Governing territory, scalecraft and intrapreneurialism

I have always been interested in territorial questions in Africa not because they are relevant to political geography as one of my research fields but mainly due to the avenues they open up for us to understand human conditions on the continent. They also offer a platform on which to engage with the (re)making of the African state in a dynamic global environment. It would appear no region of the world has a wide-range classification of states like Africa; a continent where it is common to label the state as patrimonial, clientelist, vampire, and so on. These labels constitute the naming and knowledge of Africa but also present state governance on the continent as a deviation from Western norms. The concept of governance in Africa, however, also encapsulates the sociology of knowledge and of the state. Fukuyama (2017) makes this knowledge explicit by drawing the links between weak or failed states and many of the world’s most serious problems. In the same vein, Cohn (2018, p. 351) ascribes the emergence and spread of violent extremism on the African continent to poor governance, arguing that ‘poor governance allows for violent extremist and criminal groups to gain a foothold in territory, creates pools of potential recruits and impedes conflict resolution’. Papers in this issue analyse the link between governance and territory from various perspectives and in different contexts. They also engage concepts that aid our understanding of the behaviour of governments resulting from the interactions of the state with various actors and forces.

Elden (2013) has already laid the foundation for understanding the evolution of territory but he thinks that more should be done to understand this concept through literary studies/geographies. In his paper, Elden (2018, in this issue) summarizes his work on William Shakespeare and territories to demonstrate the relevance of plays to the study of territory. Shakespeare’s plays, especially Macbeth and Hamlet, bring to the fore debates in political theory at the time; they reveal the technicalities of surveying and cartography during the making of European states and their colonies; and they also illustrate struggles over the control of territory. There is a need to expand the link between territory and literature beyond the Anglophone world to achieve at least two objectives, namely, to decolonize territory as a concept and to understand other forms of control over bodies and lived spaces – and what this means for society in the 21st century.

Territorial claims through adjacency highlight the elasticity of the concept of territory and the need to use various sources to understand fully its multiple dimensions. They generate heated debates but also raise questions about authority over natural resources and of the distribution of benefits. Foley and Mather (2018, in this issue) attempt to answer these questions by linking together the concept of territory and resource access in oceans. Literature abounds with examples of how competition over oceans and their resources have resulted in what is called ‘ocean grabbing’ – acts of dispossession or appropriation that rob coastal communities of their rights to the oceans and to marine resources (Bennett, Govan, & Satterfield, 2015). Foley and Mather question the assumption that ocean grabbing is inherently state or corporate driven. They argue that state-centric approaches to ocean grabbing obscure social struggles and underestimate the ability of social movements and marginalized groups to gain access to coastal resources or to grab them from the state. More importantly, Foley and Mather draw attention to various forms of ocean grabbing and also call for attention to alternative access relations and strategies. They suggest that ocean-grabbing research should be reframed so as to enhance our understanding of access regimes and relations of production outside ocean-grabbing processes, and to think of ocean grabbing as a strategy for social development. In their view, rural and remote communities can use adjacency to make territorial claims for equitable access and benefit sharing.

Resource access is inextricably linked to modes of governance and also reflects power relations. Any meaningful enquiry into governance within the state system has to pay attention to the economic environment in which governments and other actors operate. Miao and Phelps (2018, in this issue) tackle economic relations through the lens of the intrapreneurial state. This kind of state is understood as ‘the latent or actually existing entrepreneurialism apparent within the public sector organizations that make up the state’ (p. 5). Thus, state intrapreneurialism manifests in public sector bureaucracies and thrives under neoliberal conditions. The authors argue that state intervention in the economy produces various types of the developmental state, including the intrapreneurial state. And the transformation of the economy and the state reflects the ways in which the state responds to extra- and intrasocietal processes and conditions. The authors argue that state intrapreneurship is a crucial intrasocietal precondition for the state to deal with external challenges. For them, intrapreneurialism provides an organizing framework for understanding the positive role the state plays in effecting structural economic transformation from within. Conceptually, state intrapreneurialism reveals that models of the developmental state and of the intrapreneurial state overlap but differ in the degree of stateness. The authors draw on the example of Singapore to illustrate that state intrapreneurialism promoted the smart/sustainable urban solutions sector and also underpinned the economic success of that country.

