Zaporozhchenko R.O. Political Forms of Organizing Space in the Context of Modern Globalization Processes. Qualifying scientific work in the form of a manuscript. Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the speciality 052 Political Science (Field of Knowledge 05 Social and Behavioural Sciences).
V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, Kharkiv, 2023.
The dissertation research is devoted to a comprehensive comparative analysis of political forms of space organisation (states, empires, transnational corporations, international and regional associations) in the context of modern globalisation processes. The paper reveals the genesis of globalisation and manifestations of globalisation processes in the context of the functioning of empires and practices of imperialism and substantiates the methodological necessity of defining the category of political forms of organizing space as optimal for modern political science. The research focuses on defining the category of political space through the prism of the theory of social space and attempts to conceptualise such concepts as political space and political forms of organizing space, which is of particular importance in the context of the dominant principles of territorialism and state-centrism. The relevance of the dissertation research is primarily related to the socio-political processes taking place in the world today and are transformational in nature, in particular, the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, geopolitical rivalry between global actors, the confrontation between liberal democracy and authoritarianism, etc.
The first chapter of the dissertation is devoted to a comprehensive theoretical and methodological analysis of the following categories: globalisation, space, social space, political space, political forms of organizing space. Globalisation, as a set of different processes, is an ambiguous phenomenon that depends on the global actor environment. Most researchers tend to define globalisation as the process of forming a single, unified and universal global space, giving preference to such phenomena as spatiality, cosmopolitanism, international cooperation, etc. However, social movements and wars over the past 20 years have shown that territory and borders, as attributive characteristics of the state, remain no less important structural elements of globalisation. Accordingly, the existing dichotomy territory – space is an important ontological problem.
The second chapter focuses on a comprehensive analysis of empires as political forms of space organisation. Using the category of empire, the author demonstrates three important research facts. Firstly, globalisation is a projection of imperial power, since any empire, using the principle of mechanical expansion, covers a significant part of the global space and constitutes a single imperial world – the Pax. The purpose of building such a world is to ensure the normative and value-based functioning of the imperial political order and to structure universalised political mechanisms for governing the periphery. Accordingly, the empire tries to construct a space within which different structures are responsible for reproducing the political order and legitimising the political power of the empire's centre. The heterogeneous structure of the empire, the geopolitical trap and the need to maintain a permanent conflict between the peripheries lead to the formation of an extensive network of power structures, economic and production systems and the institutionalisation of the imperial model of governance – centre-periphery relations.
The third chapter focuses on the state of the modern state and alternative political forms of space organisation, in particular, the role of international and regional associations in the construction and reproduction of hegemonic orders and the use of mechanisms of globalisation, regionalisation and glocalisation. The author refines the concept of hegemony proposed by Antonio Gramsci to demonstrate the existence of three hegemonic orders in the global space: global messianic (American), global pragmatic (Chinese) and regional (Russian). It is important that these hegemonic orders are simultaneously examples of modern empires for which mechanical expansion in the global space is determined by the ability to use different types of geopolitical weight: soft power, hard power, combined power.
The results of the dissertation research offer an alternative view of the established political science traditions the dominance of the principle of territorialism and state-centricity in the scientific discourse. The author’s proposed models and conceptual boundaries of such categories as empire, political space, political forms of organizing space, and the supplemented concepts of hegemony, ideology, power and sovereignty provide a broader understanding of the ambiguity of globalisation.
