug market is worth between US$300 and US$500 billion every year. Given this volume and scope, the drug trade and the prohibitions that structure it have come to dramatically influence the behaviour of states and national economies. Yet, figures like those of the United Nations are little more than conjecture, for there are no reliable sources or metrics by which to gauge the scale of illicit economies. The figures are thus consistently disputed, and the study of illicit phenomena continues to present profound challenges. By their very nature, the drug trade and other illicit activities evade monitoring and documentation; they operate beyond the reach of the typical information-gathering methods of researchers working within and outside of government. The drug trade and related black markets therefore present tremendous methodological and epistemological problems. We know they exist and to a certain extent we can study their effects, but we can rarely grasp them directly; often, we face considerable challenges in our attempts to do so (cf. TUNNEL, 1998; NORDSTROM, 2004). Illicit economies of course are not limited to drugs. From petroleum to ‘pirated’music to basic services like electricity, sanitation, and water, people across the planet depend upon and are tied into shadow markets of all kinds. The formal distinction between states and ‘illegal’ or ‘illicit’ activity therefore must also be troubled. This is so not only because ‘illegality’ is itself largely a state construct, but because, as HEYMAN and SMART (1999) argue, state actors actively participate in nearly every aspect of illegal markets, blurring the lines that would otherwise separate law and authority on the one hand, and criminal or illegitimate practices on the other. This participation may be authorized but secret, as in the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm’s secret trafficking of weapons into Mexico as part of an alleged intelligence-gathering operation (CONROY, 2012); it may involve complicity through lax or permissive oversight, as in the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2012 decision not to criminally prosecute administrators and executives of banks like HSBC for laundering billions of dollars in illegal drug profits (GREENWALD, 2012). Or, it may involve taking kickbacks and
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the politics of representation of the EU interstate borders by examining the Spanish-Portuguese borderline and find that border signs, narratives and feelings have the potential to assume the form of amenities for visitor enjoyment.
Abstract: European Union (EU) internal borders and borderlands have lately become tourist attractions and destinations. Border signs, narratives and feelings have the potential to assume the form of amenities for visitor enjoyment. This paper addresses the politics of representation of the EU interstate borders by examining the Spanish-Portuguese borderline. Located on both sides of the boundary, interpretation centers and border museums display different activities and border spatialities. As experiential and cultural places, these sites b/order meanings through a material and relational affectivity that casts the border, in terms of cultural governance, as a space of representational syncretism.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors test the hypothesis that secessionism reduces government quality because secessionist threats elicit a response from central governments concerned with the territorial integrity of the state and this, in turn, channels attention and resources away from necessary governance reforms.
Abstract: In this article we test the hypothesis that secessionism reduces government quality because secessionist threats elicit a response from central governments concerned with the territorial integrity of the state and this, in turn, channels attention and resources away from necessary governance reforms. We consider the link between secessionism and government quality based on an original data set that reflects the electoral success of secessionist parties in national elections. Our empirical results, drawn from a sample of 22 OECD countries over the period from 1980 to 2007, support the expectation that secessionism will tend to reduce the quality of government even after controlling for the influence of potentially confounding variables and the possibility that government quality may itself affect the electoral fate of secessionist parties.
TL;DR: A central idea underlying this journal project is that "territory and related spatial terms (p... as mentioned in this paper ) should come first" and "Territory comes first" is the sequence of the words that make up the title of this journal.
Abstract: The sequence of the words that make up the title of this journal is deliberate. Territory comes first. A central idea underlying this journal project is that “territory and related spatial terms (p...
TL;DR: The authors argue that shifting geographies of the global drug trade require greater attention in examining the nature of female homicides in Juarez since 1993, and that the balloon effect of drug trafficking flows provides a more convincing rationale for understanding these homicides.
Abstract: In the past two decades scholars and journalists have created a sensation around a series of female homicides in Ciudad Juarez, attesting to a ‘femicide’ in which women are murdered for simply being women. In many accounts the North American Free Trade Agreement receives a great deal of attention as the driving force behind a purported devaluation in Mexican women's social status. I argue that shifting geographies of the global drug trade require greater attention in examining the nature of female homicides in Juarez since 1993, and that the ‘balloon effect’ of drug trafficking flows provides a more convincing rationale for understanding these homicides. I also address recent studies on the Juarez female homicides that challenge the existence a ‘femicide’ through quantitative analyses that call into question the culpability of free trade. Though superficially convincing, these studies neglect the context-specific nature of individual acts of gender violence that numbers can obscure. I conclude by ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide answers to a key conundrum that challenges, in different ways, territorial politics scholars, as well as those working primarily on France: what are the conditions for a successful form of regional advocacy in a unitary state?
Abstract: Drawing upon mainly qualitative inquiry with political, associative and economic actors over a two-decade long period, the article seeks to provide answers to a key conundrum that challenges, in different ways, territorial politics scholars, as well as those working primarily on France. What are the conditions for a successful form of regional advocacy in a unitary state? The French region of Brittany has a specific mode of operation, one based on mixing identity and instrumental claims, and accessing a repertoire of responses that are not naturally open to other French regions. A related question follows logically from the first: Can a specific territorial model developed in one set of conditions adapt when circumstances change? The Breton case demonstrates limited evidence of endogenous change (a central tenet of discursive institutionalism), though it does admit a continuing capacity to filter external pressures in a way that makes sense to regional actors. Analytically, the article develops territorial political capacity as a part material, part constructed framework that can be used for comparing regions at a particular point in time, as well as for capturing the evolution over time of a specific region.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the results of a survey to explore local elite attitudes towards legality across Italian regions, focusing on the concept of neopatrimonialism as a means for analysing empirical evidence concerning perceived diffuse illegal practices entailing personal use of public and private administration resources in order to gain particularistic advantage.
