State spatiality in an era of global and regional interdependence: The linkage governance approach

Abstract

Since the 1990s, political science has been criticised for its inability to adequately theorise the role and nature of the state in an era of global interdependence. In particular, the discipline is said to have fallen into a ‘territorial trap’. It is founded on a territorial conception of space that both reifies and limits debate about the state to whether it is ‘obsolete’ or ‘obstinate’ in a world where power is increasingly located in transnational functional space between countries. This article responds to this argument, providing a conception of state spatiality that stresses its contingent and variable nature. It claims that state actors can author functional transnational space by fusing together domestic and international objects into distinct ‘linkage governance’ (LG) strategies, although such behaviour will have unintended consequences and not always be successful. It is hoped this LG perspective will open up a more fruitful set of research questions concerning the role of the state in the fluid and dynamic world of the twenty-first century.