Krisztina Varró

Making (more) sense of political-economic geographies of continuity and change Dialoguing across ontological divides

In view of persisting and multiple ‘crises’, coming to grips with sociospatial change is one of the key tasks in geographical political economy today. However, to date, philosophical misunderstandings and the related lack of productive scholarly exchange has prevented this task from being satisfyingly addressed. In this paper I discuss the Cultural Political Economy approach and discourse theory in order to expose some key misunderstandings and to argue in favour of more philosophical awareness. By setting up a dialogue between the two approaches I aim to demonstrate the benefits of a constructive engagement between perspectives rooted in ontologically different positions.

Changing Narratives on EU Multi-level Space in a Globalizing Era: How Hungary as a National Space became Part of the Story

The political nature of spatial restructuring has featured prominently in recent discussions of globalization. This paper argues that we cannot understand these political processes by focusing on the interaction of institutional actors alone; we also need to consider how various spatial narratives are mobilized and interact to naturalize “given” scales and spaces. To illustrate these points, this paper first assesses the construction of a multi-level, united European Union (EU) space. It then more closely examines the narratives induced by Hungarys accession to complement institutional analyses in explaining why it was Hungarian national space—rather than the newly created regional spaces—that joined the EU in 2004. As will be shown, understandings of globalization, as part of these narratives, are indispensable to understand the re-scaling of governance.

Spatial Imaginaries of the Dutch–German–Belgian Borderlands: A Multidimensional Analysis of Cross-Border Regional Governance

Parallel to the proliferation of cross-border regional cooperation initiatives in the European Union, increasing scholarly attention has been given to conceptualizing cross-border governance in recent decades. In line with the recognition that cross-border regions have not undermined the significance of nation-state spaces but have added to their complexity, conceptual frameworks of analysis have become more and more refined. However, studies still tend to be framed in one spatial grammar, that of territory, scale or network, and fail to consider the ways in which these different dimensions become interlocked. The aim of this article is to address this lack by developing a multidimensional perspective, in order to finally circumvent state-centric thinking on cross-border regions and to offer a more nuanced account of whether and how new imaginaries of spatial governance institutionalize. These arguments are demonstrated by means of a case study of cross-border regional governance in the Dutch–German–Belgian borderlands.

Reconsidering the English Question as a Matter of Democratic Politics and Spatial Justice

This paper is concerned with the implications of state territorial decentralization for the management of uneven regional development and spatial justice. It is argued that accounts of post-1997 UK devolution and the treatment of ‘the English question’ with a similar concern have tended to dismiss government policies against the backdrop of an uncritical view of spatial Keynesianism. Furthermore, these accounts have not succeeded in capturing the interconnectedness of the issues of democracy, solidarity, and spatial justice. In order to address these shortcomings I elaborate on a perspective that draws on insights of postfoundational political thought and interprets justice as democratic practice. This perspective reminds us that any notion of solidarity between people sharing a ‘national space’ and, consequently, any understanding of spatial justice is always politically constructed. Accordingly, the main task becomes to ‘unimagine’ the nation as a community of pregiven interests and to examine the obstacles to a meaningful debate on the institutional supports of solidarity.

The Politics of Spatial Policy and Governance in Post-1990 Hungary: The Interplay Between European and National Discourses of Space

Abstract There is now a wealth of literature discussing how regional development and spatial planning practices in Central Eastern Europe have been shaped through the alignment with EU policy frameworks. However, scholars have tended to study governance dynamics in terms of adaptation and learning, paying thus little attention to how spatial policy change is inherently interlinked with the political contestation of nation-state spaces. This paper proposes to address this lack by combining insights from political economic work on state spatial restructuring and discourse theory. From this perspective, the institutionalization of spatial policies is examined as a political process in which particular understandings of space become seen legitimate and stabilized depending on how well they fit existing discourses. The paper demonstrates the added value of this approach through a case study of spatial policy change in post-1990 Hungary, and argues that the approach is more generally applicable to examine shifts in spatial policies and to address concerns with the increase in uneven development at different scales.

Rethinking cross-border Euregionalism as self-organising system

Studies of cross-border regions in the European Union have struggled conceptually with an apparent ambiguity of Euregionalism: namely that cross-border regions seem to be the manifestations of reterritorialising state governance on the one hand, but have clearly failed to substantially challenge the Westphalian state territorial system on the other. The aim of the present paper is to develop a conceptual framework that helps us understand this paradoxical nature of cross-border regions. To this end, we draw on the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann and the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, and propose to regard Euregionalism (and regionalisms more generally) as a self-organising system. Self-organisation entails the process in which self-referential communication, rather than a set of actors, employs spatial concepts, such as the region, to enable system-specific entanglements with physical space, either short-lived or enduring, and possibly – but not necessarily – involving governance.

