Practicing Geographical Uniqueness: The Geopolitics of Prenegotiation and Icelandic Accession to the European Union

Abstract

In the context of European Union (EU) enlargement, and the recent application by Iceland for EU membership, we explore the practice of geographical uniqueness by diplomatic and political elites and its multiple contradictions as these pertain to critical geopolitics. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Icelandic and EU diplomatic elites conducted in Reykjavik and Brussels, we demonstrate the vital importance—and the underresearched status of—prenegotiation in international diplomacy, arguing that it is an integral stage in the multilevel diplomatic engagements and political encounters that shape geostrategic relations between states. The nuanced practices and their discursive attributes deployed by state political and diplomatic elites in this prenegotiation are highlighted through a specific focus on elite use of geographical uniqueness as an explicit prenegotiation tactic. In turn, particular emphasis is placed on Icelandic domestic contestation of this geographical representation. Through this focus on the rhetorical and practical implications of geographical uniqueness, the article exposes the importance of prenegotiation to calls in contemporary critical geopolitics for research that examines the conditions under which geopolitical knowledge is produced and circulated, and the multiple political consequences that arise from its use.