The geo-constitution: Understanding the intersection of geography and political institutions

Wills, Jane

doi:10.1177/0309132518768406

Cited by 19 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…. City-regions are widely recognized as pivotal societal and techno-politic-economic formations that (1) are key to national and international competitiveness and (2) rebalance political restructuring processes into nation-states, even changing their geoeconomic, geopolitic, geodemocratic and geotechnologic dynamics beyond and between them (Jonas & Ward, 2007;Ohmae, 1995;Wills, 2018).…”

Section: Literature Review: Seeing Like a City-regional And Techno-pomentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Algorithmic nations’: seeing like a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage

Calzada

2018

Regional Studies, Regional Science

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There are changing dynamics among political regionalization processes and the rescaling of nation-states in Europe. However, updated and timely research remains scant, ambiguous and unable to meet the challenges of data-driven societies and uneven borders. Nations' physical boundaries matter as much as political borders in their pervasive and growing algorithmic, stateless, liquid and metropolitan citizenship patterns. This paper explores these new 'connectographies' from a regional science perspective, introducing the term 'algorithmic nations' as a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage. A case study is presented of the small stateless city-regionalized European nation of the Basque Country through its analytical and transitional lens, locally known as 'Euskal Hiria' (Basque city-region in the Basque language). This paper questions whether the Basque Country could evolve by (1) modifying its governmental logics and (2) merging its three separate devolved administrations (3) while enabling their direct interactions with citizens (4) through blockchain technologies as the small state of Estonia is implementing and employing cutting-edge algorithmic governance frameworks. In doing so, this paper suggests how four driversmetropolitanization, devolution, the right to decide and blockchainmay be respectively invigorating four dynamicsgeoeconomics, geopolitics, geodemocratics and geotechnologicsin this transition towards the algorithmic nations. Ultimately, this paper concludes with an algorithmic nations research and policy agenda decalogue of how these geotechnological changes might determine the future position of small stateless city-regionalized nations in the European Union.

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Section: Literature Review: Seeing Like a City-regional And Techno-pomentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Algorithmic nations’: seeing like a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage

Calzada

2018

Regional Studies, Regional Science

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“…However, in many areas of the country, particularly in urban areas where service needs can be most acute, these local institutions have disappeared and there are no similar bodies to which assets and services can be transferred. In these areas, new councils or community organisations can be set up to take over services but this takes time and has to be led from below (Aitken et al, 2011;Wills, 2016Wills, , 2019a. As such, the case takes us back to the insights developed by economic geographers who have long recognised the importance of our institutional architecture in facilitating adaptation to change and fostering resilience (Martin & Sunley, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The extent to which current policy is shaped by the historical-political-geography of state institutions and the divisions of political power between them … [which] in turn, shapes the nature of government and the expectations and practices of citizenship, past, present and future. (Wills, 2019a, p. 428) There have been distinct phases in the development of the British geo-constitution over the past 500 years that reflect changes in the balance of power between the centre and periphery (Wills, 2016(Wills, , 2019a. The UK has inherited a complex legacy of institutions, each with different spatial jurisdictions, function, degrees of authority, and scope for adaptive and pragmatic reform.…”

Section: Local Government Responses To Austeritymentioning

confidence: 99%

The geo‐constitution and responses to austerity: Institutional entrepreneurship, switching, and re‐scaling in the United Kingdom

Wills

2020

Trans Inst British Geog

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A nation's geo-constitutionits spatially uneven political institutionsplays a critical role in mediating change. This paper explores this in relation to local government responses to austerity. The paper presents original research collected in Cornwall, United Kingdom, to highlight the scale and impact of asset transfers to town and parish councils. This degree of institutional switching was possible because of a willingness to use legacy constitutional institutions to mediate the trajectory and impact of reform in response to austerity. Town and parish councils have taken on important assets (public toilets, parks, and libraries) and raised local taxation to pay for them. This has reconfigured relationships between local government institutions while also incentivising innovation in service organisation. The research highlights the role of political institutions and their personnel in mediating responses to austerity, as well as raising broader questions about the rescaling of the social contract, and the scope for further constitutional reform. K E Y W O R D S asset-transfer, austerity state, Cornwall, geo-constitution, institutional switching, town and parish councils 1 | INTRODUCTION Rather like the furniture in a room, a nation's political constitution provides the background infrastructure that facilitates collective activity. It is often only when this furniture comes to the end of its life that we recognise what it has been doing for us, and we think about whether to replace it or not. Living in the United Kingdom (UK) in the early 21st century, it seems that much of our constitutional furniture is getting worn out, or even collapsing, prompting debate about whether and how we should embark on reform. While this has been accelerated by the decision to leave the European Union (EU), the holes in our constitutional furniture were evident well before this event. Demands for greater autonomy for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland already had prompted the establishment of geographically differentiated constitutional arrangements from the late 1990s (Bogdanor, 2009). This, in turn, helped to generate the sharp geographical cleavages exposed by the vote to leave the EU that now threaten the nation itself (McCorkindale, 2016). Moreover, granting new freedoms to the three smaller nations has prompted the sleeping giant of England to stir and demand its own voice in a more federal world (Kenny, 2014). After the New Labour governments (1997-2010) tried and failed to provide acceptable regional bodies in England (

