Intraregional Geopolitical Imaginaries in Europe: Hungary and Poland Vs. France and Germany

ABSTRACT

This article critically describes and compares intraregional geopolitical imaginaries as they appear in the official discourses of two groups of states in EUrope: Soft Eurosceptic discourse of Hungary and Poland vs. Europhile discourse of France and Germany. The analysis is carried out through application of pragmatic analysis and language games analysis of official speeches of the leading politicians of these states delivered in the year 2018 on the theme of ‘Future of Europe’. The theoretical framework of Rule-oriented Constructivism and the analytical framework of Critical Geopolitics guide this research. This research complements existing literature on geopolitical imaginaries highlighting the importance of linguistic practices, spatial understandings and intersubjective spaces in EUropean integration.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The EIU Democracy Index is published by the The Economist Intelligence Unit. Germany and France rank 14 and 24 while Poland and Hungary rank 50 and 55 respectively out of 167 countries ranked ((The Economist 2020).

2. Soft Euroscepticism is defined as ‘there is not a principled objection to European integration or EU membership but where concerns on one (or a number) of policy areas lead to the expression of qualified opposition to the EU, or where there is a sense that “national interest” is currently at odds with the EU’s trajectory’ (Taggart, Szczerbiak, and Taggart 2008).

3. Here I use the colloquial term ‘EUrope’ (first two letters of the word capitalised) to refer to the regional organisation of the European Union as a social construction and practice embedded in the wider geography of the continent of Europe.

4. For the purpose of conceptual understanding and application in this article, ‘regions’ are understood in the wider sense as any social, political or institutional configuration consisting of two or more nation states including its various applications like geographical, e.g., Baltic states; linguistic, e.g., countries with Spanish-speaking populations, continental, e.g., Asia, sub-continental, e.g., CEE, as well as regional/transregional/megaregional organisations, e.g., BRICS, Belt and Road Initiative. Areas below the level of the state, e.g., Bavaria in Germany, are excluded in this understanding.

5. Dijkink (1996, 11) defines a geopolitical vision as: any idea concerning the relation between one’s own and other places, involving feelings of (in)security or (dis)advantage (and/or) invoking ideas about a collective mission or foreign policy strategy.

6. Said (1979, cited in Ambaras and Mcdonald 2021), defines imaginative geographies as techniques of representation, ways of othering spaces and places through recourse to specific images, codes, and conventions, which both reflect and enable relations of power. As discursive processes, imaginative geographies affect our ways of understanding territory, identity and culture ((Ganesh and Froio 2020).

7. Paulovicova and Stępniewski (2020) elaborates on these three groups of countries or blocs as follows: ‘Greater Europe’ as a western bloc centred on Germany and the West, ‘Greater Eurasia’ as a Eurasian macro-bloc centred on Russia and spanning from Europe to ASEAN and ‘Intermarium’ as a bloc of allied countries in Central Europe.

8. Here, ‘constitution’ is understood in all possible applications of the word and not restricted to the document that guides the legal basis of a polity.

9. Anti-foundationalism is an epistemological doctrine which asserts that none of our knowledge is absolutely certain. It is used to refer to any epistemology that rejects appeals to a basic ground or foundation of knowledge in either pure experience or pure reason (Bevir 2010).