When is a Nation not a Nation? The Case of Anglo-British Nationhood

This article examines the articulation of Anglo-British national identity in the tabloid Press, paying particular attention to how the emotions of shame, sorrow, defiance and nostalgia underlie much tabloid discourse of nationhood. These are depicted either as emotions aroused in the writer (and, by extension, the reader) by aspects of the Anglo-British nation; or as emotions which the nation itself (and, again, the reader) is experiencing. The exaggeration and intensity of this discourse suggests that the tabloids are adopting a special role in defending not only the virtues of the Anglo-British nation but also the very notion of nationhood, at a time when this is being undermined by various social, political and economic forces. The study thus provides insight into the dynamic and contested character of contemporary Anglo-Britishness, and illustrates that the nation is a process rather than an entity that either exists or does not exist.     

A Return to ‘Civilisational Geopolitics’ in the Mediterranean? Changing Geopolitical Images of the European Union and Turkey in the Post-Cold War Era

The prevalence of the discourse of ideological geopolitics during the Cold War meant that both Turkey and the EU belonged to the West by virtue of their ideological orientation. In the absence of this prevalent geopolitical discourse, both the EU and Turkey have spent the 1990s trying to locate themselves geographically. Drawing on the literature on critical approaches to political geography and international relations, this article seeks to answer the question of whether the EU's post-Cold War security discourse on the Mediterranean in general and on relations with Turkey in particular point to a return to the earlier discourse of civilisational geopolitics. The article also presents a reading of Turkish policy makers’ attempts to resist EU's representation of Turkey in ‘non-Europe’ (as with the ‘Middle East’ or the ‘Mediterranean’) as boundary-producing practices which have served to underline the boundaries between the ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’.     

Neoliberal and neostructuralist perspectives on labour flexibility,poverty and inequality: A critical appraisal

Numerous recent reports by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics and international organisations have focused on so-called ‘climate refugees’. This article examines the turn from a discourse of ‘climate refugees’, in which organisations perceive migration as a failure of both mitigation and adaptation to climate change, to one of ‘climate migration’, in which organisations promote migration as a strategy of adaptation. Its focus is the promotion of climate migration management, and it explores the trend of these discourses through two sections. First, it provides an empirical account of the two discourses, emphasising the differentiation between them. It then focuses on the discourse of climate migration, its origins, extent and content, and the associated practices of ‘migration management’. The second part argues that the turn to the promotion of ‘climate migration’ should be understood as a way to manage the insecurity created by climate change. However, international organisations enacts this management within the forms of neoliberal capitalism, including the framework of governance. Therefore, the promotion of ‘climate migration’ as a strategy of adaptation to climate change is located within the tendencies of neoliberalism and the reconfiguration of southern states' sovereignty through governance.     

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.     

The New ‘Passive Revolution’ of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the ‘Sustainable Development’ of Neoliberal Capitalism

This paper analyses the rapidly emerging discourse of a green economy based on green growth. It highlights inherent conflicts and contradictions of this discourse such as the myth of decoupling growth from the environment, pollution generations and resource consumption. Using key theoretical constructs of both Gramsci and Polanyi, the paper argues that the green economy/growth discourse can be seen as a Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ whereby the dominant sustainable development discourse, subsumed by capitalist hegemony, is protected in the context of global environmental, economic and development crises. The ‘neoliberalising of nature’, or in other words, the privatisation, marketisation and commodification of nature, akin to Polanyi's fictitious commodities, continues and intensifies with green economy/growth strategies. Greening the economy and associated strategies of green growth divert attention from the social and political dimensions of sustainability and issues of social and international justice. In this way, the inexorable march or ‘sustainable development’ of neoliberal capitalism is maintained. This paper goes on to argue that contesting the claims of green economy/growth discourse through political struggles by civil society against the neoliberalisation of nature is a sign of a slowly emerging counter-hegemonic ‘double movement’ which challenges capitalist hegemony and the commodification of society–nature relations.     

Aviation and Climate Change: Practising Green Governmentality across the North-South Divide

This article seeks to re-understand climate change in terms of its constitutive state practices. Existing analyses tend to frame climate change as a security discourse, or as a manner of green governmentality normalising the uneven relations between the Global North and South, but seldom is the practical process realising climate change’s logics delineated. Using aviation as an example, this article traces how climate change, as discourse, contingently takes shape through three episodes in aviation’s environmental evolution: a) an initial period of conceptual experimentation and consolidation (1992–2005); b) a major policy break catalysed by the EU ETS that destabilised previous discursive formations (2005–2012); and c) diplomatic attempts to re-gain international consensus following the EU ETS’s extension to aviation (2012–present). These practices will be charted across numerous spaces, including supra-national forums, national governments, technical bodies, consulting agencies, and political summits. By elucidating this geopolitical praxis across the North-South divide, I demonstrate how climate change cannot simply be reduced to a rationality in green governmentality, but must be understood as an outcome of strategic practices among differently positioned states.     

