Search

‘Context’ has been a central notion in British-American electoral geography since the 1960s. Kevin Cox used it as the organizing concept for his seminal paper in Progress in Geography in 1969. The paper underlines the significance of Cox’s pioneering work and connects it to the work of two of the main authors during the following period: Ron Johnston and John Agnew. It then traces major lines of inquiry in electoral geography more generally and indicates the significance of notions of context in that wider frame. It ends with some indications of the now emerging research agenda for electoral geographers and with some notes on the gradual evaporation of earlier sharp divisions of a British-American realm of electoral geography versus others, and of strictly separated imaginations of sociologists/political scientists and geographers with respect to elections.

The paper starts from the concept of political centre formation as a necessary and continuing process in the emergence and maintenance of larger differentiated societies. Accommodations of public authorities spatially concentrate within cities, mostly called capitals. The paper is about the ways in which the built environment in which public authorities operate, supports them symbolically. Introductory sections about the use of symbols, signs and icons in this context are followed by sections that take the political centres in the European state system as a relevant example and indicate ways to study this question in a comparative fashion.

While the European Union aims at developing a common foreign policy and a common arms market, European states still collaborate poorly in the field of actual defence procurement. National firms (each furtively supported by its national government) often compete with each other as much as with American ones, European initiatives compete with Transatlantic ones. At the same time the relations between the European Defence and Security Policy (EDSP) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) remain a much debated issue. While the positions of the larger member states (France, UK and Germany) are well known in this field, the views and practices of the smaller member states are hardly discussed in the literature. This paper explores the geopolitical and geo-economical dimensions of policy making regarding military technology and production in the Netherlands. A neutral country until German invasion and occupation (1940-45), the Netherlands is a founding member of the European Communities and NATO, and a close ally of the US and the UK. Around 2000 it was in absolute terms the sixth spender in the EU regarding both military Research & Development and Equipment Procurement. What are the geopolitical and geo-economical arguments of the Dutch government to procure a new generation of jet fighters and to participate in the Joint Strike Fighter programme to develop and produce the Lockheed Martin-F-35 Lightning II rather than to purchase the French Rafale or the Eurofighter? What does this mean for the further development of the EU as a territorial actor in international affairs?

Dans le discours public et les pratiques de la gestion urbaine, plusieurs modèles apportent des réponses à la question de savoir comment faire évoluer la/notre ville. Cet article présente une typologie d’une douzaine de ces modèles selon leur portée et leur approche du phénomène urbain. L’origine et la diffusion des modèles sont décrits depuis la ville fonctionnelle de Le Corbusier/CIAM.

The European elections allow to draw up a simultaneous electoral geography, which however poses methodological problems, among which the need to define political families. The results remain very determined by national frames. The 2019 election takes place in a context of systemic crisis. The dominant position of the christian-democratic, conservative and social-democratic parties has been sharply reduced since 2009. In contrast, greens and liberals are making progress, but the strongest progression is that of the eurosceptic and far-right parties. The main geographical contrast opposes the metropolitan areas to the rest of the territories, mainly the economic and demographic shrinking regions. But euroscepticism and the far-right are also growing in prosperous non-metropolitan regions, which could be threatened by the consequences of globalization and /or which nourish feelings of identity.