Abstract: The paper presents the results of a survey to explore local elite attitudes towards legality across Italian regions. Specifically, it focuses on the concept of neopatrimonialism as a means for analysing empirical evidence concerning perceived diffuse illegal practices entailing personal use of public and private administration resources in order to gain particularistic advantage. The distinction between crimes and norms manipulation permits the identification of similarities and differences across Italian regions, since they differ from each other in terms of intensity of phenomena. The emerging attitudinal dynamics, concerning high expectations of widespread illegal practices, raise issues about their influence undermining incremental and durable changes in terms of more legal and responsible institutions. Furthermore neopatrimonialism seems strengthened by difficulties in identifying common institutional actions contesting illegal practices and a diminished sense of trust in the effectiveness of...
TL;DR: The relationship between states and illegal or illicit activities remains a relatively understudied social science subject in spite of its great cultural, political and economic importance as discussed by the authors, despite the great cultural and political importance.
Abstract: The relationship between states and illegal or illicit activities remains a relatively understudied social science subject in spite of its great cultural, political and economic importance. Drug ma...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the strategies of seven legislative regions in two concrete policy cases and argue that the seven regions rely predominantly on mediated channels of interest representation as their capacity and willingness to use unmediated channels of information representation is limited.
Abstract: According to the literature on lobbying, actors gain access to European policy-making in return for information and expertise. It is often assumed that territorial actors will be in a position to provide such information by virtue of being the implementing authorities. By contrast, this article argues that there is a need to examine further to what extent regions are able to use channels of interest representation and to supply information, what kind of channels they use and how they frame their message. For this purpose, it examines the strategies of seven legislative regions in two concrete policy cases. In particular, it argues that the seven regions rely predominantly on mediated channels of interest representation as their capacity and willingness to use unmediated channels of interest representation is limited. Secondly, it argues that regions tend to use technical language over politicised language in lobbying to avoid overt conflict, especially with national governments or other regions fr...
TL;DR: In Greece, since 2010, the government had already made €28 billion in spending cuts, which accounts for about 15% of its total economy as discussed by the authors, leading to a sharp increase of unemployment and a decline in basic social services to assist the country's huge population of jobless poor and weak signs of recovery.
Abstract: At the time of writing (June 2015), Europe sits on the edge of a major structural and existential crisis. Greece and the so-called Troika are in the middle of difficult negotiations concerning structural reforms and loans. The reforms demanded by the Troika have already been instituted and these have unleashed a vicious cycle of decline. Since 2010, the government had already made €28 billion in spending cuts, which accounts for about 15% of its total economy. Austerity has resulted in deep cuts in public expenditure, a sharp increase of unemployment (particularly hard for young adults), a decline in basic social services to assist the country’s huge population of jobless poor and weak signs of recovery. These measures have degraded the physical, human and social infrastructure needed for high road growth. Talented, educated and innovative young adults have few economic opportunities in the country and are seeking out their fortunes in richer regions of Europe (ironically, regions that are oftentimes the most unflinching supporters of austerity). This brain drain will likely have long-term consequences on Greece’s economic fortunes while devaluing the skills of the young migrants. As Greek youths settle into the low-end service economy of northern cities like London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, their human capital will likely wither, damaging the economic prospects of these youths and the country that invested so heavily in developing their skill sets. The austerity policies demanded by the Troika have the real potential of setting this southern European country on a pathway of low-road economic development. Many Greek citizens have become politicized and challenged what the Troika considers to be tough yet ‘reasonable’ policies. The re-politicization of the populace predates the current crisis (ARAMPATZI and NICHOLLS 2012). It emerged in response to EU supported and banker propelled speculative urbanization over the past two decades. Residents and activists saw their cities and environments transformed by poorly regulated urban development schemes. Many different people from across the Athens metropolitan region engaged in many small battles throughout the 2000s. They started to slowly identify commonalities and develop connections between themselves. While the issues, backgrounds and tactics differed, some began to see themselves in a common struggle to re-appropriate and re-democratize their lived environments
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address Verweijen and van Meeteren's specific critiques of their research methods and data and suggest that such critiques arise not from a concern about rigorous research methods but from different viewpoints within larger epistemological debates in social science.
Abstract: In this essay, we respond to the critique [see Verweijen J. and van Meeteren M. (2014) Social network analysis and the de facto/de jure conundrum: the case of security alliances and the territorialization of state authority in the post-Cold War Great Lakes region, Territory, Politics, Governance 3(1), xx–xx] of a previous paper of ours published in this journal [Radil S. M. and Flint C. (2013) Exiles and arms: the territorial practices of state making and war diffusion in post-Cold War Africa, Territory, Politics, Governance 1(2), 183–202] that used social network analysis to examine regional patterns of conflict and cooperation in the Great Lakes region of Africa. In our response we address Verweijen and van Meeteren's specific critiques of our research methods and data and suggest that such critiques arise not from a concern about rigorous research methods but from different viewpoints within larger epistemological debates in social science. We discuss the contradictions embedded in their critiq...