International Politics

, Volume 44, Issue 5, pp 487–512 | Cite as

The Fate of Territorial Engineering: Mechanisms of Territorial Power and Post-Liberal Forms of International Governance

  • Grahame F Thompson
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Does there exist a genuine threat to the continuation of a broadly liberal international (and domestic) order, driven by the re-emergence of religious and secular fundamentalisms? This article assesses this issue in the context of first the rise of territorial power and then its fate in a period of globalization and the revival of religious intolerance. The twin concepts of sovereign-power and bio-power are deployed to investigate the emergence of territorial engineering in the 17th century. A key feature of modern fundamentalisms is that they promote and trade on the deterritorialization of social, political, cultural and economic activity. It is argued that this is a manifestation of a new form of ‘spirited martial power’. The risks associated with these developments should not be over-exaggerated but they exist nonetheless. If this is the case, the problem becomes one of how to re-territorialize the activities and disputes engendered by this reappearance and re-emergence of spirited martial power in the international system, with all its attendant links to religious fundamentalisms. Here the argument is that this requires a re-examination of the nature of international borders, and indeed a re-emphasis on their role, not just in respect to containing disorder and restoring the capacity for governance, but also as a way of re-configuring international toleration and of righting a wrong.

Keywords

territorial borders tolerance international system liberal governance sovereign-power bio-power 
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Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  • Grahame F Thompson
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Politics and International StudiesThe Open UniversityMilton KeynesUK

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