Geopolitical Economy Research Articles

Empire, redux: Towards a new political geography of race war

This essay revisits geographical debates on empire to clarify how broader geopolitical economies of power and violence have always been experienced at the scale of the everyday as an intimate politics of relation- and difference-making. It is guided by two questions that promise to stretch geographical writing on empire in new ways. They are: how has empire always been a racial project? And how has imperial race-making historically gone hand-in-hand with imperial place-making? Both questions force us to reckon with empire as a multi-scalar project that entangles the foreign and the domestic, the intimate and the global, and so on.

Capitalism, coronavirus, and war in the digital age: Interview with Radhika Desai

In Spring 2024, I met Radhika Desai for the first time at the London School of Economics and Political Science when we both held visiting positions at the Department of International Development as invited scholarly visitors. Although I had not expected her presence, I immediately recognized her after having been a reader of her works on geopolitical economy when developing my own ideas about the political economy of Chinese media and communications. I introduced myself and started talking with her, first at a coffee shop, then in a small office inside LSE’s Connaught House, and later at the Marx Memorial Library in London for a book launch party. Prompted by my questions rooted in the field of media and communication, Radhika Desai shared ideas from her newly published book, Capitalism, Coronavirus, and War: A Geopolitical Economy (Routledge, 2023), which is being translated into Chinese, her critiques about imperialism, globalization and essentially the world order after decades of neoliberalism, and, furthermore, her hopes for China, BRICS, and, ultimately, for the political left. Now, these conversations are turned into a dialogue piece, and with it I hope Communication and the Public readers will sense my gains from Radhika Desai, that is, to paraphrase from the famous line from the Communist Manifesto, in the digital age when all that is solid melts into ostensibly immaterial communication, man/woman is at last compelled to face with sober senses the real conditions of life and his or her relations with their kind.

The geopolitical economy of the original condition

Placed outside theory, the ‘original condition’ provides theory’s unquestioned foundation. For the discourses explicated as geoeconomics by Mallin and Sidaway, the points of departure include a capitalist economy on a world scale, and a set of states constituted around the pursuit of profit for private enterprises in turn understood as comprising the national economy. In this commentary I highlight how this version of the original condition has been assembled from discourses such as the political economy in the tale of Robinson Crusoe and the philosophy of a racialised homeland in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. This interrogation offers an alternative genealogy to the study of the circulation of the term ‘geoeconomics’.

Book review: Geopolitical economy of sport

Book review: Geopolitical economy of sport

Towards Financial Autonomy: The Geopolitical Economy of EUR-Denominated Clearing Services Relocation

ABSTRACT This paper examines the factors influencing the relocation of EUR-denominated clearing services back to EU central counterparties (CCPs) by the European Commission. It adopts a novel security-centred approach to analyse this decision within the context of a fragmented geopolitical arena marked by uneven development in financial centres. Using the theory of Geopolitical Economy (GPE), this paper examines the implications and risks associated with financial dependencies and the pursuit of autonomy in the global financial landscape. It specifically addresses the risks posed by the dominance of UK CCPs, such as London Clearing House (LCH), in EUR-denominated clearing services and emphasises the EU’s need to bolster its financial autonomy and stability, mitigating these intricate risks in this process. Through this analysis, the paper contributes to the existing literature by offering a novel understanding of the geopolitical-economic factors influencing regulatory actions within financial services.

Rethinking Energy Geopolitics: Towards a Geopolitical Economy of Global Energy Transformation

ABSTRACT We are in the midst of a global energy system transformation (GEST) which is rewiring the world economy, opening new axes of political contestation, and revolutionising the energetic basis of human civilisation. Energy geopolitics has not yet reconciled itself to this challenge. The field has traditionally been preoccupied with the dependence of Western states on cross-border flows of fossil fuels. More recently, efforts have been made to prospectively map out what the geopolitics of a fully renewable world might look like. What both literatures miss, however, is the very fact of the GEST: that we are living through a changing and contested process of global transformation, across interacting high- and low-emissions systems, whose contours are open and actively constructed over time. In this paper, we start to develop a provisional framework to make sense of the GEST, that is able to capture the full scale of the transformation, and its dynamic, contingent, constructed nature. We attend to three areas of geopolitical economy: the wide-ranging material dimensions of the transformation, its geographical space-making, and its conflict-ridden political economy. We then apply this framework to two case studies, one looking at the fraught role of fossil gas as a ‘transition fuel’, the other at lithium-ion batteries.

