Navigating the spaces of Kantian reason: Notes on cosmopolitical governance within the cross‐border Euregios of the European Union

Drawing on a burgeoning academic literature devoted to issues of institutionalised cross‐border regionalism within the European Union, the author attempts theoretically to contextualise observed cross‐border dynamics as a problematic of ‘cosmopolitical governance’, defined by an ongoing deficit of socio‐political rights and duties constitutive of forms of citizenship applicable to the uniquely transnational environments of cross‐border milieux. By exploring Kantian categories of aesthetic judgement and the forms of political community implicit in their manifestation of reason, the author posits a conceptual model of cosmopolitical right which adheres neither to the morally charged rationalities sustaining the liberal, modernist nation state nor the Hobbesian rationalities characterising interstate relations, but is critically informed by the ethical demands required in achieving agreement around claims rooted in affect and the passions. As elaborated in a case study of tranfrontier labourers within the transborder (and tri‐lingual) Euregion Maas‐Rhein, this Kantian sensus communis is meant to lead to the acknowledgement of a spatial and cultural politics capable of empowering cross‐border regional actors in negotiating a measure of agency vis‐a‐vis nation state communitarian logics.     

Cross‐border regionalisation in the ‘New Europe’ ‐ theoretical reflection with two illustrative examples

Regionalisation has recently become a catchword both in political practice and academic discourse. Even if the idea of the ‘Europe of the Regions’ is no longer uncritically accepted, regional imagination still frequently informs the analysis of the European political order. This article seeks to chart alternative ways of understanding political change in Europe. It first outlines the current understanding of the role of regions in Europe, and seeks to put contemporary ideas into historical perspective. The article then examines the standard way of analysing regionalism, the ‘top‐down, bottom‐up’ metaphor. By looking at the scales of politics from a social constructionist perspective the article shows that this widely‐used metaphor does not adequately capture much of the political history of region building, nor is it able to identify the relations of power involved in regionalisation in the era of expanding trans‐boundary linkages and networks across state borders. By illustrating cross‐border regionalisation with examples from Karelia and Catalonia, the article seeks to assess some of the tensions that arise between the new deterritorialised forms of trans‐regional governance and the traditional democratic practice, which is still tightly connected to areal political spaces both institutionally and in terms of the inhabitants’ collective identity. The article argues for a heightened awareness of the relational social power characteristic of network governance and potential leaks in the ‘territorial containers’ of democracy.     

‘Sovereignty Entrepreneurs’ and the Production of State Power in Two Central African Borderlands

This article advances a subaltern geopolitics of sovereignty production at the borders of the DR Congo – the supposedly most fragile – and South Sudan – the youngest state in Africa. Moving beyond critiques of representing postcolonial statehood and sovereignty in terms of ‘lack’ and ‘failure’, we localise and ground analysis by drawing on Butler’s figure of the ‘petty sovereign’‘ to analyse the agency of border officials at the DR Congo/Rwanda and the South Sudan/Uganda border who we refer to as ‘sovereignty entrepreneurs’: officials who, tasked with managing and controlling the border, in constant face-to-face negotiations and closely linked to resource competition prescribe, set and decide on the terms and conditions of border crossing. It is argued that in the context of the DR Congo and South Sudan, where the states’ claims to territorial sovereignty face similar internal and external challenges, the border work of sovereignty entrepreneurs, characterised by the ability to tax, threaten and discipline with impunity, represents a form of sovereign power that renders the state’s capacity to act excessively visible at its borders.     

The Increasing Importance of Geoeconomics in Power Rivalries in the Twenty-First Century

Relations between states in the post-Cold War period have been shaped by an increased economic competition including ‘non-market’ factors such as intelligence sharing between state agencies and private businesses, successful economic diplomacy and different techniques to influence and manipulate non-governmental organisations to weaken an economic adversary, among other things. The considerable influence of these non-market factors illustrates the limits of the liberal economic theories that emphasise the dominant role of market forces. Geoeconomics is an interdisciplinary analysis that includes geopolitical factors, economic intelligence, strategic analysis and foresight and has the objective to provide a tool for states and businesses to develop and implement successful strategies to conquer markets, and protect strategic segments of the domestic economy, among other things. This article argues about the growing significance of geoeconomics in contemporary power rivalries, presents some strategic aspects of the role of state in the establishment and coordination of a national geoeconomic disposition, and highlights briefly the importance of the strategic management of information to support geoeconomic strategies. Some arguments of the article ‘Geoeconomic Analysis and the Limits of Critical Geopolitics: A New Engagement with Edward Luttwak’ are briefly discussed as well.     

