Conceptualizing territory

In the study of international politics, territory is a term that is commonly invoked but rarely defined (Elden Reference Elden2010, 799–800; see also Ruggie Reference Ruggie1993, 174; Vollard Reference Vollaard2009, 688). We can associate the lack of a definition in mainstream IR to the reification of the territorial state, which, partially thanks to the impacts of Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (TIP), ‘became not just a political hegemon, but a conceptual one as well’ (Murphy Reference Murphy2010, 771; see also Waltz Reference Waltz1979; Agnew Reference Agnew1994). From a territorial perspective, TIP treats the global landscape as ‘homogenous empty space’ comprising interchangeable pieces of land where borders merely exist by definition and are rarely, if ever, scrutinized, perpetuating the reification of the Westphalian view of territory in IR (Williams Reference Williams2006, 6; for an exception, see Caporoso Reference Caporoso2000).Footnote ⁵ Such reification, to be sure, is not limited to neorealism; while they are known for problematizing many assumptions or conclusions of neorealism, neither neo-institutionalism nor constructivism, nor even the English School, are immune to this conceptual and analytical trap (Buzan Reference Buzan2010, 97, 182).Footnote ⁶

In particular, territory is usually assumed to be ‘self-evident’ (Elden Reference Elden2010, 800) in at least three ways: it is (i) conceptualized as a natural, intrinsic, universal phenomenon; (ii) reduced to its geographical, physical, and topographical components; and (iii) seen as if it is essentially and exclusively a Westphalian phenomenon. These assumptions, however, are misleading. First, there is nothing natural or primordial about territory and territoriality. The view that ‘human territoriality is a natural, instinctive phenomenon’ has been largely discredited (Penrose Reference Penrose2002, 279; Newman Reference Newman2006, 108).Footnote ⁷ For ‘asserting territorial control is a “conscious act”, instead of natural instinct’, territory implies space demarcated and constructed for political purposes (Vollard Reference Vollaard2009, 690; see also Sack Reference Sack1986, Storey Reference Storey2012, 20; Paasi Reference Paasi2003, 111).Footnote ⁸ Second, while a number of IR scholars may equate territory with geography, these terms, as the study of territory and territoriality has long established in geographical literature, are not synonymous (Agnew Reference Agnew2009, 29).Footnote ⁹ A third common yet misleading assumption is that territory is the product of the Westphalian ideal of clearly demarcated space over which states exercise exclusive sovereign rights. The Westphalian understanding of space–politics relationship, however, does not reflect a ‘universal’ standard, but constitutes only one of the many possible spatial–political arrangements (Biggs Reference Biggs1999; Murphy Reference Murphy2002, 208; Penrose Reference Penrose2002, 283). It follows that most studies in IR can treat territory (or what territory stands for) as self-evident and unproblematic only by assuming away the contingent and malleable nature of the relationship between territories and politics.

Compared with IR scholars, students of political geography have been more attentive to the task of conceptualizing territory. While the difference (or relationship) between the terms territory and territoriality is not always clear in mainstream IR, political geographers explicitly define the former in terms of the latter. Following the work of Robert Sack, it is almost universally accepted that ‘territories are the product of human agency and this agency is usually referred to as “territoriality”’ (Sack Reference Sack1986; Penrose Reference Penrose2002, 279; see also Gottmann Reference Gottmann1973). Territoriality is ‘a primary geographical expression of power’ as well as ‘a geographic strategy that connects society and space’ (Sack Reference Sack1986, 19; Penrose Reference Penrose2002, 279). That territory is socially and politically constructed does not necessarily mean that it is conjured from thin air. Jan Penrose offers a particular conceptualization that would also be amenable to IR literature: ‘space is present whether anyone knows about it or not, but space only becomes a place when it acquires a “perceptual unity”… and it only becomes a territory when it is delimited in some way [emphases added]’ (Penrose Reference Penrose2002, 279). Territory, in this context, emerges as a result of territorialization of a particular space through both demarcation and assignment of a political–social meaning – or, a perceptual unity – to it. This conceptualization points towards the existence of three interrelated dimensions that collectively define territories: the physical/geographical (or topographical) features of space (or land), demarcation of space, and the constitution of this demarcated space. How these dimensions collectively configure territories is illustrated in Figure 1 (see also Elden Reference Elden2010).

Figure 1 Three dimensions of territory.

In this framework, geographical space would refer to physical features such as oceans, waterways, altitude as well as natural (read material) resources that may be attached to the space (or land) in question.Footnote ¹⁰ The impacts of geographical space on politics are not necessarily constant but can vary depending on environmental or technological change. While the first dimension of territory does not require territorialization, demarcation and constitution of territory follow from politicization of space and require human agency. Territorialization, in this context, directly aims to organize and regulate individual and social behaviour by way of defining the scope and extent of authority and the cultural as well as emotive affiliations of human groups with space. For territories to exist in any meaningful sense, their demarcation and constitution also need to be periodically and systematically reified through institutionalized practices.

