Political Power

10 Key excerpts on "Political Power"

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  eBook - ePub

  Reordering The World

  Geopolitical Perspectives On The 21st Century

  • George J Demko(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Although the range of essays in this volume is deliberately broad, the essays are united by a political geographic framework. Political geography is the analysis of how political systems and structures—from the local to international levels—influence and are influenced by the spatial distribution of resources, events, and groups, and by interactions among subnational, national, and international political units across the globe. Such a definition includes group decisionmaking, organization, and implementation activities that affect natural resources. Political geography focuses, on one hand, on how groups interact—particularly the ways they manipulate each other—in the pursuit of controlling resources and, on the other, on how these social, economic, and political activities determine the use of, and thereby modify, the resource base. The resource most often directly implicated in international conflicts is land, whether for intrinsic (it contains minerals or a fresh water source), strategic (it straddles a key trade route), or nationalistic (it embodies a “homeland”) reasons. The discipline also assesses the political effects of information and resource flows that change spatial distributions and balances of power.

  The political geography of international relations, then, often comes down to control over key resources and flows—be they a commodity such as oil, a specific border crossing, or the “global commons”—and who is best connected in the global system in terms of communications, trade, and idea flows. Apart from territorial and boundary disputes, other less apparent foreign policy issues are also directly influenced by this perspective. For example, the measure of a “regional power” is its exploitative capability, both militarily and economically, over domestic and foreign resources. Many of our humanitarian crises are the result of the tragic inability of different ethnic groups to share resources and the forced displacement of one group by another, setting up flows of refugees and even “brain power” from one polity to another. And, on the global front, much of our concern over population growth, environmental protection, and sustainable development comes down to the fear that our descendants will be living on a smaller, dirtier, and less exploitable region of the earth’s surface.

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  Geography of Elections

  • Peter J. Taylor, Ron Johnston(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part Five Towards a Geography of Power Passage contains an image 9   Geography, Elections, Representation and Power

  Our focus in this book has been on the geography of elections, and we have highlighted three particular aspects of that geography; (1) the spatial variations in voting for different candidates, parties and issues which reflect the spatial division of labour and the process of politicization; (2) the locational variables which are related to information flows and influence how voters react to various political issues; and (3) the effect of the division of a territory into constituencies on the translation of votes into seats, and hence on the pattern of representation. Within such a framework, we have considered the election as an event in its own right, worthy of study for its own sake. But the purpose of an election is to allocate Political Power (as compared with a referendum or plebiscite, which is conducted to obtain a decision on a particular issue). If there are important geographical influences on voting and representation, then these should be followed by similar influences on the allocation of power, and so it is to this topic that we address our final chapter. In doing so, our interest moves away from the interaction between voters and political actors and focuses instead on the roles and performances of the successful actors in the election process. As Cox (1976) has pointed out in a recent review, such a concern with the outputs of the electoral process is unusual among geographers, but it is crucial if the value of geographical study of the whole political system is to be demonstrated.

  The concept of power is a crucial one to much analysis in social science, and its definition has been the focus of much debate. Our concern here is with a relatively narrow view of power, which is that level of control over political decision-making which is allocated to different elected representatives. This is in line with the general positivist tone of the whole book; we accept the current electoral systems as given and analyse their inputs and outputs rather than focus on their position in the wider socioeconomic system (Miliband, 1969). Our aim is simply to illustrate the political implications of electoral systems.

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  Eastern and Southern Africa

  Development Challenges in a volatile region

  • Debby Potts, T.A.S. Bowyer-Bower(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The concept of ‘geo-power’ then reminds us that the power of states is profoundly geographical, their very authority dependent on a geographical definition of where that power begins and ends. Going beyond a simplistic consideration of the geography of international relations, it is thus necessary to examine how international politics have been geographically produced. Rather than assuming a fully formed state system and state-delimited territories, the concern of a ‘critical geopolitics’ perspective is with the power struggle between different societies over the right to speak sovereignly about geography, space and territory (Ó Tuathail 1996: 11). As Luke (1993) has argued, states have sought to establish their power by in-state-ing themselves in space, imprinting a mark of their territorial presence. The form of instatement of power and authority through political space varies considerably, reflecting the variety of historical struggles that have gone into the creation and maintenance of states as coherent territories and identities seeking international legitimacy (Ó Tuathail 1996: 12). The late nineteenth century and the ‘scramble for Africa’ is a useful case in point. This very concern for geopolitical knowledges first emerged among the competing colonial powers which sought to dominate African space towards the end of the nineteenth century. During the ‘age of empire’ several European powers sought to extend their territories into Africa, to surround what was considered unclaimed space and enclose it within a larger empire

