Territory and Democratic Politics

ISBN-13: 9783031356711 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

Oscar Mazzoleni

Opis

The book provides a comprehensive and updated introduction to concept of territory in the study of democratic politics. Territory plays a rather marginal role in the traditional conceptions of democracy that in many ways still prevail today. Democratic politics is often analysed from the point of view of its institutions, citizens and voters, while little is said about the territory through which it is expressed – at most it provides a broader perimeter or context of political and institutional action. The book offers, instead, an introductory theoretically-oriented discussion of crucial issues such as the genesis of state-nation, the transformation of democratic citizenship, the current borders’ policies, the rising of territorial populism and the experience of 19-covid pandemic.This is an open access book.

Spis treści

Introduction

Chapter 1

CRISIS AND RELEVANCE OF A TERRITORIAL APPROACH

Chapter 2

A TERRITORIAL APPROACH TO POLITICS

Chapter 3

TERRITORY AND THE NATION-STATE

Chapter 4

TERRITORIAL CLEAVAGES, VOTING AND PROTEST

Chapter 5

TERRITORY, NATION AND CITIZENSHIP

Chapter 6.

POPULISM, TERRITORY, BORDERS

 

Chapter 7

TERRITORY and the PANDEMIC

O autorze

Oscar ​Mazzoleni is the director of the Research Observatory for Regional politics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Blurb

Borders,  democratic legitimacy, multiscale statehood, governance : the covid crisis has shaken things up and emphasized both the contradictions and the central salience of territories. In this sharp volume Oscar Mazzoleni critically reviews the main debates about territories that have unfold over the last two decades, in particular in geography and political sociology. He makes a powerful insight for a critical territorial approach aiming to analyze democratic politics.

 Patrick Le Galès, CNRS research professor at Sciences Po, Paris, France

Mazzoleni has contributed a brief but encompassing study of the concept of territory in social sciences. This well-written piece analyzes the concept of territory as multidimensional and interdisciplinary. His is a rigorous attempt to offer a systematic framework to make territorial politics part of the contemporary research agenda. In developing a territorial approach, he adds to the field by addressing essential gaps in the literature.

Margarita Gomez-Reino Cachafeiro, full professor at the UNED University, Madrid, Spain

The book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the uses of the concept of territory in the study of democratic politics. The author tests the limits of a literature which avoid territorial dimensions, and reasserts the relevance of the concepts of territory and territorial space in the understanding of contemporary politics. With a political sociological perspective, but engaging in an interdisciplinary dialogue, the book draws a new conceptual framework focusing on both traditional and innovative topics: state-building and the transformation of nation-states, the changes in democratic citizenship, the relevance of territory for voting behaviour, the territorial dimensions of populism and the experience of the pandemic, taken as a global territorial crisis.

Oscar Mazzoleni is Director of the Research Observatory for Regional politics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.