In particular, demarcation involves the process of delineating and compartmentalizing space. Note that demarcation does not necessarily imply Westphalian ‘impregnable hard shells’ but can also be maintained and managed through fluid frontiers or porous borders (Herz Reference Herz1957). Demarcation of space will determine the modes of transactions of goods and services, the mobility of people across compartmentalized spaces, as well as the rather ‘tangible’ features of territory such as the size and location of political units, their proximity and contiguity vis-à-vis each other.Footnote ¹¹ Assigning political, social, and cultural functions as well as meaning to demarcated space, in turn, makes up the third dimension of territory. The political and social construction of demarcated space can follow from domination of one social group by another, political cooperation and competition, social engineering, or historical contingency.

As Kratochwil recognized long ago, different processes and mechanisms of demarcation will also influence the very constitutive properties of territories (Kratochwil Reference Kratochwil1986). Demarcation processes, however, do not necessarily determine the constitutive properties of territory. Modern nation-states, for example, demarcate state territories via the so-called Westhphalian ‘hard borders’; however, how territory is constituted in the age of nationalism (where state territory, in principle, constitutes an indivisible homeland) is significantly different from the monarchical territories of the 17th or 18th centuries in the European state system. Put differently, similar demarcation methods can host different constitutive properties.Footnote ¹²

Together, demarcation processes and constitutive properties of territories construct what I refer as ‘territorial constitutions’, or the set of dominant territorial discourses as well as institutionalized practices at the legal, administrative, cultural, and political spheres that then manage and regulate the relationship between society, state, and space.Footnote ¹³ In this article, I differentiate between demarcation-related features (as opposed to processes) of territory from its constitutive properties as an analytical category in order to delineate different research questions. While this three-faceted conceptualization does not amount to a shared language, it provides a basic shared vocabulary that can help identify areas where there may be potential synergies.

Also note that this framework can help facilitate inter-disciplinary synergies – or, conversations – beyond the three research traditions that are scrutinized in this article. In recent years, for example, the idea that territory ‘should be included in and under the principles of justice’ attracted considerable attention from political theorists and philosophers (Nine Reference Nine2008, 148). This literature scrutinizes the so-called ‘territorial rights’ in order to unpack the ‘moral bases’ of states’ as well as non-state groups’ claims to certain territories (see Banai et al. Reference Banai, Moore, Miller, Nine and Dietrich2014). John Simmons and Cara Nine, for example, maintain that the origins of such rights can be derived from John Locke’s theory of property and social contract (Simmons Reference Simmons2001; Nine Reference Nine2008). David Miller, in turn, offers a ‘nationalist’ theory of territorial rights, emphasizing the symbolic association that is established between culturally defined groups and bounded space (Miller Reference Miller2012). Anna Stiltz, by building on a Kantian perspective, argues for ‘[making] philosophical sense of… the territorial state’ and offers a ‘legitimate state theory’ that distinguishes between rights of property and rights of jurisdiction (Stilz Reference Stilz2009, 187, Reference Stilz2011).

From the lenses of the framework that this article presents, the relevant debate is about the normative bases of territories’ constitutive properties. The territorial rights literature, in this context, can engage others that are treated in this article – through the medium of the framework – in at least three ways. First, it can more directly tackle the ways in which territories’ constitutive properties that relate to justice and morality claims are constructed at the interstate level. Second, the existing literature on the constitutive properties of territory can motivate political theorists to further problematize the contingent and malleable nature of the demarcation-related features of existing territories such as the location or functions of borders, which are sometimes taken as fixed or unproblematic. Lastly, engagement with territorial rights literature can help students of international politics examine how competing claims about justice and morality shape and are shaped by different territorial constitutions in the context of territorial disputes.

These being said, space limitations do not allow for further exploration of a four-way conversation. Next, I position the three-dimensional framework vis-à-vis research in political science, geography, and critical IR.

Exploring the ‘Character’ of territory

Scholars working on the constitutive properties of territory agree that the study of territory needs to ‘move beyond the traditional discourse of demarcation, proximity, size and shape of territories’ (Newman Reference Newman2006, 109). In this reading, political competition and cooperation over territory has been not only about demarcation of space, or about where borders will be drawn, but also about the very political, social, and cultural ‘character’ of demarcated space. The empirical assumptions as well as methodological leanings of the relevant scholarly approaches, when compared with the other two dimensions of territory, are less fixed and more amenable to each other. Furthermore, even though scholars hailing from different approaches draw on different framing strategies, these scholars are essentially interested in similar, or at least complementary, research questions. In addition, there exist numerous ‘beachheads’ and/or canonical works that have made their mark across different disciplines, suggesting that scholars focusing on this dimension can build on existing bridges to explore the ‘other side(s)’.