Recognising the Emerging Transnational Spaces and Subjectivities of Cross-border Cooperation : Towards a research agenda

ABSTRACT Recently proliferating practice- and people-centred accounts have offered useful insights on cross-border regionalism and cooperation in the European Union. However, the assumption of these studies concerning the dominantly national character of people’s ‘spatial socialisation’ and practices has produced a subtle but problematic bias towards nation-state (re)bordering and, relatedly, has implied a lack of recognition for the formation of transnational subjectivities and spaces. Inspired by fieldwork observations made in the Dutch-German-Belgian borderlands, the aim of this paper is to sketch a research agenda that comes to grips with the emerging transnational dimension of cross-border cooperation. Key to this agenda is the reconsideration of the notion of practice so as to acknowledge that cross-border cooperation entails simultaneous rebordering and debordering processes and is constituted through situated and embodied actions. The paper discusses discourse theory and practice theory as two useful perspectives for such a rethinking and outlines the key methodological implications for future research on cross-border cooperation.

Shifts in EU Cohesion Policy and Processes of Peripheralization: A View from Central Eastern Europe

Abstract The increasing dominance of neoliberalism as the key steering mechanism of the European Union (EU) since the early 1990s has implied the competitiveness-oriented reshaping of cohesion policy. The aim of this paper is to initiate a debate from a critical political economic perspective on the implications of this shift for Central Eastern European (CEE) member states. To this end, the paper discusses the formation of EU centre-periphery relations from a CEE point of view and formulates some preliminary suggestions as to how cohesion policy would need to be rethought in order to ensure the better integration of lagging CEE regions.

European innovation policies from RIS to smart specialization: a policy assemblage perspective: A Socio-Economic Perspective on EU Integration

Policy initiatives such as regional innovation strategies are strategically and selectively infused by rationales and imaginaries that resonate with major political and societal shifts. A core example is how the transition from spatial Keynesianism to neoliberal thinking has been accompanied by a discourse of the ‘knowledge-based economy’, overpowering the more socially oriented notion of the ‘information society’. Using the notion of policy assemblage, this chapter advocates a more complex and political reading of the role of rationales and imaginaries. Undertaking an analysis of four decades of regional innovation policy in Europe, we show how a variety of concerns, notably around competitiveness, sustainability and cohesion, have all made their inroads into the substantiation and legitimization of innovation policies. In doing so, we pay attention to the way innovation policies have been shaped by the continuous (re)imagination of European, national and regional spaces in terms of developmental ambitions. The last four decades have witnessed the rise, peak and modification of regional innovation policy. This is especially noteworthy in Europe, where the EU has taken a leading role in the development and proliferation of innovation-oriented policy ideas and practices. The evolution of EU regional innovation policy has been marked by a number of major trends and shifts. Underlying development perspectives have moved from Keynesian to neoliberal approaches; policy perspectives took on board academic notions of learning and the building of institutional capacity; in terms of governance, a direct nexus was created between the EU and the regional level.Policy initiatives such as regional innovation strategies are strategically and selectively infused by rationales and imaginaries that resonate with major political and societal shifts. A core example is how the transition from spatial Keynesianism to neoliberal thinking has been accompanied by a discourse of the ‘knowledge-based economy’, overpowering the more socially oriented notion of the ‘information society’. Using the notion of policy assemblage, this chapter advocates a more complex and political reading of the role of rationales and imaginaries. Undertaking an analysis of four decades of regional innovation policy in Europe, we show how a variety of concerns, notably around competitiveness, sustainability and cohesion, have all made their inroads into the substantiation and legitimization of innovation policies. In doing so, we pay attention to the way innovation policies have been shaped by the continuous (re)imagination of European, national and regional spaces in terms of developmental ambitions. The last four decades have witnessed the rise, peak and modification of regional innovation policy. This is especially noteworthy in Europe, where the EU has taken a leading role in the development and proliferation of innovation-oriented policy ideas and practices. The evolution of EU regional innovation policy has been marked by a number of major trends and shifts. Underlying development perspectives have moved from Keynesian to neoliberal approaches; policy perspectives took on board academic notions of learning and the building of institutional capacity; in terms of governance, a direct nexus was created between the EU and the regional level.