Accounting for Income-Contingent Loans as a Policy Hybrid: Politics of Discretion and Discipline in Financialising Welfare States

Income-contingent loans (ICLs) are becoming widely adopted across higher education sectors internationally, and increasingly proposed for other policy domains. This article explores why this policy form has gained such wide popularity in the context of fiscal austerity and greater financialisation of social policy. It argues ICLs act as a policy hybrid, combining elements of a tax and a loan. The article traces the development of ICLs in their original and most developed context, Australia’s university sector. We connect the development of ICLs to changes in modes of state accounting associated with the application of private sector accounting techniques. These changes reflect financialisation inside the state, producing contradictory political dynamics. Drawing on Streeck’s conception of a shift from the ‘tax state’ to the ‘debt state’, we argue the hybrid construction of ICLs creates political tendencies in both directions, facilitating greater state discretion while also implementing market discipline. Alongside these contradictory state imperatives we highlight continued partisanship, pointing to new and ongoing forms of distributive politics. To the extent that accounting technologies allow the state to act as a special kind of creditor, we ask whether financialisation may also involve the emergence of an ‘asset state’.     

National Government Responses to Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Certification: Insights from Atlantic Canada

Over the last decade, the proliferation of social and environmental certification programmes has attracted the attention of a growing number of political scientists interested in new forms of ‘private’ transnational governance. However, we still lack analyses on the nature and extent of different state responses to and involvement in new private transnational governance arrangements in particular sectors and in different jurisdictions. This article advances our understanding of the interactions between nation-state and private transnational modes of governance by analysing the role of national government authorities in Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) fisheries certification in Atlantic Canada, known more for the disastrous collapse of Northern cod stocks than good marine stewardship. Focusing on the 2008 certification of Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) fisheries off the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the analysis finds that the implementation and maintenance of MSC certification in this case depended on significant support from government authorities. The delicate legitimacy of both authorities faces a period of uncertainty in this case since some certified shrimp stocks appear to be in decline and perhaps also migrating northward off Newfoundland and Labrador.     

Contending Geo-Logics: Energy Security,Resource Ontologies,and the Politics of Expert Knowledge in Estonia

Engaging with nascent scholarly efforts to foreground the ‘geo’ of geopolitics, this article examines how certain low-quality geological substances are constituted as strategic, ‘unconventional’ fossil fuel resources, the exploitation of which is deemed indispensable for energy security reasons. Based on a detailed study of oil shale exploitation in Estonia, the paper specifically analyses the politics of knowledge that enable such carbon-intensive and energy-inefficient industries to perpetuate at the national level and, moreover, subvert the neoliberal imperatives of energy sector deregulation and decarbonisation arising from EU policies. This analysis leads to two key arguments. At one level, the Estonian case evidences and contextualises the growing recognition that ‘energy security’ represents a multifaceted and dynamic construct as it highlights, in particular, the contingency of expert knowledge in its conceptualisation and performance. What counts as energy security is in this case articulated via shifting and contested modes of knowledge-making, whereby state- and market-led modes of energy governance are continuously renegotiated. At another level, however, the politics of knowledge is explained here as exercised through contending ontologies of the fossil fuel resource that pivots security claims, or ‘geo-logics’, which has multiplying effects on resource materiality.     

The fraying modern map: Failed states and contraband capitalism

Inter‐relationships between markets and states are re‐making the world political map but in some instances these interactions have created zones of political conflict where the world political map is fraying and coming undone. In certain ‘wild zones’ of the world, state failure and illegal exchange are the prevalent processes conditioning civil and nationalist wars. This paper considers the general relationships between turbo‐globalisation, contraband capitalism, and failed states. Using the case of Russia and Chechnya, it seeks to illustrate and describe the illegal and illicit forms of governance that are fraying the ‘modern map’ and contributing to the complexity of the story of ‘nationalism in a globalising world.’     