The paper by Piñeira Mantiñán, Lois González, and González Pérez (2018, in this issue) shifts the discussion on the intrapreneurial state to that of entrepreneurship in the context of urban governance. The authors analyse the emergence of new urban governance models in the Spanish cities of Madrid and Barcelona under two different but related conditions, namely the emergence of new leftist parties and the neoliberal economic model. Between 1990 and 2008, the neoliberal government enabled private investment into the construction industry. This industry was however paralysed by the financial crisis of 2008. The impact of the financial crisis varied among Spanish cities, with those highly depended on the construction sector hit the hardest. The crisis also exacerbated urban inequalities as evident in the close correlation between foreclosures and social class in Madrid and Barcelona. The political ramifications of the financial crisis were that Spanish cities changed from conservative to inclusive urban governance by allowing civil society to participate in government structures. The jury is still out on whether this new form of urban governance will deliver ‘a new Spanish city’.

Urban governance should be understood within the broader context of statecraft. Henderson (2017, in this issue) engages the notion of scalecraft as a particular form of statecraft that entwines tiers of government with various actors within and outside government. This process leads to various outcomes, including regional-level instabilities, power dynamics, and alternative place-based spatial imaginaries. Scalecraft helps us to critique uneven development, a process which is often associated with the state as a uniform entity operating within global capitalism. Henderson draws attention to the need to broaden the framing of regional inter-local government collaborations.

Given that controlling territories and spaces is already a complex undertaking, how can we shape control and power over transnational and trans-territorial transactions? Smith and Saper (2017, in this issue) tackle this question through the lens of transnational movements. They use a conscientious consumption framework and a Polanyian interpretation of transnational advocacy to analyse how the Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action (TIGRA) emerged as a transnational movement to pursue a multi-sited form of justice involving labour and capital. The objectives of TIGRA were to influence the certification of remittance companies by developing its own label, to achieve fair pricing for Filipino migrants, to change the norms and practices of the money transfer industry, and to achieve migrant-centred development in the remittance industry through the targeted reinvestment of profits such as the Remit4Change Fund. The authors use this case study to question the ability of transnational movements to build sufficient power to challenge industries and to alter neo-liberal regulatory discourses and attendant practices. In other words, experiences with TIGRA raise the question whether, and under what conditions, transnational movements can define the responsibility of industry to society in a capitalist economy.

Moving to the national level of governance, Riegl, Doboš, and Bečka (2019, in this issue) revisit the question whether distinct populations are better off being fully independent or with a partially independent territory (PIT). Their paper is an attempt to critique David Rezvani’s argument for partial rather than full independent territories. They question the separation of regional polities from core states, and argue that it is not supported by legal frameworks or by the ways in which politics is handled. In their view, the concept of PIT has theoretical, methodological and empirical flaws, and gaps. These include the criteria used to define PITs, the comparison between PITs and other polities, and the data set. In his response, Rezvani (2019, in this issue) laments the inability of Riegl et al. (2019, in this issue) to offer alternative views that could enhance further debate. He accuses the authors for errors of logic, observational mistakes, misrepresentations and for lacking evidence. He welcomes the critique as an opportunity to clarify his views on PITs and also to spell out what an appropriate critique might look like. Rezvani’s view is that a political form that is comparable with sovereign states such as PITs exists and has discernible economic, political and security advantages. The concept of PIT disrupts the conventional analysis of politics, law, sociology and economics. The debate on PITs raises important questions about broader political struggles and their desired outcomes. For example, the bantustans in apartheid South Africa demonstrate that PITs could serve colonial ambitions. This is so because bantustans perfected colonialism as an ideology as well as a policy and a practice (Ramutsindela, 2017).

The papers in this issue are diverse and were never intended to address a particular question or to engage a dedicated theme. However, they provide us with conceptual frames and the vocabulary that help us to grasp the complexity of governing territory. I find the attempts by the authors to situate the economy, scale, natural resources and the behaviours of governments within broader territorial questions refreshing. Collectively, the papers in this issue deepen our understanding of topics that have already appeared in Territory, Politics, Governance, and also open up possibilities for new lines of enquiry.