The scholarly attention on the constitutive properties of territory (in the context of international politics) remained relatively, if not completely, polarized, with political science on the one hand, political geography and critical approaches on the other. In mainstream IR, two key interventions deserve special attention. Taking issue with the bellicist theories of state-formation,Footnote ¹⁵ Hendrik Spruyt, in his The Sovereign State and Its Competitors, maintains that the rise of the Westphalian state over its competitors such as city-states and city-leagues was not merely a function of sovereign states superior war-making capabilities (Spruyt Reference Spruyt1994). Instead, the mutual recognition that sovereign states bestowed upon each other’s particular territorial arrangements (which later came out to be framed with reference to the Peace of Westphalia) in order to keep transactions costs of managing trade as well as to minimize the diplomatic hassles that would emanate from multiple and clashing jurisdictions led first to the marginalization and then eventual extinction of alternative political–spatial (read territorial) arrangements, prompting the territorialization of the entire Continent in the image of the sovereign state.

In this influential 1993 International Organization article, John Ruggie suggests that the ‘unbundling of territoriality is a productive venue for the exploration of contemporary international transformation’ (Ruggie Reference Ruggie1993, 171) and draws a comparison between the modern understanding of the territorial and the medieval order (Ruggie Reference Ruggie1993, 150; see also Teschke Reference Teschke1998, 346; Penrose Reference Penrose2002, 283; Hirst Reference Hirst2005, 27, 28–32). For Ruggie, the origins of different forms of territorial orders can be traced to the institutionalization of ‘knowledge’, or ideas, about the relationship between space and politics, which, to a large extent, depends largely on ‘the domain of social epistemes, the mental equipment by means of which people [reimagine] their collective existence’ (Ruggie Reference Ruggie1993, 169). Combined with Spruyt’s analysis, Ruggie’s arguments provide a dynamic account of the rise of the Westphalian territorial order, which can be best framed not as a historical necessity but as a story of cooperation (among sovereign states) and competition (e.g., sovereign states vs. city-states and city-leagues) over the question of how the European landscape was going to be politicized at both institutional and ideational levels (Ruggie Reference Ruggie1983, 276, 1993).

The constitutive properties of territory have attracted considerably more attention in political geography and critical studies than it has in political science. The initial impetus for this research was built on the works of philosophers such as Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre as well as geographers such as Jean Gottmann and Robert Sack. The scholarly interest in territory flourished especially from late 1980s onward; as David Newman wrote in 2006, ‘territorial discourse within political geography [has] experienced a renaissance during the past two decades’ (Newman Reference Newman2006, 85; Storey Reference Storey2012). The relevant literature is vast, but two lines of scholarship deserve special attention: John Agnew’s influential ‘territorial trap’ and ‘critical geopolitics’.

In his widely-cited 1994 article, John Agnew argues that IR theory is built on three geographical assumptions that effectively limit its understanding of territory. The first assumption entails the reification of ‘state territories as set or fixed units of sovereign space’, which in turn serves to ‘dehistoricize and decontextualize processes of state formation and disintegration’ (Agnew Reference Agnew1994, 59). Second, modern IR theory draws upon the polarity of domestic and international politics, which then obfuscates the ways in which these two dimensions interact (Agnew Reference Agnew1994, 59).Footnote ¹⁶ The third component of the territorial trap, in turn, involves viewing ‘the territorial state as existing prior to and as a container of society’, which artificially normalizes the complicated and multifaceted nature of society–territory–politics interaction simply by assuming away the complexity (Agnew Reference Agnew1994, 59). Without recognizing the flawed and misleading nature of these assumptions, Agnew argues, IR cannot move beyond the territorial blindfolds that not only limit but also distort its theoretical and historical vision.

While he does not consider his work as a part of it, Agnew is sometimes associated with the so-called critical geopolitics (Dalby Reference Dalby2010, 281). For students of critical geopolitics, ‘the study of geopolitics is the study of the spatialization of international politics by core powers and hegemonic states’ (see also Ó Tuathail Reference Ó Tuathail1996; Ó Tuathail and Agnew Reference Ó Tuathail and Agnew1992, 192). Most adherents of critical geopolitics do not ‘seek to develop a theory of how space and politics intersect but rather [have been] concerned with developing a mode of interrogating and exposing the grounds for knowledge production and of seeking to analyze the articulation, objectivization and subversion of hegemony’ (Power and Campbell Reference Power and Campbell2010, 243). From such a vantage point, for example, classical (or neoclassical) geopolitics presents particular representations of the global political landscape, which are in fact tools for establishing and legitimizing strategies of domination, as facts. For example, according to the adherents of critical geopolitics, Mackinder’s ideas that are so cherished by the students of neoclassical geopolitics and numerous IR scholars amount to little more than ‘a panoramic view of global imperialism’ (Blouet Reference Blouet2004, 327).