Outlines of a geopolitical economy of Chinese socialism against US-led capitalist imperialism: a reply to ‘China’s development path, 1949–2022’ by Mick Dunford

Outlines of a geopolitical economy of Chinese socialism against US-led capitalist imperialism: a reply to ‘China’s development path, 1949–2022’ by Mick Dunford

The Geopolitical Economy of International Inequality

ABSTRACTThis article shows that economic inequality between nations has systematically worsened in monetary terms since 1950, and that the principal explanator is inequality between blocs of nations, notably the persistent gap between the Global North and Global South. By 2022, the GDP per capita of the North was 12 times greater than that of the South, this ratio being twice as great as in 1950. This general trend has two consistent exceptions, China and Vietnam. There was also a brief reversal of the trend from 2000 to 2012. However, except for China and Vietnam, it has resumed since then. The article shows that both the Global South and North are coherent entities: they are historically stable and converge internally while diverging from each other. It assesses the implications for international inequality and convergence research and draws out some consequences for world geopolitical relations. Finally, the article sets out the case for an international classification standard that facilitates systematic research into inter‐bloc inequality.

ПРИЧИНЫ ДИСФУНКЦИЙ МОДЕЛИ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ МИРОВЫМ СПОРТОМ

The article presents materials related to the analysis of the causes for management dysfunctions in modern sports and further prospects for the development of sports in a changing world order. Paradoxically, the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine and the subsequent reaction of sports officials of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and international sports federations (IFS) made it possible to really look at the existing models of management of individual sports and the entire Olympic system from an applied aspect. Governance and power in sport is viewed through the lens of theories of symbolic capital, critical realism, dominance theory and the three-level dimension of power in sport. In the analytical part, the focus is on the fact that international sport does not adhere to a unitary or federal model of governance, but corresponds to the principles of a polycentric management system, since power in sport is asymmetrical and dispersed across separately established bodies with overlapping jurisdictions, which are not always in a hierarchical relationship with each other. That is why IOC President Thomas Bach made recommendations to remove Russian and Belarusian athletes from international competitions, cancel competitions on the territory of these countries and ban Russian and Belarusian state symbols. The IOC leadership has no other management levers to make decisions. The author identified that dysfunctions in the management model led to the dependence of the Olympic movement on American capital and unfair distribution of income; creating a trend towards the development of regional sports projects and the formation of a new geopolitical economy of sports

The Geopolitical Economy of Sport: Power, Politics, Money, and the State

The Geopolitical Economy of Sport: Power, Politics, Money, and the State

Christopher Krupa: A feast of flowers review essays

A feast of flowers is simultaneously grounded in the reality of place and the practice of face-to-face social relations while at the same time being thoroughly shaped by detailed attention to actual global geopolitical economy—not just vague references to globalization, but a thorough engagement with, in this case, finance capital and the way debt has driven Northern ambitions and generated a specific kind of social world in the Ecuador of the Global South.

Transculturality, Anti‐Asian Racism and Student Mobility: A Case Study of Chinese International Student Experiences during the COVID‐19 Pandemic1

The breakout and spread of the SARS‐COV‐2/COVID‐19 virus in early 2020 caused a drastic increase in blatant racism and microaggressions against Asians/people of Asian descent. The rise of anti‐Asian racism can be viewed as a repeat of a century‐long narrative of Yellow Peril against Asian newcomers in western societies. While some reports/studies explained the phenomenon with the hegemony of race relations, it is imperative to examine the experiences of anti‐Asian racism in the context of the fast‐changing geopolitical economy and transcultural relations. Using the conceptual frameworks of Intellectual Migration and transculturalism, this study examines how the rise of anti‐Asian racism during the COVID‐19 pandemic affected Chinese international students in Nova Scotia and if their experience of racialization was critical enough to change their post‐graduation plan of staying in Canada or not. In order to provide an overview of international student experiences in Nova Scotia and to assess the significance of ethnicity and racism as factors in student mobility, we analyzed the data from two research projects. First, survey and individual interview data from the IM (Intellectual Migration) Halifax project provided detailed insights on Chinese international students' study and living experiences during the pandemic and their post‐graduation plans. Second, survey and focus group data from the NSIS (Nova Scotia International Students) project allowed a comparison of pandemic experiences between Chinese and other international students in the province of Nova Scotia. This case study aimed to examine the experiences of racialization among Chinese international students in Nova Scotia and assess the extent to which their post‐graduation mobility is shaped by racialization.

