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Spring/Summer 1996: International Relations Without Territory
Introduction: International Relations Without Territory (PDF, 6 pages, 63.5 KB), by Bertrand Badie and Marie-Claude Smouts
The territory loses its regulating virtue in times of globalisation and post-modern societies, and in the grip of the "identity fever". The global stage is characterised by an active search for new solidarities to make up for the defection of the classical territory models. The weakening of the territoriality principle restores some importance to other branches of the social interplay, such as economy, identity and culture, community life and networks. However, there is a lack of conceptual tools to analyse this territory decline.
The Territorial Imperative (PDF, 20 pages, 74.7 KB), by Denis Retraille
Political sciences have always favoured the State when observing international relations in order, or so it seems, to reach the status of a positive "Science", to allow measures to be done, to go back and forth between theories and empirical checks. They were always confined in a solid space to acquire a real safety. If we look carefully at what the stakeholders tell about themselves, who they are, what their actions are, how they are like and how they act, it opens a new and much wider scientific field. This geographical liberation frees us from the single reference to a material space. It is of an utmost importance if we were to transpose this into action. Analysing the stakeholders' consciousness and intentions is not sufficient anymore. The aim should be to understand and even establish the organisation of a collective field, which the world is, through the substitution of thinking by acting, the reality of a subjective mechanism by the conscience ideal, in order to reach the legitimacy condition: oneself-between. It is about transforming the territory attributions: resources then empire, to finish with a legitimacy space. We must keep on inventing the world.
State Territory between Imposition and Subversion: Saharo-Sahelian Examples (PDF, 33 pages, 98.2 KB), by Pierre-Robert Baduel
This contribution provides a comparative analysis of political crises in Saharan-Sahelian Africa (Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, and Senegal) on the question of state-territoriality (between ethnic deadlocks and international order). A progressive awakening is taking place in this region according to which the ethnic-territorial State-Nation model imposed after the decolonisation is not adapted to the people.
The Territorial Question in India: from Universalism to Parochialism?, by Christophe Jaffrelot
The territorial model promoted by Nehru and other Indian leaders after the independence was inspired by universal values. However, because of regional movement pressures, the Indian Union territory was redefined as from the 1950s according to a particular criterion, where the language often represented caste interests. The Indian territory history is above all the history of the success of ethnic forces over the universal State structure.
Power and Territory in Russia (PDF, 9 pages, 31.6 KB), by Marie Mendras
The historical and organisational complexity of the Russian people and territories prevented the rapid mutation of a large part of the former Soviet Empire into a nation-State with strictly defined borders. Though Moscow managed to save the RSFSR from the 1991 soviet foundering, the use of strength by the Russian power in Chechnya, on the pretext of saving the territorial integrity of the Federation, weakened the federal structures and the central institutions. Russian history in the last few years is that of a State reinventing itself without territory or a defined political space.
No Blood, nor Soil? The Crisis of Europe and the Dialectics of Territoriality (PDF, 15 pages, 50.3 KB), by Pierre Hassner
The European crisis is, from several points of view, a particular and acute version of the territoriality crisis. At least, as far as these three examples demonstrate, the contradictions and paradoxes of networks and territory articulation fuel it. Firstly the European Union borders issue, then the relation between European security and borders issues in the East, thirdly the refugees issue.
Territory and Public Space in the European Union: the Internal and External Dimension(Part 1, Part 2), by Jean-Louis Quermonne and Andrew Smith
To which extent is the European Union a disturbing factor to the European territorial space and beyond? This contribution offers a reflection on the European Union capacity to modify the territorial space within the Union borders themselves; on the European territorial mutations under the influence of the European Union; on the capacities of the European Union to generate an efficient public space beyond the large market it represents already.
The Territorial Dilemmas of Israel (PDF, 11 pages, 39.4 KB), by Alain Dieckhoff
The Jews' wish for a territorial stabilisation creates the radical originality of the Zionist plan. The protest of Israel by its neighbouring countries was not the only weakening factor. The nature of the Israeli State itself kept it going. And the Jews themselves maintained this confusion of a territorial reference, according to their contrasted way of looking at their national territory, whether they considered their earth as sacred or not. The issue today is to reach a political agreement by distributing the territory, but will it be sufficient to clarify the identities of both groups?
Palestine: From the Lost Land to the Reconquering of the Territory (PDF, 47 pages, 137 KB), by Jean-François Legrain
The Palestinian people under the authority of the PLO based their national identity on the recovery of their sovereignty on a shared territory for over thirty years. But the Oslo agreement appears today as a traditional Israeli-American refusal of the Palestinian State. The Palestinian authority largely discredited possessed the force, and was able to use the lassitude of its people and the civil war threat to forbid political access and the maintaining of their military involvement to its only legitimate competitors, fundamentalists. This compulsory return to neo-fundamentalism in Islam will lead to an increased social influence. An easy task indeed because the population deprived of its national freedom and surely enough of real democracy will find the reasons to cope and hope for in religion.