‘Geopolitics of Integration’ and the Imagination of South America

The main tenet of this article is to argue that the process of regionalisation in Latin America is entering into a new phase, where South America is consolidating an own process of regional integration. From being not more than a geographical expression, South America is rapidly becoming a political and economic entity with increasing international actorhood. One important difference to the past is that there is now a ‘core state’, Brazil, with a clear strategy directed towards deepening South American integration. Yet, Brazil is not alone; there is also an increasing convergence with other South American states and old rivalries are being substituted for increased cooperation in areas such as economy, infrastructure, energy, security or aid. As this article explains, the logic of action of the forces behind the process of integration can be understood by analysing the evolution of South American geopolitical current called ‘geopolitics of integration’.     

National borders,the global economy and geopolitics: A view from Yemen

The wider geographic scales of the new interdependencies called ‘globalisation’ are not new to peripheral states such as Yemen. In the colonial and post‐colonial world sensitivity to international developments has always been important in the course of local events. What is new is the particular configuration of political and economic institutions at various levels including, critically, the national level. This paper argues that, on the one hand, the new geography of economic and political ‘globalisation’ has left Yemen with distinctly ‘old’ forms of economic integration into world markets, but that, on the other hand, regional geopolitics have opened certain opportunities for Yemen's political elite to refashion itself as a strategic geopolitical player so as to maintain international flows of military and economic aid. The end result is the continued national dominance of these same elite. ‘Globalisation’ in this sense is a national political project.     

Diaspora Geopolitics: Romanian-Americans and NATO Expansion

Recent years have witnessed increased interest in diasporas. In the current context of globalisation, diasporas have assumed greater prominence on the international stage. The link between diasporas and international politics, however, is relatively under-studied. The purpose of this study is to analyse the interconnections between diasporas and international politics from a geopolitical perspective. Specifically, I examine the linkages between the US-based Romanian diaspora and US foreign policy regarding Romania during the late 1990s when NATO expanded into Eastern Europe. The US-based Romanian diaspora attempted to influence the US political establishment to grant NATO membership to Romania during NATO’s 1997 expansion by reshaping the prevailing geopolitical discourse about Romania in order to move the borders of ‘sameness’ to include Romania as similar to rather than apart from ‘the West’.     

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.     

Optimal Currency Areas Scottish Economic Society/Royal Bank of Scotland Annual Lecture, 1999

Microeconomic efficiency and market transparency argue in favour of UK membership in EMU and for Scotland’s membership in the UK monetary union and also in EMU. UK seigniorage (government revenues from money issuance) would be boosted by EMU membership. Lender of last resort arrangements would not be substantially affected by UK membership in EMU. The UK is too small and too open to be an optimal currency area. The same point applies even more emphatically to Scotland. The ‘one‐size‐fits‐all’, ‘asymmetric shocks’ and ‘cyclical divergence’ objections to UK membership are based on the misapprehension that independent national monetary policy, and the associated nominal exchange rate flexibility, can be used effectively to offset or even neutralise asymmetric shocks. This ‘fine tuning delusion’ is compounded by a failure to understand that, under a high degree of international financial integration, market‐determined exchange rates are primarily a source of shocks and instability. Instead, opponents of UK membership in EMU view exchange rate flexibility as an effective buffer for adjusting to asymmetric shocks originating elsewhere. I know of no evidence that supports such an optimistic reading of what exchange rate flexibility can deliver under conditions of very high international financial capital mobility. The economic arguments for immediate UK membership in EMU, at an appropriate entry rate, are overwhelming. Monetary union raises important constitutional and political issues. It involves a further surrender of national sovereignty to a supranational institution, the ECB/ESCB. It is essential that this transfer of national sovereignty be perceived as legitimate by those affected by it. In addition, the citizens of the UK have become accustomed to a high standard of openness and accountability of their central bank since it gained operational independence in 1997. The ECB/ESCB must be held to the same high standard, and, while there are grounds for optimism, there still is some way to go there.     

