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This thesis examines the long political career of Sir Halford Mackinder (1861-1947), the father of modern British geopolitics, underlining its crucial importance for the origins and evolution of the famous Heartland theory of 1904. Far from having a meta-historical significance, in fact, this elaborate geopolitical vision of Central Asia was the direct product of the cultural and strategic circumstances of the early twentieth century, reflecting Mackinder’s patriotic commitment to the cause of the British Empire, threatened by new powerful foreign rivals like Germany and the United States. Seriously concerned about the future of Britain’s international position, the Oxford geographer tried then to translate his brilliant educational talent in the political domain, supporting the tariff reform campaign of Joseph Chamberlain and fighting relentlessly for the political union of London with the overseas Dominions. Meanwhile he also focused his geographical imagination on the problem of India’s defence, developing a bold containment strategy against the territorial expansion of Russia in Asia. However, both these initiatives failed to influence the official policies of the British government, while the parliamentary career of Mackinder at Westminster knew more frustrations than successes, due to the internal divisions of the Unionist Party and to the bitter constitutional disputes of the last antebellum years. From this point of view, the outbreak of European hostilities in 1914 represented an important turning point for Mackinder’s political and intellectual life, compelling him to partially modify his previous imperialist ethos and to recognise the need of a more balanced and democratic international society at the end of the conflict. Expressed originally in Democratic Ideals and Reality, published in 1919, this new attitude toward international affairs found later its practical application in the activities of the Imperial Committees, successfully directed by Mackinder on cooperative lines for all the interwar years.

This thesis takes the reader on an emotional journey, through offices, buildings, streets, cities, countries, past and present, to explore what makes things neutral. It addresses a question currently lacking in the discipline, that if geographies are essentially emotional-affective, material, geopolitical and organised (if fluid), is there such thing as a geography of neutrality? Based on a case study of the World Forum Area of The Hague, and specifically a war crimes courtroom, headquarters building and International Zone, it shows how various forms of neutrality are peopled and placed. By doing so, it also confronts what constitutes "The Hague International City of Peace and Justice." The research was autoethnographic, involving semi-structured interviews, walking tours, observation and texts. Developing current analytical debates in geography, including emotions and affects, architecture, critical geopolitics and organisational anthropology, the thesis reveals three distinct yet overlapping socio-spatial forms, namely neutrality-as-competence, international-as-neutral and neutrality-as(un)organised. These three 'neutralities' matter politically since they fuel and challenge, liberal democracy, sovereignty and power relations. They also matter theoretically, as they uncover a complex relationship between absence and presence, in the constitution of a recognizable entity. Neutralities are an achievement of staged and unstaged significance along with staged and unstaged insignificance. Through the deliberate and inadvertent enactment of a lack of certain elements as much as a supply of others, intricate 'neutral' practices produce power(less) (un)organisations, that can justify political action and inaction, intimately and globally. With showcase trials performing emotional control, architecture downplaying its importance, and coherency that appears without strategy, 'The Hague International City of Peace and Justice' is one such multiscalar, organisational effect. Nevertheless, it contains people 'at the coalface,' negotiating neutrality's inherent contradictions, continually stretching its meanings and practices. Future work could tell their stories to enrich geographies of peace (McConnell, Williams and Megoran 2014).

