Questioning planetary illiberal geographies: territory, space and power

In the news media, stories abound of nationalist outbursts, of authoritarian repression, of populist eruptions and of closures/enclosures of space, and of freedoms. Strikingly, these stories have and continue to be amplified and mobilized by social media. When publics around the world demand the freedom to express themselves and generate online opinion, it can be difficult to distinguish between genuine public sentiment and manufactured outrage. Governments around the world from Donald Trump's America to Rodrigo Duterte's Philippines are proving adept at ‘rigging’ outbursts, generating repressions and unleashing populist arrows (e.g., ‘Send them home’, ‘Lock her up’).

Before predicting the demise of liberalism and the dawn of a new, more illiberal age, it is necessary to pause and reflect on the weight, meaning, and construction of these terms and concepts. It is salutary to recall that the term ‘illiberal democracy’ was first coined in 1997 by the Indian-American journalist Fareed Zakaria (Zakaria, 1997). Zakaria argued that all around the world there were democratically elected regimes routinely avoiding constitutional limits and restraints. His point was simple: democracy is flourishing but constitutional liberalism is not.

Twenty years later, we might ask whether normative understandings of illiberalism be made or unmade? Is illiberalism appropriate as a frame for a comparative approach to territory, space and power, given the trouble of categories such as ‘East’, ‘West’, and the associated (mis)conceptions about moral geographies and politics? Where are illiberalism's origins, influences, endpoints, boundaries and limits? Certainly, things such as the postcolonial reordering and rescaling of nation-states and the advent of ‘do-it-yourself’ geopolitics via social media (which has upended hierarchies, rescaled borders and allowed for new types of political encounters) suggest that such a rethink is necessary.

Second, before heralding the planetary nature of illiberalism, it is important to zoom in on the local and reconsider the role of situated context, and the embedded/embodied flows of power attached to place. To what degree, for example, are Chinese state–society relations and the oppression of the Uyghur people comparable (or not) with other states, with other oppressions? What lessons can, or cannot, be learned from such a comparison? And does such a comparison perpetuate an East–West moral hierarchy, a sort of illiberal Orientalism?

Third, moving away from the mainstream news, from the spectacular and from the violent, we seek to look more closely at the ordinary, the mundane and the everyday operations, flows and embodied performances of illiberalism and illiberal power – in other words, a popular geopolitics (e.g., Agnew & Shin, 2019). Through mechanisms as seemingly ordinary and banal as community centres, public health infrastructure, urban planning strategies, WhatsApp conversations and the local geographies of sanctuary, the relational processes of illiberalism come into view. However, just as important are the exceptions, the surprises and the ways in which illiberal structures are circumvented, upended and resisted – by both public and secretive forms of protest – those gathered by the thousands in city streets, and ordinary, small daily gestures and actions that, taken together, comprise what Scott (1987) called ‘weapons of the weak’.

Finally, ‘illiberalism’ is a catch-all rather than a given. Illiberal places, processes and policies contain liberal openings and possibilities, and so-called liberal institutions, structures and places contain repressive, regressive and non-democratic features and closures/enclosures. Illiberalism is not reducible to a linear or cyclical pattern or process but rather a lived and encountered facet of daily life that is spatialized and performed in multifaceted ways across context, territory, space and scale. This is why it is essential to resist the temptation to Orientalize and to move away from assumptions about one place versus another, or the portrayal of any one political frame as containing essential characteristics. Illiberalism moves between place, actors and agents and is formatted and reconstituted as it moves. West and East are no longer appropriate comparative categories (where is ‘West’ or ‘East’, anyway?) and likewise, we seek to move beyond an illiberal/liberal dichotomy, since this is falsely constructed and as Kuge (2019, in this issue) suggests is ‘ossified’.