Over the last two decades, critical geopolitics has transformed itself from a marginal footnote into a popular research programme and has in fact become so inclusive that it amounts to little more than ‘a synonym for contemporary political geography’ (Dalby Reference Dalby2010, 281; Power and Campbell Reference Power and Campbell2010, 24; see also Mamadouh 1999).Footnote ¹⁷ Regardless, the term has so far served as a potent rallying point for geographers who are interested in international politics as well as numerous critical IR scholars. The engagement between critical geopolitics and critical IR, in turn, has been quite robust. This is hardly surprising, for ‘the emergence of critical geopolitics was coeval with the development of critical theories of international relations from the late 1980s onwards, especially in the work of Richard Ashley, James Der Derian, Michael Shapiro, and Rob Walker’ (Power and Campbell Reference Power and Campbell2010, 343). In relation, geographers associated with critical geopolitics and critical IR scholars use similar methodological approaches such as problematization, which ‘interrogates the way that a concept is used in discourse, how that usage is connected to questions to do with power relations, and the way in which it is also productive of particular forms of subjectivity’ (Vaughan-Williams Reference Vaughan-Williams2009a, 9).

An early attempt that questions the territorial assumptions of IR from a critical perspective is offered by Richard Ashley in his 1987-dated article, ‘The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space’. For Ashley, critical scholars, who can be likened to ‘revolutionaries’, are supposed to participate ‘in the making of history’ by ‘doing interpretive violence’ to traditional readings of international politics and relevant practices (Ashley 1987, 429). The dominant interpretations and readings of the international space, according to Ashley, are used effectively as tools for domination, while they are paradoxically presented as static, timeless, and universal ‘facts’ of political life. The critical scholar should constantly question the dominant discourses and practices, exploring the ‘historical emergence, bounding, conquest, and administration of social spaces [italics in original]’ while simultaneously exposing the fact that the ‘sovereign state boundaries’ are ‘plastic divisions of political space’ (Ashley 1987, 409, 421).

The critical IR’s attention to territory and territoriality soared by late 1990s and early 2000s. One illustrative example of this line of work is offered by the Identities, Borders, Orders (IBO) group, which culminated in an edited volume by Mathias Albert, David Jacobson, and Yosef Lapid (see Albert, Jacobson, and Lapid Reference Albert, Jacobson and Lapid2001).Footnote ¹⁸ Usually associated with international political sociology, international law, and international political theory, the so-called IBO perspective favors a ‘processual/relational/verbing’ approach for analysing the space–politics relationship, rejecting the notion that such relationship can be defined by inertia. Territorial orders, in this reading, are best defined as processes that are temporarily stabilized. Such processes, in turn, should be thought in terms of their relational aspects, which necessitate that scholars should approach all relevant social experiences in the context of the ‘community’ where they take place. Finally, the processual and relational aspects of space–politics relationship must not be divorced from the discursive (hence, ‘verbing’) dynamics that empower and substantiate such relationship. IBO perspective, according to its supporters, can be utilized to explore the ways in which the present-day territorial order is in fact being projected as a ‘normative order’ by powerful actors to ‘discipline and punish’ their adversaries by creating spaces of morality vs. immorality.

As robust as it is, the relationship between political geography and critical theory also resembles a closed circuit, as both literatures rarely engage (and are engaged by) political scientists, at least in order to partake in constructive dialogues. That being said, as far as the constitutive properties of territory are concerned, this polarization – or mutual indifference – can be thought as less of a hindrance, as the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological ‘distance’ between political geography, critical IR, and political science is shorter when compared with other dimensions. Further attention to framing and a more open-minded, not to mention focused, reading of research being done outside one’s disciplinary boundaries, in this context, can help scholars better evaluate the commonalities and differences.

An illustration may help. In mainstream IR, research on the relationship between the character of territory and patterns in conflict has followed two general paths. First, scholars such as Monica Toft, Ron Hassner, and Stacie Goddard scrutinize the relationship between the so-called indivisible territory and armed conflict (Toft 2002/Reference Toft03; Hassner Reference Hassner2003; Goddard Reference Goddard2006). On the other hand, Mark Zacher, Tanisha Fazal, and Boaz Atzili have pointed towards the importance of the so-called ‘territorial integrity norm’ that came to prominence after 1945 and has – to a large extent – ruled out territorial conquest as an acceptable international behaviour (Zacher Reference Zacher2001; Fazal Reference Fazal2007; Atzili Reference Atzili2012). While these studies are well known in political science, they barely engage political geographers, who, in turn, rarely take notice of the said studies.

Interpreted from the framework I offer, the relevant research in political science can be framed as an inquiry into the origins and consequences of different configurations of territory.Footnote ¹⁹ The literature on indivisible territory, in particular, looks at how the cultural, political, and strategic dynamics constitute different kinds of territories and the territorial integrity norm debate points towards how territories have recently been ‘reconfigured’ at the system-level through the institutionalization of particular norms and practices. Put differently, the former research focuses on the domestic construction of territory’s constitutive properties and the latter emphasizes how such properties are configured and re-configured at the interstate level, collectively highlighting the contingent – and essentially ‘plastic’ – nature of the global territorial order as well as the power relations that sustain and transform it.