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  Engaging Geopolitics

  • Kathleen Braden, F.M. Shelley(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the European colonial powers attempted to integrate residents of their colonies into their European-centered economies. European languages, educational systems, industries, economic activities and political institutions were superimposed on local cultures. As the Europeans integrated their colonies into the global economy, the indigenous people became increasingly torn between national loyalty and obligations to the European-defined colony. Once the former colonies achieved independence, not only were members of different national groups divided in their political loyalties, but each state consisted of a diverse set of national groups, making the achievement of national unity difficult. Tension between competing national groups remains characteristic of many West African countries even today.

  2.3   Power and territory

  The study of geopolitics involves considerations of territory, power and conflict between nations and states. In international relations, control of territory usually increases power, while increased power can expand control of territory. More powerful states exercise direct or indirect territorial control over weaker ones. In many cases, power implies direct, formal political sovereignty over designated territories. Throughout history, many wars have been fought for control of specific territories, and the foreign policies of inany countries have been influenced by the desire to control additional territory for economic, military or political purposes. Countries that have been defeated in wartime have often been obliged to cede control of territory to their victorious opponents. Following World War I, for example, the defeated Germans ceded East Prussia to Poland and the Alsace–Lorraine region to France.

  Relationships between power and territory can be observed at all geographical scales. Power implies the opportunity to exercise control or influence over others, and control of territory is at times an objective of the exercise of power and at other times a result of its exercise. In the house-hold, for example, a parent controls territory by placing gates or other barriers in order to deny toddlers access to hot stoves, fireplaces, and medicine cabinets. Older children, although not subject to territorial control through physical restraint, are admonished to remain within designated areas when not supervised by parents directly. For example, a ten-year-old may be told, “You may ride your bicycle on this block, but may not cross Main Street by yourself.” Transgression of territorial limits on the part of the child brings swift punishment. Punishment reinforces the parent’s power over the child – power exercised through territorial control, which, in most cases, is undertaken for the child’s long-run benefit.

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  Spaces of Capital

  Towards a Critical Geography

  • David Harvey(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Geopolitical struggles between territories and regions have therefore been of considerable importance in geographical understandings. The division of the world into distinctive spheres of influence by the main capitalist powers at the end of the nineteenth century, for example, raised serious geopolitical issues. The struggle for control over access to raw materials, labor supplies and markets was a struggle for command over territory. Geographers like Friedrich Ratzel and Sir Halford Mackinder confronted the question of the political ordering of space and its consequences head on, but did so from the standpoint of survival, control and domination. They sought to define useful geographical strategies in the context of political, economic and military struggles between the major capitalist powers, or against peoples resisting the incursions of empire or neocolonial domination. This line of work reached its nadir with Karl Haushofer, the German geopolitician, who actively supported and helped shape Nazi expansionist struggles. But geopolitical thinking continues to be fundamental within the contemporary era particularly in the pentagons of military power and amongst those concerned with foreign policy. By force of historical circumstance, all national liberation movements must also define themselves geopolitically if they are to succeed, turning the geography of liberation into geopolitical struggles.

  But it is not only the interactions between geographical entities that need to be treated in a dynamic way. The processes of region formation are perpetually in flux as social and natural processes reconfigure the earth’s surface and its spatially-distributed qualities. New urban regions form rapidly as urban growth accelerates, climate change generates shifts in biotic conditions, water regimes, and the like. Populations shift their perceptions and allegiances, reinvent traditions and declare new regional formations or radically transform the qualitative attributes of the old. Like space-time and the cartographic imagination, the dynamics of the process are by far the most interesting.

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  Spaces of Capital/Spaces of Resistance

  Mexico and the Global Political Economy

  • Chris Hesketh, Nik Heynen, Mathew Coleman, Sapana Doshi(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • University of Georgia Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Geographical Politics and the Politics of Geography

  The spatial is not just a matter of lines on a map; it is a cartography of power.

  – Doreen Massey, For Space

  This chapter seeks to critically engage with debates surrounding the production of space under capitalist social relations of production. The aim is to construct a theoretical framework whereby changes in the geography of the global economy and, moreover, resistance to those changes can be understood. Furthermore, the framework developed here should allow us to examine these changes through a multiscalar analysis. Rather than simply focusing on global, national, or local changes, this chapter seeks to develop an approach that can integrate analyses on a variety of spatial scales. In short, the chapter aims to serve as a tool of analysis, helping to explain why struggles over space, and what particular spaces contain, are likely to become an ever more prominent feature of political life. Linked to this explanation are ancillary arguments about state and class formation and their central role in these processes.