Spatializing social reproduction theory: integrating state space and the urban fabric

This article sets out to extend the core ideas of social reproduction theory (SRT), an increasingly influential strand of scholarship within and beyond critical geopolitical economy. It suggests that while SRT productively addresses longstanding debates within Marxist feminism, it has yet to adequately theorize the shifting spatialities of reproductive work and the relationship between social reproduction and the state. To address this relative weakness, this article stages a dialogue between SRT and the emergent neo-Lefebvrian literature on state space and the multiscalar geographies of capitalist urbanization. The primary claim at stake in this context is that reproductive work is periodically and systematically reorganized and re-spatialized in relation to the broader crisis dynamics of capital, and the reweaving of the urban fabric; and, moreover, that this process of reorganization and re-spatialization is profoundly mediated, managed, and canalized by state spatial practices. To concretize this theorization, this article closes with a brief historical reading of US imperial expansion and urbanization between roughly 1898 and 1925.

The revenge of multiplicity: Chinese capitalism under systemic competition

The re-emergence of conflict at the apex of the global political economy between the United States and China makes it imperative to establish analytical connections between geopolitics and national political-economic development trajectories. However, just as realist international relations conceals ‘domestic’ causes of international conflict, most comparative capitalisms (CC) research has systematically underplayed the role of geopolitics and the global political economy as forces structuring and driving national economies. Furthermore, both IR and CC analyses misleadingly treat states as analogous and independent ‘units’, rather than relationally constituted and internally heterogenous political forms whose existence and reproduction requires explanation. As such, CC fails to examine either the geopolitical preconditions for, constitution of, or the geopolitical outcomes of growth models. This article presents an uneven and combined development (U&CD) account of the connections between global order, geopolitical economy and Chinese capitalism, showing how – rather than an alien infiltrator – Chinese state capitalism is both a product, and increasingly a transmitter, of the dynamics of competitive capital accumulation operating in the global political economy. In this way, I contribute to the development of heterodox CC literature by advancing i) a conception of capitalism as a geopolitical-economic system, (ii) an example of how national cases can be treated as dialectically related to and sites for the emergence of the global geopolitical economy, and (iii) a concise application of this method to the case of Sino-US relations.

Ten postulates of a media imperialism framework: For critical research on China’s media power and influence in the Global South

This article considers the growing media power and influence of China in the global South through the lens of a critical media imperialism framework derived from the geopolitical economy of communications research tradition. While extensive research exists on US media imperialism and the challenge to it posed by China’s global media rise, the idea of China as a media imperialist in its own right has received limited attention. This article addresses this gap in the field by summarizing ten key postulates of a media imperialism framework for critical research on China’s media power and influence in the global South. This article study does not seek to prove China’s status as a new media imperialist power or provide a detailed case study of China’s media imperialism in a specific country. Instead, it synthesizes the ten postulates of a media imperialism framework, examines China’s corporate and state media organizations in relation to these, and draws from relevant scholarship, evidence, and anecdotes. The article argues that each postulate can serve as a foundation for future case studies of different facets of China’s media power and influence in countries across the global South. These postulates can be refined, disproven, or expanded through further research. By considering China’s media power and influence through the lens of the media imperialism framework, this article aims to stimulate further meta-theory, empirical research, and scholarly debates on this pivotal topic, which while contentious, is significant to the future of the global South, and the wider world system.

New imperialisms in the making? The geo-political economy of transnational higher education mobility in the UK and China

Higher education (HE) mobility programmes around the globe have been key initiatives over the past thirty years, driven by combinations of supranational and national state-led knowledge economy policies, university strategies, and decisions made by individuals regarding employability, credentials, or academic tourism. In this paper we argue that mobility too often is understood through the prism of internationalism, itself umbilically tied to and nourished by Enlightenment liberal thinking, such as Kantian cosmopolitanism, and the romantic figure of the wandering scholar. This has the effect of reducing our understanding of transnational mobility to individual actors, their desires, and experiences. In this paper we ask: to what extent and in what ways can HE transnational mobility projects be understood as forms of imperialism? In this regard we examine the literature on imperialism and argue for a more capacious use of the term; as taking economic, political and cultural forms. We use these to examine the links between the expansion and securing of empires historically, the state’s spatial projects and global market making. We do this through the prism of two nations, the UK and China, comparing their state’s transnational HE strategies, selectivities and outcomes.