Framing this line of research in decidedly territorial terms can not only allow political scientists to map out their existing insights vis-à-vis research being conducted in political geography and critical IR, but also make the relevant research more accessible (or interesting) to scholars operating outside political science.

This illustration also suggests that mapping out analyses and interpretations across disciplinary boundaries becomes more viable of a task when the conceptual framework is ‘applied’ to a particular research topic. In the next two sections, I juxtapose a number of recent entries from political science, political geography, and critical IR in the context of two broad research topics in order to evaluate similarities and differences, as well as to map out areas of potential cross-fertilization. The first topic of concern involves the exploration of territorial heterogeneity in world politics. Relating to the first topic, I overview recent entries by Boaz Atzili, Stuart Elden, and Nick Vaughan-Williams. The second topic is the relationship between power and territory, especially in the context of the processes through which political and social actors consciously or inadvertently construct the nature and the spatial extent of political authority. On this topic, I examine monographs by Ronald Hassner, John Agnew, and Jeremy Larkins.Footnote ²⁰

Note that the selection of books was not arbitrary, but was carried out with three criteria in mind. The first was expert advice, especially with respect to research conducted outside political science.Footnote ²¹ Second, while they are not selected on their similarities per se, the books under scrutiny can still ‘speak to’ each other, at least to a certain point. The third criterion, in turn, has to do with variation in the ‘scope’ of the research questions raised by these studies, which collectively cover a scholarly terrain that include global issues as well as regional ones in the past and present of international politics.

Territorial heterogeneity in world politics

In conventional thinking, the spatial–political representation of international politics as a domain of homogenous territories is best reflected in world political maps, where each state is assigned a distinctive colour. In this geopolitical imagining, the state system exists in homogenous empty space in at least two ways. First, while we find it convenient to separate, say, ‘orange’ Germany from ‘blue’ France by assigning distinct colours to each polity to flesh out the physicality of the ‘state’ (which is in fact an organizational form), we also implicitly accept the notion that territories are substitutable and equal; when borders change, for example, some orange parts of the world effortlessly become blue (or vice versa) on the map. Furthermore, the assumption of the interstate system as a collection of territorially defined sovereign states also implies a sense of spatial equality as far as legal status and sovereignty are concerned, defined in terms of both freedom from outside intervention and authority exercised by the state inside the borders. Put differently, there are different ‘colours’ in the world, but they are assumed to be equal in terms of sovereignty. The second component of the territorial homogeneity assumption, in relation, involves how territories inside the state borders are constituted. In world political maps, a state’s territory is assigned a single colour that shows no internal variation; ‘Germany’, for example, is marked by a single shade of blue, implying the uniformity of the territories that lie within its borders.

More recently, the assumption of territorial homogeneity has come under attack. The most popular challenge is based on globalization and its impacts on state sovereignty, which are usually associated with the rise of ‘de-territorialized’ networks. While this perspective questions the viability of the frameworks that are fixated on the so-called Westphalian territoriality in the age of globalization, it still falls short on three grounds. First, as Anssi Paasi recently argued, despite the rising importance of networks and the increasing porousness of state borders, these borders and the associated practices still play a decisive role in creating and sustaining territories, especially in the context of how states utilize their meaning-making capabilities to exert their authority in social and political life (Paasi Reference Paasi2009).

The second problem with the ‘end of Westphalia’ arguments is that we are not moving from a centuries-old territorial order to a new one.Footnote ²² Until the second half of the 20th century, global politics was a heterogeneous habitat where empires co-existed with sovereign states and European colonialism, rendering the notion of territorial equality and homogeneity – at best – a fiction. Third, a temporal interpretation that focuses not only on 1648 but even 1945 (or any other focal point in time) as the ‘beginning’ of a global political order based on territorial homogeneity is misleading, for territorial practices in many parts of the world have always been at great variance with the ideal of the sovereign state (e.g., see Herbst Reference Herbst2000). In sum, while IR theory is built on territories’ homogeneity and substitutability, recent research suggests that the past and present of the global territorial order has been marked more by heterogeneity.

While he does not necessarily define his arguments in such terms, Boaz Atzili, in his Good Fences, Bad Neighbors (Good Fences, hereafter) makes a strong case for unpacking the problems associated with the heterogeneous nature of territory in world politics. Good Fences explores the so-called norm of ‘border fixity’, which, thanks to constant practice, an empowering narrative (e.g., discourses), and institutionalization (through regional and international organizations) has become an undeniable fact of international politics in the post-WWII era, stabilizing the territorial borders of existing states to a large extent. While it has contributed to peace and stability in many regions, Atzili argues, the norm of border fixity has also fuelled and perpetuated both intrastate and interstate conflict in ‘regions where states have been socio-politically weak, such as the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, and Central America as well as large parts of Asia and the former Soviet Union’ (Atzili Reference Atzili2012, 2).