Cultural Identity and Securitising the Korean Peninsula: Transformations in the South Korean Security Narrative

In response to enlargement, the EU’s ‘Wider Europe’ initiative and emerging European Neighbourhood Policy envisage ‘positive interdependence’ with neighbouring countries of the ‘East’ and ‘South’. ‘Partnerships’ are seen as an alternative to direct EU membership and thus as a sustainable incentive for regional cooperation. In order to be effective, such regional partnerships must transcend market logics and accommodate heterogeneous economic and socio-political realities. However, Wider Europe is characterised, in terms of realpolitik, by competing rationales of ‘stability’, ‘prosperity’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘security’ and thus by considerable potential for exclusionary policies. It is unclear whether exclusion can be counterbalanced by multilevel and ‘de-centred’ forms of regional engagement that also define Wider Europe. Applying a pragmatic approach, discussion will centre on rationales, discourses and reconceptualisations of European space upon which the notion of Wider Europe is being constructed and on whether they signal gradual changes in the direction of a ‘post-Westphalian’ geopolitics.     

Security and the Subsurface: Natural Gas and the Visualisation of Possibility Spaces

ABSTRACT

Beneath the surface of the United Kingdom lies a sprawling natural gas infrastructure. Based on recent (2014/15) ‘follow the thing’ fieldwork conducted in the UK onshore gas industry, this paper explores the ways that dangers related to the subterranean circulation of natural gas come to be visualised, and how these visualisations make possible different security interventions. These practices are shown to be limited by the ground, which despite its enrolment as a security device conceals from view the shifting landscapes of risk that surround these gaseous movements. Drawing on Manuel DeLanda's concept of the possibility space, I provide a conceptual framework for attending to security’s visualisation practices, describing how attempts are made to overcome the subsurface obfuscation of natural gas. I argue that, rather than being understood as a process of circulatory ‘filtration’ or ‘maintenance’, security must instead be regarded as a series of transformative practices of ecological (re)organisation that are predicated upon the visualisation of entities’ spaces of possibility. In the process, I provide an account of how the three-dimensional geographies and materialities of gas circulations and their milieus are intimately tied up in their governance and politics.     

The Political Economy of the Global Environment

Issues of the ‘global commons’ have secured a prominent place in environmental discourse. The temperature-regulating functions of the global atmosphere and radiation control functions of stratospheric ozone offer clear examples of true public goods. Other environmental assets, such as biodiversity and forests, are treated as if they are public goods, but in reality are complex mixtures of private goods, local public goods and global public goods. The approach to the provision and protection of these goods has tended to focus on the development of international agreements, such as those at the Rio de Janeiro ‘Earth Summit’ in 1992. But do these agreements contain the relevant incentives to conserve the global commons? Much depends on one's view of human nature. The Scottish economic tradition suggests that unless incentives focus on ‘self love’, as postulated by Hume and Smith, improvements will, at best, be marginal. A richer array of policy measures is obtained by analysing the potential for ‘global bargains’, trades that improve the environment whilst making each party better off. The souls of Hume and Smith surely approve recent developments in practical global bargains.     

Leading from Behind – American Exceptionalism and President Obama’s Post-American Vision of Hegemony

This article explores the discursive performance and political significance of ‘American exceptionalism’ under President Obama. Moving beyond a critical examination of geopolitical identity, it investigates how representations of exceptionalism, understood as ideational construct of uniqueness and superiority, are linked to practices of US foreign and security policy that confirm, but also contest, established notions of American leadership in world politics. A particular focus lies on the 2012 presidential campaign, and how diverging ‘exceptionalist’ visions between Obama and Mitt Romney testified to competing ideas for American primacy and cooperative engagement. The article will further examine the cases of ‘leading from behind’ in Libya, American non-intervention against Assad in Syria, and US reactions to current crises concerning Ukraine and ISIS. The contextualisation of these episodes in contemporary, geopolitical discourse reveals how the practice of US foreign and security policy under Obama is shaped by a conflicted and paradoxical vision of post-American hegemony.     

The regulation of unstable growth: I'éecole de régulation and the social structure of accumulation

The economic growth condition of parallel developments in consumption and production has been placed by the French regulation school and the social structure of accumulation approach in the policy context of the distribution of class income. The implications are that there exists some unique income distribution compatible with growth, and that the post-1973 growth slowdown was the cause of labour becoming so strong as to ‘weaken’ capital. This condition of growth has close affinity with early growth theory and is presented here in terms of a Harrod-Domar ‘knife-edge’ instability. Starting from this perspective, I argue first, that the conditions of long-term growth cannot be applied to medium-term policy horizons, and secondly, that this domestic regulation is no longer dominant in an international environment in which national economies have increasingly become more open to trade and/or capital transfers. This consideration, illustrated by the instances of Canada and the NICs, suggests the existence of a different form of growth/income regulation in which the ‘knife-edge’ is exported. The policy implications for the national labour movement is then more complex and perhaps less constraining than that suggested by the two approaches under discussion.     