Questions emerge such as where is illiberalism and where does a researcher go to encounter it (and how does it encounter the researcher even when they are not looking for it)? Social media firestorms can, after all, come looking for the researcher, such as the way academics find themselves increasingly disciplined around issues of free speech, or the way right-wing web ‘trolls’ sometimes choose and attack academic targets. Illiberalism is place based and placeless; mandated as a set of laws or practices; performed through the Tweets of global leaders such as Trump or through quiet conversations taking place over a dinner table; in the home, the workplace, the public plaza or market. Illiberalism operates through the corporeal and biological; the surveillance of public spaces; the censorships both demanded and self-imposed; the comments responding to a Facebook post; the co-creation of a ‘meme’ or a public artwork. This presents a complicated ontology, but also a rich field of possibility for comparison and critical enquiry. It can also be a dangerous arena to be caught up in. Despite the illusion of academic safety and institutional protections, researchers tread perilous and sometimes fatal ground in illiberal contexts (as in the shocking case of doctoral student Giulio Regeni’s murder in Egypt in 2016).

BEYOND ILLIBERAL NORMATIVITY? THIS SPECIAL ISSUE

This special issue of Territory, Politics, Governance contains five papers that engage both with the current debates on ‘planetary urbanization’ and the nature of urban political theory, but importantly, the implications on space, territory and power in an age where illiberalism (in authoritarian and democratic settings) is increasingly embedded in complex, hybrid, non-linear and globally networked ways. Through ordinary explorations drawn from diverse case studies and mixed methodologies, the papers seek to advance theory that moves beyond assumptions of illiberal normativity.

The five papers are situated at the junction of several overlapping and pressing debates: namely, the (re)emergence of the political as a central anchor of urban geography; the tension between planetary theory and site-based contextual comparison; the rise of digital space as a real and powerful political space; and the continued task to decolonize a political geographical theory that has been built on, and remains trapped by, the skeletons of colonial power relations, viewpoints and ideas (e.g., Gregory, 2004).

The papers in this issue explore diverse terrains of illiberal geographies: specifically, how illiberal regimes articulate territory and space at scales both global and local through lenses such as city planning, policy, surveillance, digital encounters or economic development. This issue thus engages with several current and recent debates in Territory, Politics, Governance and beyond in the wider discipline, including the recent (re)turn to the political within urban geography and the relationship between politics, space and territory (e.g., Eaton, 2015, on Peru; Obydenkova & Swenden, 2013, on Russia and Europe; Cartier, 2015, on China; Clare, Habermehl, & Mason-Deese, 2017, on Latin America). We situate within (but critically against) the planetary turn (e.g., Brenner, 2013) and with reference to the comparative gesture in urban studies (e.g., McFarlane & Robinson, 2012).

The papers in this issue question the link between illiberalism and territory and probe the degree to which illiberalism is embedded in relationally networked and multilateral global flows at a variety of scales, speeds and textures. Right- and left-wing populism and right/left-wing authoritarianism are combining and overlapping in novel ways, forming both territorial and aterritorial hybrids, for example: the symbolic representation of Singapore as a territorial backdrop for Trump and Kim Jung Un's ‘durian diplomacy’ (Luger, 2019, in this issue) or the way that ‘sanctuary’ (as a space of exception) becomes both an urban policy (‘safe cities’) and a global imaginary (Kuge, 2019, in this issue).

First, we propose in this issue that illiberalism is an embodied, performed and encountered process rather than a fixed outcome that is not necessarily conceived in one place and delivered to another, or the brainchild of a political leader or ideology – it need not be operated through ‘the authoritarian personality’ of a political leader such as Duterte (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). Rather, we frame illiberalism as a networked landscape of mundane state–society relations, operations and encounters that define the human everyday, in cities big and small, in democracies and non-democracies. Recent studies such as Runciman’s How Democracy Ends (2018), for example, outline the ways that states can disintegrate from liberal democracies to authoritarian autocracies via various characteristics and pathways. We do not believe that such a path is either straightforward, linear, inevitable or irreversible. We propose that Runciman’s ‘coups, catastrophes and technological take-overs’ may happen in subtle and hard-to-read ways that may be incommensurable. We portray illiberalism as a banal, ordinary, global condition that is brought into being and experienced through mundane processes such as seeing a doctor, attending a meeting at a community centre, ‘liking’ a Facebook post or negotiating an urban planning strategy. Indeed, we build from Hannah Arendt's (Arendt, 1958) proposal that illiberal power is circular, stemming not only downward from powerful despots or autocratic governments but also upwards and sideways from society's interstitial spaces and micro-places and practices.