The geopolitical economy of an undermined energy transition: The case of Jordan

For resource-poor countries in the MENA, the expansion of renewables represents a unique chance to overcome established geopolitical dependencies, develop employment opportunities, and pursue a long-term strategy of domestic energy security. While, in 2018, Jordan was declared one of the top three emerging markets globally for clean energy investment, in 2019, efforts at transition had come to a temporary halt. Jordanian attempts at energy transition were motivated by concerns for energy security, rather than sustainability. Whereas energy security and transition to renewables initially seemed to coincide, technical restraints and a renewed turn to fossil fuels have undermined efforts at transition, seemingly boosting energy security on the short-term, but compromising it on the long-run. We argue that the case of Jordan illustrates how domestic and regional political and economic drivers may undermine efforts at energy transition, deepen established dependencies, and transform renewables’ distributed nature into concentrated forms of power. By zooming in on key entry points for energy flows into Jordan, we explore what dynamics are (re-)energised, and which ones undermined. Finally, we suggest decentralised renewables, communal ownership models, and the empowerment of marginalised municipal authorities as means to strengthen inclusive and participatory practices and overcome fossil fuel dependencies.

Malaysia in Changing Geopolitical Economy: Navigating Great Power Competition between China and the United States

The past two years have witnessed escalating geopolitical tensions occurring not only in the political but also economic domains especially technology and global supply chains, infrastructure connectivity, trade and finance. With tensions between the US and China escalating on many fronts, Southeast Asia has become a focal point of strategic rivalry again as Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy 2022 attempts to rebuild the US-led order in Asia to blunt China’s growing influence in the region. A series of economic initiatives following his Indo-Pacific strategy focuses on reconfiguring the semiconductor global supply chain. In this context, the paper aims to examine how Malaysia cope with the complex patterns of cooperation, competition and conflict arising from the current shifts in the global geopolitics and geoeconomics. The paper benefits from the insights from the international political economy research which explores how the Malaysian government strives to reconcile domestic and international imperatives in navigating the changing global geopolitical economy, which can be perceived as both a threat as well as an opportunity by the state and non-state actors in the country. The question of whether hedging is tenable is undoubtedly contingent upon the extent of big power rivalry. Given the greater uncertainty over the pernicious effects of rising regional polarization and retreat from economic globalization, Malaysia will continue to maintain strategic ambiguity as long as US-China rivalry has not (yet) escalated into outright military conflict. Nevertheless, the paper concludes that the space to hedge may be squeezed since small power like Malaysia may face harsher realities as it navigates the changing geopolitical economy landscape. Hence, the ASEAN solidarity and cohesion is crucial to ensure a more unified regional response to the escalating Sino-American strategic competition.

The Long Shadow of Hiroshima: Capitalism and Nuclear Weapons

ABSTRACT Few realise that amid rising international tensions, inter alia over Ukraine, Taiwan of China, Iran and AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States), nuclear arms control is today almost entirely dismantled and a manifestly declining and desperate US has launched a new nuclear arms, now also targeting China, making war and even nuclear war seem increasingly possible. The political and geopolitical economy of nuclear proliferation and control here highlights the singular role of the US in driving the arms race, arguing that the US desire to dominate the world economy, not the Cold War, caused the nuclear arms race; that the only surviving arms control treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has become more a channel for proliferation than a dam against it; and that the US used the NPT to justify its post–Cold War international aggression against some countries while violating it to aid allies.

Siberian Transport Communications in the Second Half of the 19th Century: Geopolitical Economy

The article covers the attempts to create a Trans-Siberian waterway, which were made by the government and individual persons in the second half of the 19th century. The ideas on the possibility of connecting Siberian river systems were suggested back in the middle of the 18th century, but due to a number of circumstances these attempts failed to be realized, despite the evident government interest in this issue. Local Siberian merchants came up with an initiative to improve river traffic on Siberian rivers in the middle of the 19th century, but the government did not see a pressing need for it and did not consider it expedient to participate in financing of this and other similar projects that came later. The issue of possible creation of a river route through the whole of Siberia is considered in the article from the perspective of geopolitical economy, which makes it possible to include in the analysis the topic of state authorities’ interest formation in the Siberian river communications. Such an approach is useful for discovering the reasons that prompted the state in the second half of the 19th century to pay attention to the urgency of pulling the space of Siberia and Russia into a single whole, using the Siberian rivers for this purpose. Despite the main disadvantage of these transport arteries - the seasonality, the freight transportation along them could be started rather quickly at minimal cost (compared to the construction of railways or overland tracts). The purpose of this article is to identify the cause-and-effect relationship between the decision of the state on the need for urgent transport development of Siberia and the Far East and the complication of the geopolitical situation in Asia, related to the activity of the main political actors in this region.