Assessing structural change: the case of Austria

In recent years in many OECD countries the view became popular that a country has a healthy industrial structure if it has a high share of high-tech industries and a low share of traditional industries like textiles and steel. Therefore, industrial policy in these countries introduces programmes for reallocating from traditional sectors to high-tech sectors in order to increase national welfare. This paper questions this view by taking into account recent insights of international trade theory and shows, in the case of Austria, why conventional concepts of measuring and assessing structural change (used, e.g. by the OECD) are misleading and thus lead to wrong conclusions in the assessment whether structural adjustment has gone in the ‘right’ direction. More specifically, the ‘popular’ criteria ‘share and shift’, ‘high-tech versus traditional products’, and ‘R & D intensity’ are discussed and an alternative interpretation suggested by economic theory is given. Additionally, the paper illustrates the alternatie interpretation of these popular criteria on the example of the textile industry which, as a traditional consumer goods industry, managed to modernize largely without R & D of its own and was able to meet international competition successfully.     

The End of ‘Central Europe’? The Rise of the Radical Right and the Contestation of Identities in Slovakia and the Visegrad Four

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the effects of the migration crisis and the parallel rise of right wing parties on national and regional identities in Slovakia and the broader subregion of the Visegrad Four. It argues that the recent right wing political discourse around migration has been reshaping the meaning of ‘Central Europe’ as a normative project and an identity shared by the V4 countries. The post-Cold War narrative of Central Europe was a story of ‘returning to the West’, which in practice meant that normative conformity with the West was a precondition of membership in key Western institution. The situation has changed visibly after the migrant crisis, as the V4 political elites have now been constructing new identities, in partial juxtaposition with Western European liberalism. These new identities favour a culturalist, conservative interpretation of the nation and reject humanitarian universalism, epitomized by the European Union’s decision to welcome the refugees. This arguably devaluates the previous notion of ‘Central Europe’ as a region that seeks to identify itself firmly with the West. Slovakia is chosen as a case study because of the recent success of the radical right in the 2016 parliamentary elections. The article concludes that although the situation of being structurally locked into the EU does not allow the V4 countries to openly challenge its main principles, the V4 political elites pursue a counter-hegemonic strategy, subverting and resignifying some of its key political notions. One should, therefore, speak not of an end of ‘Central Europe’ but rather of its evolution into a new, hybrid stage, where normative conformity and identification with the West will only be partial. The article makes use of Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of discourse and related concepts as well as insights from constructivist geopolitics literature to track articulatory practices of the regional establishments. The study relies on evidence from recent political campaigning in Slovakia as well as official Visegrad Group documents from 2015 to 2016.     

The Nature of Capitalist Money and the Financial Links Between Debt-Led and Export-Led Growth Regimes

The aim of this article is to develop a consistent theoretical approach to the financial links between the so-called debt-led (DLG) and ‘export-led’ (XLG) growth regimes. Assuming the endogenous supply of money and the unstable dynamics of financial markets, the leveraging process of DLG regimes is taken as an inherent dynamic of developed domestic financial systems, without the need of any external capital inflow. Foreign inflows are not a requisite for such expansions; however, attracted by high expected returns, they can play a key role in fueling DLG cases. Alternatively, current-account imbalances are not an indicator of the international financial flows but rather a side effect stemming from the productive, financial and trade links between DLG and XLG countries. Based on this approach, we study the relationship between changes in credit and current-account balances in several countries before and after the crisis of 2008. Both the observed general relationship of these variables for most of the countries, as well as some specific national cases ‘out of the norm’ are fundamental for understanding the national and international financial links between DLG and XLG models.     

Transforming economics into what? Heterodox economics and critical realism

The volume under review consists of comments on critical realismby heterodox economists. This paper addresses a number of themesfrom the book, e.g., history and reflexivity, sometimes expandingon the authors' comments on critical realism, other times respondingto them on behalf of critical realists. It considers the goalsof critical realism and ask to what extent the book furthersthem. It concludes that the high level of abstraction at whichcritical realism operates encourages those commenting on itto do so at a similarly high level of abstraction. As it stands,critical realism and the contributions to the book are too divorcedfrom the concerns of concrete economic theorising to be of greatuse to practising heterodox economists.