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The economic, fiscal and environmental crises evident in contemporary political economy carry a set of interconnected, profound and largely unacknowledged sustainability challenges for the welfare state. This is particularly the case if the environmental crisis constitutes a severe set of limitations upon further economic expansion or demands that post-industrial societies begin to normatively question the primacy of pursuing ad infinitum economic growth. The crisis narratives identified are conceptualised here as a triple crisis afflicting welfare state sustainability, and this more holistic and innovative understanding of the current conjuncture is the starting point of an analysis which interrogates the tensions and inter-dependencies between the fiscal and environmental sustainability of the welfare state. This research agenda prompts a dialogue between two literatures which have largely remained segregated from each other up to this point, despite them both being embraced by progressives. The first is the literature on the fiscal sustainability of the welfare state, which is invariably predicated upon assumptions of future growth either to manage demographic changes or to rationalise counter-cyclical spending during economic downturns. The second is the scholarship on post-growth, which has enjoyed a notable resurgence in recent years due to its environmental and social critique of societies dedicated to pursuing economic growth. Bringing these literatures together has implications for the study of welfare state sustainability. On the one hand, if the fiscal sustainability of the welfare state is predicated upon the public expenditure extracted from an environmentally-unsustainable growth dynamic it is surely necessary to problematise the concept of sustainability conventionally used in the welfare state scholarship. Meanwhile, the prospect of pursuing environmental sustainability through challenging the economic primacy of economic growth would mean a suppression of monetised economic activity, severe fiscal implications for the capitalist state and an uncomfortable degree of welfare state retrenchment. The post-growth literature’s assertion that growth no longer impacts positively on wellbeing, therefore, is challenged by highlighting the potential effects of the absence of growth on the institutions of the welfare state. This constitutes a paradox for welfare state sustainability, and it is only complicated further by the evidence suggesting that welfare states can potentially be conducive to environmental governance more directly through facilitating decarbonisation strategies, maintaining monetarily and ecologically efficient public welfare services, and promote notions of the ‘public good’. This would mean that any post-growth transition may ironically be counter-productive if it does produce a conflagration of public welfare programmes. These are a set of paradoxes for welfare state sustainability which will be difficult to negotiate within the current political settlement. As such, my research speaks to debates concerning how progressives can map out a policy direction in the 21st century which meets both our social sensibilities – which are typically met through those state mechanisms financed by monetised economic activity – and our environmental imperatives – which may require us to question economic growth. This thesis, therefore, contributes to both bodies of scholarship under examination through exploring the intractability of the tensions and inter-dependencies between their discourses and the implications of this for welfare state sustainability and progressive politics more broadly.

This thesis explores how sovereignty is performed through appeals to the concepts of civilisation and savagery. In the discipline of International Relations (IR), most scholars still consider sovereignty as a largely unproblematic (if now socially constructed) concept. Following post-colonial scholars this thesis argues that a compelling understanding of the concept requires a questioning of its universality and objectivity. Sovereignty needs to be re-connected to the cultural context and to the civilisational values that contribute to its emergence. Although they have rightly pointed at the Western origin of the concept of sovereignty post-colonial scholars have rarely engaged with how the civilised and sovereign identity of Western states is produced. In order to provincialise European sovereignty, they have focused their research primarily on the external side of the construction of civilised sovereignty. In other words, their interest has lain in the relations between the Western sovereign states and the ‘uncivilised’ Rest that was denied sovereignty. References to the contemporaneous internal construction of Western civilisation and sovereignty have been scarce and underdeveloped. What is missing is an explanation of how the Europeans dealt with their own civilisational doubts and how they constructed their own civilised sovereignty at the same time as they were denying it to others. Indeed, this specific focus has engendered a disconnection between the analysis of the ‘domestic’ task of statecraft and the ‘international’ affirmation of sovereignty. This thesis offers a non-Eurocentric approach to sovereignty that captures both the internal and international dimensions of ‘writing civilised sovereignty’. It reveals the inherent ambiguities and unexpected similarities of the process of statecraft in both spheres. Such a re-integration of the domestic ‘colonial encounter’ of the West with its own Others is important for our understanding of sovereignty. First, it shows how sovereignty must be seen as a site of political struggle irrespective of where (or upon whom) it is claimed. In particular, the construction of sovereignty is attached to the differentiation of the civilised with the savage. As such, sovereignty is inextricably and as much bound to savagery as it is to civilisation: actors claiming sovereignty require the presence of a savage that can in turn threaten their very claim and from whom they must differentiate themselves. Second, considering the ‘internal’ side along the ‘external’ one enables the identification and comparison of two colonial frontiers, i.e. two demarcations between the civilised and the savage. One is performed ‘inside’ the sovereign state and one ‘outside’ of it. These two frontiers function in similar ways and have the same purpose: allocating an indisputable sovereignty to the representatives of the Western state. Because they separate the civilised from the savage, these frontiers are crucial political tools in the legitimation of claims to sovereignty. Finally, and interlinked with the above, juxtaposing the ‘internal’ and ‘international’ processes of statecraft reinforces the critique of the image of the sovereign state as unitary and culturally uniform (an image that mainstream IR strives to preserve). This thesis thus questions the usual and common-sense association between sovereignty and independence and argues that sovereignty promotes (at best) the independence of the sovereign elite adhering to the values considered as civilised in the West. Through the analysis of more than 300 archival sources, I demonstrate how the sovereign agency of the West and the task of statecraft require an appeal to civilisational superiority that can only be established through the identification of familiar (yet degenerated or underdeveloped) similarities between the civilised West and the savage non-West. The discourses of sovereignty in fact represent a resolution of civilisational ambiguities in order to (re)produce the illusion of a unified, civilised and sovereign Self. The theoretical conclusions of this thesis are informed by an extensive exploration of claims to sovereignty in 16th century France. This focus is justified for two reasons: the Age of Discovery is usually taken as the beginning of the modern practice of colonialism (and thus the extension of European sovereignties to new territories) and in Europe claims to sovereignty strengthened and were more often successful during that period. In essence, then, this thesis provides a richer understanding of sovereignty and of its role in the creation and management of ‘difference’ in international relations. Through its interrogation of sovereignty this thesis also possesses a broader resonance for some key concepts of international relations and IR as a discipline. As shown in the review of the literature on sovereignty, the role of culture is overwhelmingly silenced by IR scholars through different strategies despite the fact that international relations are essentially intercultural relations. As such, the way cultures perceive each other (as different) is crucial to the functioning of our international ‘society’. Looking at sovereignty and at its links with civilisation also highlights the importance of colonial frontiers in international relations. These frontiers correspond to the differentiation established and constantly reproduced between the civilised and the savage. Such frontiers are both internal and external to the sovereign state, which means that the internal Other is never far from the external one. These civilisational hierarchies are not only relevant for sovereignty: they also shape other international practices such as war or state-building. All these areas are informed by these colonial logics of differentiation and hierarchical ordering. But all are equally troubled by the lack of stability and permanence of these colonial frontiers between civilised and savage. More generally, these international practices seem to create the very problem that they are designed to solve or reduce: difference. This is ironic since difference is also the source of the dangers and problems that these practices are designed to deal with. Finally, this thesis contributes to the literature on encounters and the Age of Discovery and expands upon some of their conclusions, thus building a stronger link between History and International Relations.

