Reterritorialisation, foreign policy and diplomacy: the case of sub-state entities in Europe

At the beginning of the 1990s, influential IR scholars focussed their attention on globalisation and its impact. Some believed the world would gradually become one village, with no borders. They argued that myriad processes of de-territorialisation were occurring, in which society and politics were less bound to territorial spaces. During the 1990s, it seemed this process would continue. However, as the twenty-first century dawned, it became clear that territoriality had not vanished as a potential explanatory variable of international relations and diplomacy. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred. Today, multiple processes of re-territorialisation can be identified. This concept can be understood as a series of “developments which occur when certain territorial entities diminish in importance, in favour of other territorial configurations”. Thus, geopolitics has not vanished: different types of re-territorialisation are altering the fabric of international relations and, inevitably, such processes are also influencing the practices and conduct of modern diplomacy. One example concerns the relationship between re-territorialisation and non-state actors. Both above and beneath the state level, territorial entities become relevant, and generate their own external relations, foreign policy and diplomatic practices. Europe has been and still is a nursery for sub-state diplomacy. Different regional sub-state entities in Europe such as Flanders, Wallonia, Catalonia, Scotland, Bavaria and others engage in international relations on their own merits, and conduct a foreign policy parallel, complementary or sometimes in conflict with their state diplomatic counterparts. The days when diplomacy was exclusively associated with national states are gone. Since the late 1990s, the spectrum of diplomatic instruments and the strategies that accompany sub-state entities have become more diverse and complex. To a certain extent, today’s diplomatic practices resemble a pre-Westphalian world in which realms of different territorial sizes generate their own diplomatic identity and practices. What is interesting about sub-state entities in Europe, is that they “re-imagine” the territorial world which surrounds them, via mental maps (cognitive geopolitics) and discursive patterns (critical geopolitics). Their re-defined ‘place in the world’ defines their foreign policy mission, which in turn inspires concrete diplomatic actions and interventions. Based upon several cases of sub-state diplomacy in Europe, this paper wants to illustrate this dynamic. Finally, we will try to distil some conclusions regarding the extent to which re-territorialisation impacts both the objectives, methods and practices of foreign policy and diplomacy, and how new forms of interrelatedness and interconnection reconfigure regional and global power relationships.