Second, global politics are often ascribed to territory, and we propose it is time to move beyond a territorial fixation. This does not mean abandoning territorially based case studies (as most of these papers do, indeed, focus on place-based cases). Rather, it is trying to look across and beyond territory and scale to find commonalities, trends, hybridities, connections and convergences/divergences in the way illiberalism is a set of relations, processes and flows; the way illiberalism in one place informs another; and the way that illiberalism operates through inter alia local and global scales. We propose that, for example, illiberalism is deeply embedded in what is left of the global neoliberal project; deeply enmeshed in global democracies; and in often-portrayed ‘liberal’ institutions. Understanding these hybrid forms are crucial to understand specific places better. The places explored in this issue are Hyderabad, India (Sood & Kennedy, 2019, in this issue); rural China (Tynen, 2019, in this issue); Korea (Lim and Sziarto, 2020, in this issue); Singapore (Luger, 2019, in this issue); and the ‘Sanctuary Cities’ of the United States (Kuge, 2019, in this issue).

Finally, we seek to expand the definition and scope/scale of illiberalism and to broaden understanding beyond what is normally discussed in political science and political geography. For example, how illiberalism informs public health policy and thus crosses into health geographies (Lim, In Press, in this issue); the way that cyberspace has allowed illiberalism to stretch and reconfigure digital conversations and identities, thus pushing into the geohumanities and media studies (Luger, 2019, in this issue); the way that illiberalism is experienced via community planning and the grassroots, thus bridging the political with planning (Sood & Kennedy, In Press, in this issue; Tynen, 2019, in this issue), and the way that illiberalism merges with the debates on immigration and place (Kuge, 2019, in this issue). In broadening and expanding how to frame illiberalism, we suggest incorporating much broader concepts such as ‘welcome’ or ‘inclusion/exclusion’, and the way these can create spaces across place/territory into a discussion on illiberalism (echoing, for example, Gill, 2018, on spaces of ‘welcome’ versus ‘unwelcome’ for refugees; or Gökariksel & Smith, 2018, on spaces of exclusion). In the afterword, Matthew Sparke synthesizes the key debates within this special issue and connects with some wider questions and proposals in (and beyond) political geography (Sparke, 2019, in this issue).

In this expanded framing, illiberalism can be seen as more process oriented and experiential – pockets of micro-interactions and small, ordinary encounters. Zooming into these banal, quotidian spaces can help one zoom back out to the planetary to build and reconsider theory. We prefer to think of this as zooming rather than scaling in a vertical or horizontal sense. Illiberalism is defined, in part, by the experience of intensities and the ramifications of amplification. It can help one to (de)terrorialize and decolonize, even as we (re)territorialize and continue to engage with site-specific cases.

The following papers also identify and grapple with some conceptual gaps in urban political theory. Writing about liberal democratic contexts, Lefebvre (1979/2009) argued that state territorial control facilitates capital accumulation. But what happens in the relationship between the state, territory and capital in illiberal political contexts? While some scholarship in geography has addressed the relationship between sovereignty and territory (Yeh, 2013), such as in the context of violence (Elden, 2009) and state power (Jessop, 2007), more scholarship is needed to address the implications of authoritarian governance on multiple scales in relationship to territory and economic development. Furthermore, political geographers such as Koch (2013, 2016) have stressed the importance of moving beyond ‘territorial traps’ and ‘moral geographies’ to understand better the relational nature of illiberalism and the circular, rather than hierarchical, flows of power (Foucault, 2007) in and across various scales. Furthermore, illiberalism is not limited to particular places, global regions or physical territory at all. Various forms of illiberalism, from authoritarian state–society relations to religious fundamentalism, show up in ‘East and West’, ‘North and South’, in cyberspace and in urban neighbourhoods, in both Western-liberal and non-Western-illiberal settings, but more importantly, the spaces in-between and the autonomous geographies that might offer contradictory and surprising examples of hybridization and transnationalism.