Deconstructing border practices in the Estonian‐Russian borderland

The Estonian‐Russian borderland is a relatively fragile, fairly contested and highly politicised arena in which a number of vital issues for both countries meet and are negotiated. This fact makes the borderland a part of the (geo)political process, including bargaining over social space and resource access, where one can find actors located on different spatial levels and situated among various interests groups. The present article attempts to study how borders with a multitude of meanings and roles can be understood and crossed in time, scale and from different geographical settings. It illuminates the conflicting visions and asymmetric interests among the local borderland population, regional authorities, central governments and international actors. Lastly, it will be argued that border negotiations are unlikely to succeed or intensify where conflicting visions and asymmetric interests dominate, different actors talk ‘different languages’, or boundary‐producing practices simply prevail over border‐crossing practices.     

Doing Away with the Sovereign: Neoliberalism and the Promotion of Market Discipline in European Economic Governance

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a critical reading of market discipline and its limitations as a mechanism in European economic governance. Consistent with neoliberal beliefs about market-based governance, the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is premised on the functioning of the government bond market as a fiscal-policy discipliner. However, the operation of market discipline requires that neither governments nor their private creditors can rely on an authority to bail them out. It, therefore, precludes the kinds of intervention by Eurozone’s supranational institutions witnessed during the euro crisis. In the post-crisis context, efforts to strengthen market discipline continue to be frustrated by the growing reliance of financial institutions on government bond markets as well as the European Central Bank’s (ECB) active participation in those markets. Having undermined the credibility of the market as an autonomous and apolitical mechanism of discipline, European economic governance struggles to come to terms with the rise of a supranational ‘economic sovereign’ in the Eurozone.     

Nation Branding for Survival in North Korea: The Arirang Festival and Nuclear Weapons Tests

The article problematises a popular view in nation branding literature that equates nation branding with states’ attendant advertising campaigns. Instead, this article adopts a broader perspective that nation branding can also operate as a policy aimed at enhancing the sense of ontological security among states and as a practice to strengthen the position of the ruling regime by targeting particular audiences within a broader ‘strategic narrative’. From this perspective, this article aims to shed new light on non-liberal capitalist countries’ – specifically North Korea’s – attempts at nation branding policies in terms of various nation branding strategies. In so doing, Clifford Geertz’s anthropological concept of ‘theatre state’ is introduced as an important metaphor to broaden the existing understanding of nation branding by highlighting the unique characteristics of North Korea’s policies of nation branding and nation building. It is argued that great national spectacles such as the Arirang Festival and military demonstrations provide North Korea with a useful platform for participating in the identity competition among other nation states, as well as in the fierce recognition game against the rest of the Korean national community. Obviously, these strategic performances have contributed to communicating with the outside world, deliberately seeking more respect from others, but have simultaneously operated as nation building processes. Therefore, this work concludes that such staged events are sophisticatedly designed to enhance North Korea’s complex interest of nation branding, and, more importantly, argues that techniques and practices of nation branding are neither historically new nor confined to Western liberal capitalist regimes.     

Remittances and Households in the Age of Neoliberal Uncertainty

International migration and remittance flows have been reframed as catalysts for poverty reduction and development through marketization. Growth, measurement, and promotion of global remittances have emerged against the backdrop of neoliberal structural adjustment programs and financialization. Those processes have paralleled the emergence of the transnational household as a global institution. The article suggests that transnational households characterize a new stage of neoliberal capitalist development. The article revisits Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation and discusses how active governance and neoliberal discourse regulate and frame labor and remittances as “fictitious commodities.” Further, it is argued that transnational households take active roles in Polanyi’s “double movement,” by providing social protection amidst narrow public responsibility for provisioning. The article identifies this as a new element of “the great transformation,” and referring to J. K. Galbraith, as a new age of neoliberal uncertainty.     