The causal logic entails a territorial interpretation of bellicist theories of state formation: territorial pressures are essentially different from non-territorial ones since they create substantial incentives for state elites to build strong institutions and establish social cohesion among the population. The border fixity norm neutralizes this competitive mechanism: not only are weak states not ‘selected out’, their governing elites can also afford to rule without necessarily building socio-politically strong states. Chronically weak states, in turn, are more likely to experience civil strife and internal conflict, which may then spread to neighbouring countries in the form of interstate or trans-border armed conflict or refugee crises.

From the lenses of the conceptual framework offered in this essay, Atzili points towards the existing territorial heterogeneity as a side-effect of the norm of border fixity. In the past, there used to be a ‘floating’ border regime, which made for wars but also created incentives for states to homogenize territories within their borders, an attribute of ‘strong states’ in Atzili’s terminology. In the post-1945 era, the emerging ‘fixed’ border regime is creating disincentives for rulers to engage in similar activities, which then leads to the perpetuation of heterogeneous territories in parts of the globe that then may prove to be ripe for internal and transnational conflict. The message following from Good Neighbors is stark: in some parts of the globe, the inbuilt tensions over how territories are constructed at the interstate level and domestic level will be perpetuating conflict and instability.

Stuart Elden’s Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty (Terror and Territory, hereafter) displays remarkable similarities with Good Fences, but two books do not directly engage each other.Footnote ²³ In Terror and Territory, Elden – a leading figure in the study of territory especially in political geography whose work also cuts through political theory and critical IR – seeks to ‘uncover the logic and grammar of contemporary geopolitics’ in the context of the so-called War on Terror (Elden Reference Elden2009, xxxi; see also Elden Reference Elden2013).

Elden argues that world politics from 1945 onwards has in fact been based on a ‘sovereign fiction’ that posits that ‘every state is in control of its own territory and therefore has territorial sovereignty within its boundaries and equal sovereignty outside them’ (Elden Reference Elden2009, 63). Exposing this fictitious nature of sovereignty requires analysing the notion of ‘territorial integrity’ with respect to its two major components: (i) preservation of territorial borders (or territorial preservation) and (ii) territorial sovereignty. Elden suggests that these two components (the former pertaining to the demarcation-related characteristics of property and the latter to its constitutive properties) have long been at conflict with each other, for while territorial preservation is artificially forced upon the international system by dominant states who have long thought of it as a stabilizing factor, the same dominant powers constantly challenge territorial sovereignty in many parts of the world through direct and indirect interventionist measures (especially Elden Reference Elden2009, 21–23; see also Graham Reference Graham2011, 36, 38–39).

September 11 further stimulated the penchant for interventionism in places where Western states perceive and portray as zones of disorder primarily because ‘a putatively deterritorialized threat – the network of networks of al-Qaeda or global Islamism’ – was immediately ‘reterritorialized in the sands of Afghanistan and, later, Iraq’ (Elden Reference Elden2009, 4). Fighting terrorism, accordingly, requires that United States and its allies infringe upon territorial sovereignty of states like Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Somalia (and perhaps even Pakistan), where sovereignty is no longer given or absolute, but contingent. As long as the United States and its allies exercise an unlimited right to undermine the sovereignty of states that already suffer from limited effective sovereignty and porous borders, internal competency of these states are bound to deteriorate, perpetuating political instability in geographies where the so-called war on terror is being fought.

In his Border Politics, Nick Vaughan-Williams, who can be associated with the so-called ‘Aberystwyth school’, is interested in the ever-present identification and incessant deconstruction of the ways in which diverse border politics configure and reconfigure practices of inclusion and exclusion (Vaughan-Williams Reference Vaughan-Williams2009Reference Vaughan-Williamsb, 749).Footnote ²⁴ Vaughan-Williams highlights that, especially in the post-September 11 era, ‘offshoring the border’ has become a common practice for many Western polities: barriers to entry are established well beyond the physical borders of a state through integrated information systems that help identify ‘risky’ entrants before they even approach the said physical borders, implying that ‘internal security is [now] projected beyond [borders]’ (Vaughan-Williams Reference Vaughan-Williams2009a, 57). This transformation creates the need for ‘alternative border imaginaries’ that would re-conceptualize the limits of sovereign power ‘not as fixed territorial borders located at the outer edge of the state but rather infused through bodies and diffused throughout everyday life’ (Vaughan-Williams Reference Vaughan-Williams2009a, 96, 9).

A considerable portion of the book builds up a series of conversations with political theorists, especially with Foucault, eventually invoking Giorgio Agamben’s notion of ‘zones of indistinction’, or zones where it is not possible to differentiate between two different (and potentially contradictory) elements by drawing a line between them and where the polarity between the said substances is present at any point inside the zone, revealing itself through an ever-present tension. According to Vaughan-Williams, borders are essentially zones of indistinction where the sovereign – whose power relies on a decision over which ‘life forms’ are worthy of living or not – creates an expendable life form, or ‘bare life’. In this context, ‘borders are linked to the bodies of those in transit, as mobile as the subjects they seek to control, and not merely confined to the outer edges of sovereign territory but more and more generalized throughout a global biopolitical terrain’ (Vaughan-Williams Reference Vaughan-Williams2009a, 166).