The papers in this issue are diverse not only in terms of geographical cases and territorial versus aterritorial approaches to state and society but also in their methodologies and range of empirical findings. Sarah Tynen (Tynen, 2019, in this issue) draws from interviews and site-based observation in western China to suggest that community centres are powerful mechanisms for Chinese state territorialization and the induction of control and discipline of the minority, Muslim, Uyghur population. Tynen's portrayal of the ordinary, local community as a powerful biopolitical agent reconfigures traditional conceptions of the top-down and monumental nature of Chinese authoritarianism. Contrasting Tynen's look at illiberal community structures, Janika Kuge (Kuge, 2019, in this issue) critically deconstructs the ‘liberal’ assemblage of the ‘Sanctuary City’ as a response to Trump's illiberal antimigration policies (and the way the movement has grown beyond the United States). However, Kuge also urges caution in falling back into the liberal/illiberal dichotomy, suggesting that the Sanctuary City movement is not always progressive or inclusive, more a dialectic of emancipatory openings and exclusive closures.

This complexity is also probed by Ashima Sood and Lorraine Kennedy (Sood & Kennedy, 2019, in this issue) through the lens of the urban planning and economic development process in Hyderabad. They explore the way that non-democratic neoliberal development agendas become ensconced within otherwise-liberal local governments through the form of ‘special-purpose enclaves’ that create spaces of exception and become loci for illiberal governance in the name of entrepreneurialism. This paper also thereby expands the discussion on undemocratic urban growth structures (such as ‘opportunity zones’ aided and abetted by ‘crony capitalism’), commonly explored in North American or European contexts, to the Global South.

Public health policy and infrastructure as an illiberal state–society apparatus forms the basis for So Hyung Lim and Kirstin Sziarto's case (Lim and Sziarto, 2020, in this issue), which focuses on South Korea and the authoritarian response to the MERS outbreak in 2015. Public emergencies such as MERS (a respiratory virus), Lim and Sziarto argue, can stimulate rapid illiberal responses in places such as South Korea with a history of authoritarian governance. Authoritarian governments often animate their national security doctrines with references to disease and pathogens. The lethality and transmissive qualities of disease are then transferred onto the bodies and institutions of those who oppose their rule. Duterte's drug war in the Philippines is also a war against disease.

Finally, I conclude the set of papers with the question of where a place begins or ends if its politics stretch into cyberspace. As Singapore is a territorially bound and geographically small city-state, its legal mechanisms apply to a territory that is rooted in place and, increasingly, aterritorial. Singapore's recent ‘fake news’ legislation shows how the rhetoric emanating from Trump's administration has globalized, attaching to Singapore's unique authoritarian state–society fabric. Illiberal rhetoric and authoritarian enclosures in cyberspace and on social media are thus combined, hybrid and multidirectional. If Singapore is place-based and planetary, then where does anyplace really exist? And where are politics located? What to make of social media emerging as a political ‘place’ which functions as both an extension of but also a challenge to the nation-state?

The implications of these explorations lead to conclusions that illiberalism cannot be so easily charted or prognosticated. Recent events in Hong Kong are just one indication that the daily battle for or against illiberalism is far from over; democratic recession is not inevitable. We hope this special issue pushes research further as new questions arise. We argue to move beyond cycles, linear pathways or predictable stages, beyond sensational coups or catastrophes, to look more closely at everyday illiberal processes and experiences in, and across, places both ordinary and extraordinary. The times are perilous, and we feel these questions are crucial. In sum, we feel that by deterritorializing and engaging with the planetary scale, we can then reterritorialize and return to place with renewed theoretical, empirical and epistemological vigour.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The guest editor thanks the authors of this special issue: Sarah Tynen, Janika Kuge, Ashmina Sood and Lorraine Kennedy, and So Hyung Lim. The papers began as a set of American Association of Geographer's (AAG) conference sessions in 2018, co-organized and chaired by the guest editor and Sarah Tynen – doubly Sarah is thanked for her collaboration and vision for the sessions. The guest editor also thanks Matthew Sparke sincerely for writing the afterword, which follows the papers and concludes the special issue.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jason Luger http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0250-7011