East Asia: Back to Politics (PDF, 15 pages, 49.8 KB), by Jean-Luc Domenach
It is dangerous to think that Eastern Asia is about to get rid of the burden of politics to give itself away entirely to economy and other trans-national phenomena. As a matter of fact, the East Asian States contributed to the regional division; they controlled it and did not acquire their sovereignty. Moreover, as economies and societies are coming closer, it prepares politics to be back in vengeance, including internal political crises and a renewal of nationalism, which seems to have already started.
Territory and Interdependence (PDF, 7 pages, 26.5 KB), by Robert W. Cox
The questions about the existence and the importance of an international system without any territory emerged in a context of increasing scepticism towards the conventional theories in international relations. The words "international relations" themselves seem to deviate the study aim creating a link to an old-fashioned exclusively Wesphalian conception of the world.
Disarmament and Territory (PDF, 20 pages, 61.5 KB), by Jean-François Guilhaudis
Does disarmament confirm that the international system has no territory? Three linchpins to follow-up the reflection: disarmament and globalisation (globalisation does not challenge the essential role of the State in the field of disarmament); disarmament and geopolitics (according to disarmament diplomacy, the States offer a geopolitical vision); the disarmament territories (very different territories are concerned by disarmament: parts of States, States, several States together, regions, continents).
An International System without Territory? (PDF, 16 pages, 53.4 KB), by Marcel Merle
The couple State/Territory might be in danger of getting divorced, or at least is it showing signs of time erosion. To talk about "an international system without territory", is both a very significant statement and a challenge to the onlookers. If the "territory" as a sovereignty symbol and a state identity support disappears, it questions the international relations conception, based over centuries, on the juxtaposition of State entities.
The informal on the international level or the Subversion of Territoriality (PDF, 34 pages, 103.3 KB), by François Constantin
Not only is the State territory contested by permanent trans-national informal flows and by environmental issues, but also by the global society evolution favouring mobility instead of stability to which the ideal representation of the State is connected and symbolised by the territory. Globalisation generally make the notion of territory out of fashion (electronic communication), and particularly the state territory. The image of territory is even more deteriorated by new practices linked to national heritage. Due to their public notoriety, these new practices popularise the degraded image of territory as a lucrative object, to the detriment of a sublimate image of territory as a political value. Trans-national informality keeps on finding new adepts and becomes commonplace though it first was a phenomenon caused by oppressed minorities, by population looking for survival, etc. It concerns all kinds of social classes, all kinds of activities, including within the state institution, among the local authorities. However, one must admit that trans-national informality is less due to moral or political perversity (although it sometimes is) than to a smart reaction to escape jams, hindrances, and other failures caused not only by under-developed State deficiencies, but also by the excessive bureaucratisation of a modern State.
Economic causes and Representations of Regionalisation (PDF, 24 pages, 71.4 KB), by Jean Coussy
The subject of the new international economy regionalisation was born out of the aspiration to demonstrate, with convergent indicators, that economic globalisation does not prevent regionalisation to survive, or the desire of regionalisation whatsoever. These indicators, it must be said, are rather heterogeneous and of unequal values. The further one looks at all the listed indicators the more doubtful and complex this phenomenon reality seems. They were usually added up to one another to legitimate the regionalisation speeches, concentrated on showing the importance of the phenomenon more than its relevance. As a result, a considerable amount of forecasts, of rhetorical plans and strategies on the functions of regionalisation are written today. These proliferating views claim to adhere to economic logics and they present regionalisation as a respect to economic constraints. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is sometimes due to local circumstances or to its introduction within political plans. It mobilises cravings that have nothing to do with economic determinism. Today regionalisation is often presented as a consequence of "inevitable" economic trends, but it is the expression of economic imaginations as well.
The Deterritorialisation of the Multinationals, Global Firms and the Networking of Firms (PDF, 23 pages, 69.2 KB), by Wladimir Andreff
Since the end of the seventies, multinational companies' de-territorialisation went through several stages. After a strategy of production unit de-localisations, more sophisticated modalities came up: new investments forms, network companies and strategic alliances. Since the end of the eighties, quite a few multinational companies got involved in a so-called global strategy (globalisation), eased by the use of modern technologies and the "financiarisation" of their activities. Is it still possible today to regulate the world system without territory?
Wars, Conflicts, the Transnational Dimension and Territory (PDF, 24 pages, 77.8 KB), by Didier Bigo
Some forms of conflict have no longer anything to do with the traditional images one could have of wars as interstate or territory related conflicts. Conflict stakes have been modified by the infinitesimal multiplication of violence, the transnationality and the virtual contiguity of territories, the multiplicity and relative invisibility of actors, the transformation of "neighbourhood" relationships, and the pattern of networks. In the form of conflict considered in this issue, the battle for recognition articulates differently with the relation to territory, which nevertheless does not induce a clash of civilisation or a new international disorder.