From this observation, Vaughan-Williams generates the concept of a ‘generalized biopolitical border’, which ‘refers to the global archipelago of zones of indistinction’ (Vaughan-Williams Reference Vaughan-Williams2009a, 116). The increasing control of bodies through these zones, in turn, suggests that ‘border performance’ is also becoming ‘body performance’ (Vaughan-Williams Reference Vaughan-Williams2009a, 134). Vaughan-Williams concludes that students of borders should move away from a geopolitical vision and towards a ‘biopolitical’ one (see also Minca and Vaughan-Williams Reference Minca and Vaughan-Williams2012).

Power of territories, territories of power

The very construction – and, not to mention, reification – of territories are associated with political processes and practices that define the extent, scope, and nature of political authority. Not surprisingly, scholars scrutinizing the constitutive properties are interested in the ways in which territories create power as well as how political, social, and economic power can be used to configure and reconfigure states’ and societies’ relationship to space.

Ron Hassner’s War on Sacred Grounds deals with the incompatible authority claims made over sacred places, which constitute ‘an independent category of disputes worthy of special attention’ (Hassner Reference Hassner2009, 2).Footnote ²⁷ Hassner identifies three existing approaches relating to the study of such disputes: the interpretive approach that emphasizes the content of religious texts and practices that pertain to sacred grounds, the constructivist perspective that highlights the role of religious leaders in assigning meaning and function to these spaces, and the materialist perspective that privileges the dynamics of strategic bargaining between interest-driven politicians. Concluding that that none of these individual approaches is sufficient for addressing the question at hand, Hassner offers what he calls ‘thick religion methodology’, which combines IR focus with an interpretivist perspective and entails tracing ‘a comprehensive logical chain, from the content of specific religious ideas to particular outcomes in international politics’ and identifying ‘causal or even constitutive relationships between religious ideas and political behaviour’ (Hassner Reference Hassner2009, 178).

Hassner holds that, different from ‘secular’ territories, sacred spaces make for ‘pure’ indivisible territories since they are ‘irreplaceable and cohesive sites with inflexible and highly visible boundaries’ that leave ‘no room for compromise and no substitute for [them]’ (Hassner Reference Hassner2009, 69). The key to unpacking the dynamics of dispute over sacred space, then, is to explore the factors that render such spaces indivisible in the first place. For Hassner, there are two relevant dimensions: centrality and vulnerability. Centrality follows from the functions sacred space serve for believers with regard to communication with – and access to the presence of – the divine. Vulnerability, in turn, refers to ‘the extent to which access to the site and behavior within it are circumscribed, monitored, and sanctioned’ (Hassner Reference Hassner2009, 31). The likelihood of conflict is at its highest at sites that are most central and vulnerable in the eyes of a religious movement’s followers.

Hassner argues that, in order to understand the dynamics of relevant disputes, we should pay close attention to the ‘contents’ of the relevant religious discourses, acknowledge – but also recognize the limits of – religious actors’ ability to change and challenge the ‘value or configuration of sacred space’, and explore the nature of ‘delicate bargain[s]’ that need to be struck between religious and political leaders (Hassner Reference Hassner2009, 94, 159). In order to illustrate his arguments, Hassner examines cases of successful dispute management as well as cases of mismanagement, especially in the Middle East, while also extending his logic to secular territorial disputes.

John Agnew’s Globalization and Sovereignty, in turn, challenges the ‘dominant image of globalization’ that portrays a new world where the Westphalian territorial order is being replaced by an endless web of networks that recognizes no man-made borders (Agnew Reference Agnew2009, vii).Footnote ²⁸ For Agnew, the so-called ‘myths of globalization’ obscure our understanding of global politics almost as much as the territorial trap does.Footnote ²⁹ Agnew argues that the relationship between territory and sovereignty, two concepts that need to be differentiated analytically, has always been complex and resistant to uni-dimensional conceptualizations or linear historical narratives. Globalization, in this context, has been neither eroding sovereignty nor leaving it unscratched; it is merely complicating an already complex and multifaceted relationship.

Agnew breaks down this complex relationship by scrutinizing two dimensions: central state authority and territoriality. The former refers to the extent to which a state can project power in an uncontested and uninterrupted fashion within a bounded territory and the latter involves the degree to which territorial borders have been ‘totalized’ with respect to the regulation of transactions that take place across a state’s borders. Out of these two dimensions, Agnew extracts four different categories. The first entails the combination of strong state authority and consolidated state territoriality, or, the ‘classic’ Wesphalian ideal, which, according to Agnew, has never truly ruled the entire globe but still has significant ideological mileage in it. The second sovereignty regime, in turn, is called ‘imperialist’ and refers to cases where central state authority is weak and state territoriality is open (which implies that territory is ‘subject to separatist threats, local insurgencies, and poor infrastructural integration’), reflecting the political–spatial dynamics in numerous locales in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Latin America (Agnew Reference Agnew2009, 130).