One Bridge,Two Towns and Three Countries: Anticipatory Geopolitics in the Greater Mekong Subregion

The proposed bridge between Chiang Khong and Houay Xay will form the remaining crucial link of the Asian Highway 3, connecting Bangkok to Kunming, a project highly anticipated in the Greater Mekong Subregion's (GMS) development. With China funding half the cost of the bridge, it signifies a strong player in the economic borderland. The article seeks to uncover the locals' thoughts and feelings of the bridge to raise awareness of ‘voices’ from the Thai-Lao border in relation to the further destinations the bridge will serve. The local perceptions of the proposed bridge are used to provide a form of comprehension of anticipatory cross-border geopolitical relations between the Thai-Lao border and China. Drawing on the concepts of critical geopolitics, anti-geopolitics and geoeconomics, it concludes by underscoring the need to listen to local perceptions at the Thai-Lao border as they signal potential ill-feelings that could jeopardise future cross-border geopolitical ties and trade.     

Resiliency or Change? The Contemporary Canada—US Border

The developed states of North America have not experienced transnational integration to the same degree as those of the European Union. Indeed, some scholars have argued that North American States and the border functions which define their territorial limits, are essentially unchanged in the face of globalisation, hardening rather than softening, and remaining unabashedly archaic and state-centred. This article suggests that although there has been considerable change in the border functions and geopolitical discourses which mediate transnationalism among the highly developed North American states – namely Canada and the United States – the nature and structure of transnational integration has remained more limited than that of the EU. It argues that the reasons for this more limited international integration agenda lie in the specific geopolitical discourses which sustain cross-border institutions and national identity before and after 11 September 2001 (‘9/11’). The Canadian state, for example, has demonstrated considerable resistance to greater levels of integration with the United States, at the same time that it has became increasingly open to cross-border trade under NAFTA. This resistance is based upon a national-identity discourse that relies upon distancing the Canadian state from its larger neighbours to the south. At the same time, however, the national security discourse which has emerged in the Canada and the United States following from 9/11, has failed to close borders to increasing levels of economic integration, and must accommodate the need for a degree of openness to the heightened levels of cross-border trade under NAFTA. As a result, there has been considerable reorganisation and reorientation of borders within North America. It is simply inaccurate to view the continent as a place where borders have remained unyielding to the broader forces of globalisation. If the role of borders in maintaining security while facilitating trade has resulted in an increased awareness of, and concern with the Canada-US border, the latter is not simply a continuation of ‘old-fashioned state-centred geopolitical concerns’ but is instead a newly-fashionedpost-9/11 response to the ramifications of globalised trade and terrorism.     

Is EU Cross-border Cooperation Ethical? Reading Cross-border Cooperation Through the ‘Needs for Roots’ by Simone Weil

This article applies Simone Weil’s philosophical concept of ‘uprootedness’ and the ‘14 needs of the soul’, set out in her 1943 book ‘The Need for Roots’, to the empirical case study of the border ‘Italy-Slovenia’ considered within Programme 2007–2013. A multi-dimensional qualitative approach that relies on an extensive literature, consultation of primary sources and semi-structured interviews carried out between October 2013 and February 2014 has been adopted.

The article questions why does cross-border-cooperation often fail to develop an ‘integrated’ border territory and a cohesive ‘moral’ community? Conversely, why does social fragmentation emerge from cross-border-cooperation? It is argued that while the EU (Commission) has focused on initiatives and projects in order to achieve regional, economic border integration, it has instead failed to develop an ‘ethical framework’ for promoting a ‘rooted’ integrated borderland and a cohesive moral community.     

Knowledge coordination, competence creation and integrated networks in globalised firms

It is argued in this article that the main problem for the modern,globalised firm is not one primarily of the unequal distributionof information, but rather of the difficulty of mobilising andintegrating fragmented forms of localised knowledge. In sucha context, the role of new means of telecommunication and cooperativeworking is investigated. It is shown that networking favoursa transparent mode of governance characterised by inter-linkedactors and their continuous stimulation. Thus, the conceptualisationof the globalised firm as a collection of competences offersa framework for analysing governance mechanisms, involving theissue of incentives.     