  This chapter thus lays the theoretical foundations for explaining the changing scalar organization of the world economy since the 1970s. That organization is viewed from a macrostructural perspective, with an analysis of how it affected the space of Latin America, as well as state formation in the region (see chapter 2 ) and the changing historical sociology of the state form in Mexico (chapter 3 ). Finally, the chapter provides the basis to understand processes of geopolitical conflict and class struggle around particular subnational spaces that are currently being targeted as sites for increased capital accumulation (chapters 4 and 5 ). As was set out in the introduction, the first task is to make the theoretical argument in the abstract before putting flesh on these bones through empirical investigation and the appreciation of wider nuances. Neil Brenner (2004: 18) has stated in relation to this that “consideration of the abstract level enables scholars to examine the general, systemic features of a given historical system.” Noel Castree (2000: 10) usefully illustrates how it is in the realm of abstract argumentation that we organize our worldviews and then come to act out our everyday practices. Our conceptions of the world thus clearly matter, and they motivate us toward action (Gramsci 1971: 323–25, Q

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  Geographies of Resistance

  • Michael Keith, Steven Pile(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  13

  A second instance of the geopolitical can be thought through in relation to the original constitution of national sovereignties. Significantly, the geopolitical in this context can be used to destabilize some of the meanings previously attached to the political since in many of these conceptualizations the analysis of the relation between politics and the political is seen as being worked out within the confines of an implicitly Western territorial state. Here, there is an assumption of pre-given territorial integrity and impermeability. But in the situation of peripheral polities, the historical realities of external power and its effects within those systems are much more difficult to ignore. What this contrast points to is the lack of equality in the full recognition of the territorial integrity of nation-states. Predominantly, those underlying, mobile, unstable, disrupting currents that can fundamentally shift the terrain of politics are located within the implicitly bounded space of one nation-state which is invariably Western in its origin. Missing is the possibility that externally based forces could also constitute the magma of the political. Such an absence reflects a governing supposition, rooted in modern political theory, that the context is formed by full territorial sovereignty; ‘quasi-sovereignty’, in contrast, would be applicable to non-Western states (Jackson, 1993).

  For the societies of Latin America, Africa and Asia the principles governing the constitution of their mode of political being were deeply moulded by external penetration. Colonialism, for example, represented the imposition and installation of principles of the political that violated the bond between national sovereignty and the constitution of societal being. The framing of time, and the ordering of space, followed an externally imposed logic that did not cease to have effects in the post-colonial period. The struggles to recover an autochthonous narrative of time and an indigenous ensemble of meanings for the territory of the nation have formed an essential part of post-Independence politics.14

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  A Companion to Social Geography

  • Vincent J. Del Casino, Mary Thomas, Paul Cloke, Ruth Panelli(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Outside the discipline of geography, geopolitics is generally understood as the political machinations played out between countries around the world, and more specifically the ways in which geography influences the relationships between states (ÓTuathail 2006; Dahlman 2009). Modern geopolitics came into being as a consequence of the Eurocentric drawing of boundaries around the globe in the nineteenth century, and the partitioning of blank spaces into specific domains of power, resulting in a new order of closed space and associated realms of control (ÓTuathail 1996; Gilmartin and Kofman 2004). Indeed, from its early stages, geopolitics drew on behavioral practices and socio-spatial relationships associated with states. The assumptions held that “natural” aspects of geographical location influenced the roles of states (Dahlman 2009: 89).

  One often hears “geopolitical” employed as an adjective loosely synonymous with international relations, and yet the origins of the term have been more precisely traced and defined. Dahlman (2009: 88), for example, notes the two definitions provided by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the influence of geography on the political character of states” and the “pseudo-science developed in Nationalist Socialist [Nazi] Germany.” Gilmartin and Kofman (2004: 113) define geopolitics as the “practices and representations of territorial strategies.”