The third regime, which practically refers to the EU, is ‘integrative’ and entails cases where state is weaker but territoriality is consolidated. The final category is the globalist sovereignty regime, identified with a strong state and open territoriality. Different from adherents of the idea that globalization is a function of economic and technological trends, Agnew asserts that this regime does not arise spontaneously but requires at least one state, or a ‘great power’ in IR talk, to promote it. In present day world politics, the United States, while it practices classic sovereignty within its own territory, actively seeks to impose a globalist regime elsewhere. For Agnew, it is the frictions between overlapping regimes that lead to much tension and instability in world politics, instigating conflict between the ‘beneficiaries of the globalist regime who extend well beyond the borders of any particular state’ and ‘those states and people trapped in the imperialist and globalist regimes… that are not experiencing many of its benefits’ (Agnew Reference Agnew2009, 135).

While Agnew is interested in the ‘present’ of the global territorial order, Jeremy Larkins, in his From Hierarchy to Anarchy (From Hierarchy, hereafter), seeks its roots in the Renaissance cultural practices, venturing into historical and philosophical terrain – including the works of Ptolemy and Dante – that yet remains alien to most IR scholars. Building on Ruggie’s conceptualization of ‘episteme’, Larkins holds that territories are not solely political but also cultural products and how territoriality is produced is a function of the ‘structural codes that determine how particular cultures represent and use space’ (Larkins Reference Larkins2010, 41).

Larkins traces the reification of territory to the 19th century political thought, primarily to the ideas of Weber, whose ‘desire to master space’ propelled the idea that ‘politics and history were ultimately determined by spatial factors such as states’ size, location, and the distance between them’, privileging, and effectively reifying, the demarcation-oriented features of territories at the expense of their constitutive properties (Larkins Reference Larkins2010, 29). Larkins concludes that Weberian historical sociology ‘offers no way out of the territorial trap’ (Larkins Reference Larkins2010, 30). The key to understanding the present day territorial order, instead, lies in the ‘Renaissance texts and images’, for it was during the Renaissance that ‘the rupture or break with the medieval territorial imaginary was initiated’ (Larkins Reference Larkins2010, 6).

From Hierarchy drives attention to the association between religious cosmology and geographical practices, highlighting that the ‘medieval culture of space was structured by the rigid hierarchies’ that could be identified ‘as the divinely authorized design of all celestial and terrestrial being’ (Larkins Reference Larkins2010, 72). Drawing upon close readings of Machiavelli, Larkins holds that Renaissance literally undermined the ‘spatial hierarchies of the medieval political imaginary’ and triggered the process that fixed ‘sovereignty, violence, and identity onto state space’, which eventually formed the foundations of the modern territorial imaginary (Larkins Reference Larkins2010, 122, 123). This argument is further substantiated through a detailed analysis of the visual portrayals of the ruler(s) (personification of sovereign political authority) as the centre of an increasingly homogenous and abstract space.

In a most innovative move, Larkins then explores the role that Renaissance imaginary played in the territorialization of the international society. That America was free of symbolic centres of hierarchy in the eyes of Europeans, in particular, allowed the colonizers to utilize the new geographical imagery in the ‘new’ continent to a larger extent than they could in Europe. European territorial imaginings reconfigured the spatial make-up of the new world, filling it with meanings, memories, and identities, helping Europeans dominate its old inhabitants by defining the nature and scope of the political authority that could be exercised. From Hierarchy, in passing, also implies that Europeans then imported the spatial experience and knowledge gained in the New World back to Europe to further rationalize and homogenize space there (see also Branch Reference Branch2012).

Road ahead: making the case for pragmatic interaction

The overview of the sample of studies scrutinized in the previous sections confirms that conversation across disciplinary borders is, at best, underwhelming. Atzili’s references to political geography remain symbolic gestures and Hassner’s War on Sacred Grounds consciously chooses not to engage the relevant literatures in political geography and critical IR (Hassner Reference Hassner2009, 10).Footnote ³⁰ Elden’s Terror and Territory does not necessarily tackle mainstream IR in a way that would stimulate reaction from it. Agnew’s Globalization and Sovereignty presents an exemplar of an attempt to bridge the gap between mainstream IR and political geography but also exposes some of the crucial differences between them with respect to conceptual as well as empirical strategies. Larkins’s From Hierarchy and Vaughan-Williams’s Border Politics remain relatively detached from the core theoretical and empirical concerns of political science oriented students of IR.

Regardless, the analysis above also suggests that if the relevant body of work is ‘read’ from a common conceptual framework and in the light of specified research topics, there may be benefits to be accrued from further interdisciplinary interaction. There are at least two further areas – or research topics – where interdisciplinary interaction can contribute to our understanding of the relationship between territory and international politics: the association between hierarchy and territoriality and the ways in which territories are constituted by and in turn constitute identities.