This thesis explores how postcolonial critics figure the centrality of imperialism to the cultures and socio-politics of those societies at the hegemonic apex of today’s geopolitical hierarchy. I begin by addressing the discipline’s homogenisation of ‘the West’, which I attribute to a totalist articulation of the category, whether as a geopolitical agency, a geojuridical bloc, a polity, an identity, or a central ideologeme within colonial discourse and contemporary imperialist ideology. I argue that this totalisation elides variances of consciousness, purpose, and practice that cut across whatever unity obtains within and among the constituent societies of the ‘geopolitical West’. I then look to the thought of Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Claude Lefort, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, and Jacques Rancière for a way of understanding that unity in light of these internal variances. Moreover, drawing on Rancière’s notion of ‘dis-identification’ and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s of occupying ‘a position without identity’, I establish how if we are to challenge the hegemonic ascendancy of ‘Western’ imperialism, then we must acknowledge these variances. I then explore how literary representations of ‘Westerners’ by Jamaica Kincaid, V.S. Naipaul, Gil Courtemanche, Bret Easton Ellis, and Nadine Gordimer variously question the claim that anyone that benefits from contemporary imperialism cannot ever oppose it with integrity.

In contemporary politics many groups make claims for self-determination. Some of these claims are recognised by existing political authorities or the international community, whilst others are denied. Often this is regardless of the fact that the reasons why groups make claims for self-determination differ from group to group. This thesis assesses whether groups who make claims for self-determination should have their claims recognised or denied and for what reasons this should be the case. This thesis, therefore, provides an answer to the question ‘which groups have justified claims for self-determination?’ My thesis is that groups who are dominated have justified claims for this right. This thesis is in two parts: the first is a critical examination of three existing theories of self-determination, and the second is a defence of a constructive alternative to these theories – it details a republican theory of self-determination. In part one I assess three theories in the existing literature on self-determination: the choice-based, nationalist, and just-cause theories of self-determination. I argue that none of these theories provides a framework that is satisfying enough to assess which claims for self-determination should be taken as justified in political practice. I argue that the ideas of the freedom to choose which political authority one should be subject to, nationhood, and the violation of human or social rights – which respectively reflect the justificatory basis of each of the existing theories – do not provide a satisfying enough framework to assess which claims for self-determination should be justified in political practice. In part two I provide an alternative to the existing theories and argue that republican political theory provides a more compelling justificatory framework to assess claims for self-determination, with its idea of domination. I argue, that in comparative consideration of the three existing theories and the republican alternative, republicanism provides the most satisfying justificatory framework to assess the claims groups make for self-determination. I argue that groups that either: (i) fail to be afforded rights of self-government, or (ii) have the exercise of their rights to self-government constrained whilst other citizens sufficiently exercise these rights, are dominated and have sufficient justification for their claims to self-determination.

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