Regional service clusters and networks. Two approaches to empirical identification and development: the case of logistics in the German port city‐states Hamburg and Bremen

This article discusses two approaches to the identification and measurement of regional clusters and its networks in ‘cross‐sectoral’ services which are not available through official industrial statistics. The first approach is a ‘secondary‐statistical’ one consisting of a firm‐based blending of two separate official statistical data‐sets, industrial and ‘functional’ (that is, the professions practised within firms). Thus, a service ‘cross‐sector’ is identified across manufacturing and service industries. In the matrices resulting, weights are attached in an expert survey to the numbers of employees to aggregate the ‘real’ logistics ‘cross‐sector’. This is applied to the two German port city‐states, Hamburg and Bremen. The second approach is ‘primary‐statistical’, based on a small firms survey which generated data on ‘functional’ supplier relations (the cluster) and on project‐based ‘strategic’ cooperations (the networks within that cluster). This follows a two‐stage model of emerging clusters and ‘its’ networks. This data‐set is combined with the firms’ affiliations to branches, firm size, age and sales growth classes, in order to connect information with the industry statistics. Also, the net densities and centrality structures are calculated. The combined information provides indications of the relevance of the service cluster and its networks as factors of future regional development. The latter approach is applied to the State of Bremen only. Two results appear to be transferable beyond the German cases: first, the two approaches improve the knowledge about policy‐relevant ‘cross‐sectors’, clusters and networks; and second our knowledge about service, namely logistics, clusters and networks (for which port regions are prominent nodes) is improved. Finally, some implications for regional cluster strategies are discussed.     

Deterritorialisation and the Transformation of Statehood: The Paradox of Globalisation

Since the end of the Cold War, states and civil societies face a radically different security situation. In addition to state-to-state threats, transnational security issues have risen to previously unknown relevance. I will argue that – in order to create effective counter-policies against transnational threats – states must transform fundamental principles of traditional statehood according to the logic of global deterritorialisation. To develop this argument, the nature of changed security will be analysed which itself can be found in de-territorialisation: transnational actors withdraw from the territorial principles of traditional security, as best epitomised by transnational terrorism. Consequently, ‘national security’, developed according to the territorial ‘inside’-‘outside’-logic of the state, no longer counters those actors. States must elaborate deterritorial strategies. This development causes a transformation of the state since territoriality is the basic principle of modern statehood. Thus, the reassertion of the state in global security unveils a paradox: to react to deterritorialised security and to reassure their power in global politics, states must overcome their traditional principles of territorial politics and further the development of deterritorialisation.     

Beyond ‘Poverty Reduction through Good Governance’: The New Political Economy of Development in Africa

The new political economy of development, characterised by the rising powers' new resource finds in many poor countries and the financial crisis, has driven development ideas and practices towards a paradigm shift, moving it beyond the post-Washington Consensus which marked the high point of development's ‘Poverty Reduction through Good Governance’ agenda. This has important implications for the extent to which developing countries remain governed by the institutional and ideological imperatives of development. Optimists suggest that this could herald a new era of sovereignty that enables African countries to take fuller control of their governance and development priorities, including a shift towards a ‘southern consensus’ around structural transformation, whilst pessimists argue that the hegemony of orthodox development ideas has only been partially reordered and that new problems of sovereignty are now emerging. Insights from Uganda suggest that both of these scenarios are currently unfolding, leaving the outcomes uncertain and much to play for. What remains of the ‘good governance’ agenda has yet to adapt itself to this new politics of development, which requires the emergence of new forms of developmental state in Africa.     

Hungarian Border Politics as an Anti-Politics of the European Union

ABSTRACT

This essay contextualises Hungarian antipolitics of Europe as an element of radical conservative nation-building and as a reflection of the strategic use of borders. Two concrete examples of border politics will be elaborated that document shifts from EU-conformity to EU-contestation and the increasing political significance of culturalist arguments. These cases, moreover, are exemplary of the dual nature of then nationalist-conservative agenda which involves: 1) the implementation of an ethnopolitical and thus extraterritorial, de-bordered notion of nation and 2) the unilateral securitisation of Hungary’s borders, for example with Serbia, in a self-proclaimed defence of European integrity. The research that informs this essay is based on a review of media sources, academic and policy-focused literature. The essay begins with a discussion of links between Hungarian euroscepticism and the radical conservative nation-building project and continues with an analysis of post-1989 border politics with regards to the areas mentioned above. Considerable attention will be devoted to the Hungarian government’s politics of borders and contestations of European Union within the context of the so-called refugee crisis and wider debates regarding immigration and asylum.