The Fallacy and the Promise of the Territorial Trap: Sovereign Articulations of Geopolitical Anomalies

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Notes

1. J. Agnew, ‘The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory’, Review of International Political Economy 1/1 (1994) pp. 53–80. Emphasis in the original.

2. For example, J. Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: CUP 1995); T. J. Biersteker and C. Weber (eds.), State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge: CUP 1996); S. D. Krasner (ed.), Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (New York: Columbia University Press 2001); J. D. Sidaway, Imagined Regional Communities: Integration and Sovereignty in the Global South (London: Routledge 2002); T. B. Hansen and F. Stepputat, Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants and States in the Postcolonial World (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2005).

3. J. Anderson, ‘The Shifting Stage of Politics: New Medieval and Postmodern Territorialities?’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14/2 (1996) pp. 133–153; T. Forsberg, ‘Beyond Sovereignty, within Territoriality: Mapping the Space of Late-modern (Geo)politics’, Cooperation and Conflict 31/4 (1996) pp. 355–386.

4. See also S. Elden, ‘Contingent Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity and the Sanctity of Borders’, SAIS Review 26/1 (2006) pp. 11–24.

5. J. Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes: Territoriality and State Authority in Contemporary World Politics’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95/2 (2005) pp. 440–441.

6. See A. Herod, G. Ó Tuathail, and S. Roberts, Unruly World? Globalization, Governance and Geography (London: Routledge 1998) and M. Sparke, ‘Political Geography: Political Geographies of Globalisation (1) – Dominance’, Progress in Human Geography 28/6 (2004) pp. 777–794 for discussions around globalisation; Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes’ (note 5) for geographies of money; and D. S. Bieri, ‘Financial Stability, the Basel Process and the New Geography of Regulation’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2/2 (2009) pp. 303–331 for the current financial crisis.

7. See A. Kaplan, ‘Where is Guantanamo?’, American Quarterly 57/3 (2005) pp. 831–858; Elden (note 4); S. Dalby, ‘Regions, Strategies and Empire in the Global War on Terror’, Geopolitics 12/4 (2007) pp. 586–606.

8. For example, see J. Duursma, Fragmentation and the International Relations of Micro-States: Self-Determination and Statehood (Cambridge: CUP 1996); K. Dodds, Geopolitics in Antarctica: Views from the Southern Oceanic Rim (Chichester: John Wiley 1997); M. Guibernau, Nations without States: Political Communities in a Global Age (Cambridge: Polity Press 1999); A. Anghie, ‘Colonialism and the Birth of International Institutions: Sovereignty, Economy, and the Mandate System of the League of Nations’, New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 34/3 (2002 ) pp. 513–633; P. Kingston and I. S. Spears (eds.), States-Within-States: Incipient Political Entities in the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2004); M. J. Strauss, ‘Guantanamo Bay and the Evolution of International Leases and Servitudes’, The New York City Law Review 10/2 (2007) pp. 479–510.

9. For a broader discussion of the intersections of geopolitical anomalies and issues of sovereignty, territory and statehood see F. McConnell, ‘Governments-in-Exile: Statehood, Statelessness and the Reconfiguration of Territory and Sovereignty’, Geography Compass 3/5 (2009) pp. 1902–1919.

10. F. McConnell, ‘De Facto, Displaced, Tacit: The Sovereign Articulations of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile’, Political Geography 28/6 (2009) pp. 343–352 doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2009.04.001.

11. Duursma (note 8) p. 115; E. Mihalkanin, ‘The Abkhazians: A National Minority in their Own Homeland’, in T. Bahcheli, B. Bartmann, and H. Srebrnik (eds.), De facto States: The Quest for Sovereignty (London: Routledge 2004) p. 157.

12. B. Bartmann, ‘Political Realities and Legal Anomalies: Revisiting the Politics of International Recognition’, in T. Bahcheli, B. Bartmann, and H. Srebrnik (eds.), De facto States: The Quest for Sovereignty (London: Routledge 2004) p. 12.

13. P. G. Mandaville, ‘Territory and Translocality: Discrepant Idioms of Political Identity’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28/3 (1999) pp. 653–673.

14. Bartelson (note 2); S. D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organised Hypocrisy (Chichester: Princeton University Press 1999).

15. Biersteker and Weber (note 2); J. Edkins, N. Persram, and V. Pin-Fat (eds.), Sovereignty and Subjectivity (Boulder: Lynne Riener 1999); A. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: CUP 1999).

16. Murphy makes this important distinction in order to historically examine the ‘role of territorial arrangements and ideology in the development of the sovereign state system.’ See A. B. Murphy, ‘The Sovereign State System as Political-Territorial Ideal: Historical and Contemporary Considerations’, in Biersteker and Weber (note 2) p. 87.

17. A. Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationality (Durham NC: Duke University Press 1999) p. 216.

18. Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes’ (note 5) p. 456 uses the term ‘effective sovereignty’ to describe actually existing sovereign practices. Here I am using the overlapping term of de facto sovereignty in order to contrast it directly with de jure sovereignty.

19. R. Jackson, Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: CUP 1990).

20. See S. M. Pegg, International Society and the De Facto State (Aldershot: Ashgate 1998); Kingston and Spears (note 8).

21. Distinguishing between legitimacy and legality, whilst TGiE's authority cannot be based on legal powers, TGiE achieves compliance to its rules through its management of societal pressure and cultivation of moral authority. See McConnell, ‘De Facto, Displaced, Tacit’ (note 10).

22. Sidaway (note 2) p. xi.

23. J. Agnew and S. Corbridge, Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy (London: Routledge 1995).

24. Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes’ (note 5) p. 441.

25. Ibid., p. 437.

26. C. M. Austin and M. Kumar, ‘Sovereignty in the Global Economy: An Evolving Geopolitical Concept’, Geography Research Forum 18 (1998) pp. 49–64; Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes’ (note 5).

27. Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes’ (note 5) p. 437.

28. Murphy (note 16).

29. For example, the reproduction of the political map of the world with the states in block colours, the ongoing dissemination of realist IR scholarship and the daily interactions at the United Nations which admits states but not (stateless) nations. See Biersteker and Weber (note 2); Murphy (note 16).

30. See T. Bahcheli, B. Bartmann, and H. Srebrnik (eds.), De facto States: The Quest for Sovereignty (London: Routledge 2004).

31. Pegg (note 20) p. 209.

32. For example, the Palestine Liberation Organization has ‘non-member entity’ status at the United Nations and the unrecognised Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic is a member of the African Union.

33. Anderson (note 3); Murphy (note 16); Agnew, ‘Sovereignty Regimes’ (note 5).

34. G. Kearns, ‘Progressive Geopolitics’, Geography Compass 2/5 (2008) pp. 1599–1620.