  The discipline of geography has long been intimately involved in modern geopolitics, from merely mapping new boundaries drawn to furnishing geographical justifications for political hierarchies (Gilmartin and Kofman 2004). Early geopoliticians included German geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who likened states to living organisms in his writing in the late nineteenth century. Similarly, British academic Halford Mackinder was famous for his study of the expansion of Russian power due to its geographic location. Their work related closely to the purview of nation-states and indeed maintained the centrality of the state in conceptual understandings of international or global fields.1

  Geopolitics – both as a discipline and as a guiding political philosophy – generally functioned as a tool of the state in the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century. Geopolitical ideas proved central to the extension of state power and were harnessed to justify imperial aspirations (Gilmartin and Kofman 2004). For example, in his position as the US government’s territorial advisor after each of the world wars, geographer Isaiah Bowman was instrumental in the realization of American ambitions for global power (N. Smith 2004).

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  An Introduction to Political Geography

  Space, Place and Politics

  • Martin Jones, Rhys Jones, Michael Woods, Mark Whitehead, Deborah Dixon, Matthew Hannah(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This research has also extended the scope of political geography in considering non-human entities as both objects of governance and as potential political actants, including animals (Hobson 2007) and even carbon molecules (Whitehead 2009). Much of this work has drawn on theoretical perspectives from political ecology, an interdisciplinary approach that emphasises the embedding of environmental processes and issues within structures of power and politics, which had previously tended to co-exist with, rather than interact with, political geography (Robbins 2003). The political geographies of the environment are discussed further in Chapter 10. Finally, there has also been a rise in a more activist political geography, which seeks not just to analyse the political world, but also to put geographical knowledge to use in challenging and shaping political actions and structures. In some ways this echoes the framing of early political geography and the ambitions of political geographers such as Mackinder, and as such it radically departs from attempts to de-politicise political geography in the post-war period. However, in stark contrast to Mackinder and Haushofer, contemporary activist political geographers aim not to assist the state, but rather to aid subordinate and marginalised populations in challenging power (see also Chapter 12 for more on the broader engagement of political geography in public policy). This has been a core agenda for feminist geopolitics, with Koopman (2011), for example, proposing an ‘alter-geopolitics’ that proactively engages with grassroots movements resisting state violence and constructing political alternatives on the ground. Similarly, the growth of political geography research on social movements is entwined with the active involvement of political geographers in environmental, global justice and peace movements – generating auto-ethnographic accounts from the ‘inside’ (Clough 2012; Routledge 2012)

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  Politics

  Critical Essays in Human Geography

  • Virginie Mamadouh, John Agnew(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Part I Agendas for Political Geography Passage contains an image

  [1]Human Territoriality: A Theory

  Robert D. Sack  Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wl 53706 

  Abstract. Territoriality is a means of affecting (enhancing or impeding) interaction and extends the particulars of action by contact. Territoriality is defined here as the attempt to affect, influence, or control actions, interactions, or access by asserting and attempting to enforce control over a specific geographic area. A theory of territoriality is developed that contains ten potential consequences and fourteen primary combinations of consequences to territorial strategies. It is hypothesized that any instance of territoriality will draw from among these. Specific consequences and combinations are predicted to occur in particular social-historical contexts.

  Keywords : territoriality, spatial analysis, power, control, accessibility. 

  HUMAN territoriality is a vast, yet often neglected, facet of human behavior. I propose to analyze territoriality by considering it to be a strategy for influence or control. I shall present a theory of the potential advantages that can come from the use of territoriality.

  By human territoriality I mean the attempt to affect, influence, or control actions and interactions (of people, things, and relationships) by asserting and attempting to enforce control over a geographic area (Sack 1981). This definition applies whether such attempts are made by individuals or by groups, and it applies at any scale from the room to the international arena. This is not the usual definition of the term and is intended to include many facets of behavior often referred to by other concepts such as property in land (real estate), sovereignty, dominion, “turf,” and “fixed personal space.”

  Like Dyson-Hudson and Alden-Smith (1978), I shall skirt the issue of whether human territoriality is a biological drive or instinct. Rather, I see it as a strategy for establishing differential access to things and people. Interactions or access can occur either territorially or nonterritorially. Nonterritorial interactions have been the primary focus of systematic spatial analysis. Yet these occur in causal relationship to numerous kinds and levels of territories. To ignore territoriality or simply to assume it as part of the context is to leave unexamined many of the forces molding human spatial organization. The area of geography that has most often sensed the significance of territoriality is political geography, but with some exceptions (Soja 1971, 1974) political geography has not yielded a sustained and systematic analysis of its role and function. I intend to show how a theory of the potential consequences of territoriality can help to make a spatial perspective of more direct use to the analysis of property, political sovereignty, and the territorial structure of organizations.

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