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“…While territory and territoriality refer to political struggles over the control of space (Raffestin 1980; Sack 1986), territorialisation is used here as the more specific process of building a political organisation, which may span both formal and informal institutions, oriented towards disputes at one or more scales. The scales of territorialisation may respond both to existing levels of formal political institutions, what Wills (2019) refers to as the “geo‐constitution”, as well as to the geographically delimited political subjectivities and social relations that are constructed by activities themselves, akin to what Martin (2003) describes as place‐framing. Influential geographical literature has developed ontological criticisms of the topographic assumptions of scale (Marston et al 2005) and it has been highlighted that territory itself is relationally constituted (Painter 2010).…”

Section: Territorialising Movement Parties In Argentinamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to opening up the concept of movement party to a more geographically sensitive reading the paper also seeks to expand the remit of radical geographical scholarship by extending literature on the geography of social movements (Miller 2000; Routledge 2015; Souza 2015) into a study of political parties and formal institutions. It is striking that geography’s “radical turn” has provoked an ever‐growing literature on contentious politics and informal activism while relatively little attention has been given to formal political institutions (Wills 2019). In this context, geographical work into political parties and elections (Agnew 1996; Cutts 2006; Johnston and Pattie 2006) has developed in parallel to debates on mobilisation and contention (cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Territorialising Movement Parties: The Case of Nuevo Encuentro in Buenos Aires

Halvorsen

2020

Antipode

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How and why do political parties, seemingly focused on electoral politics, also mobilise within contentious arenas? Drawing on qualitative research with a centreleft Argentine party called Nuevo Encuentro (NE) in the city of Buenos Aires this paper demonstrates the importance of a geographical reading of "movement parties" for responding to this question. Specifically, the paper analyses NE's territorialisation, understood as a strategy for organisation building via the political appropriation of space, typically by opening branches and mobilising activists in neighbourhoods. Between 2007 and 2019 NE's strategy of territorialisation mobilised across multiple scales-the neighbourhood, city and national-yet in so doing its organisation became overstretched and struggled to engage across both contentious and electoral arenas. Through an analysis of NE's territorialisation, grounded in the historical and geographical context of contemporary Argentina, the paper provides an original attempt to spatialise the concept of movement party. Resumen: ¿C omo y por qu e los partidos pol ıticos, aparentemente enfocados en la pol ıtica electoral, tambi en movilizan en las arenas contenciosas? Basado en una investigaci on emp ırica realizada en la Ciudad Aut onoma de Buenos Aires sobre el partido de centroizquierda llamado Nuevo Encuentro (NE), el art ıculo demuestra la importancia de una lectura geogr afica del "partido movimiento" para responder a ese interrogante. Espec ıficamente, el art ıculo analiza la territorializaci on de NE, entendida como una estrategia de construcci on de organizaci on a trav es de la apropiaci on pol ıtica del espacio, generalmente mediante la apertura de locales partidarios y la movilizaci on de militantes del barrio. Entre 2007 y 2019 la estrategia de territorializaci on de NE incluy o m ultiples escalas-el barrio, la ciudad, y lo nacional. Sin embargo, en ese proceso, su organizaci on se abarc o demasiado y encontr o dificultades para participar tanto en la arena electoral como en la contenciosa. Con el an alisis de la territorializaci on de NE, arraigada en el contexto hist orico y geogr afico de la Argentina contempor anea, el art ıculo hace un intento original por espacializar el concepto del partido movimiento.

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The geo-constitution: Understanding the intersection of geography and political institutions

Cited by 19 publications

References 101 publications

‘Algorithmic nations’: seeing like a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage

‘Algorithmic nations’: seeing like a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage

The geo‐constitution and responses to austerity: Institutional entrepreneurship, switching, and re‐scaling in the United Kingdom

Territorialising Movement Parties: The Case of Nuevo Encuentro in Buenos Aires

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