GEOGRAPHY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: STRUCTURE AND ELEMENTS OF THE WORLD POLITICAL SPACE

Abstract

The article offers a system view on the structure of the world political space as a basic grid of coordinates for the modern system of international relations. This grid is the subject of the geography of international relations (or ‘new political geography’) – a discipline that sets a periodic system of elements for international studies. This approach allows us to reformulate the subject of political geography and its basic research methods.Political geography draws knowledge from political science and geography. The former studies the political aspects of social activity or, in other words, setting and reaching goals in society, the two processes linked to shaping the institutional structure of the state, while the latter focuses on the spatial dimension of both natural (physical geography) and societal (social geography) processes on the Earth’s surface. Thus, political geography, a discipline combining the two sciences, deals with the spatial dimension of political processes and phenomena.The starting point for political geography is the fact that the Earth’s spatial organization preordains the territorial distribution of political power. However, this is not always the case, and there may be exceptions, since a range of other factors – apart from the man-made and nature-driven spatial organization of the planet – affect the territorial distribution of political power both internationally and domestically. Research in political geography is aimed at determining the extent to which the basic hypothesis of political geography is relevant and can explain political processes.Political space resembles a multi-layered pie in a way. The political world map basically demonstrates only the state level. And even more so, it is done with profound distortion. In fact, being physically in one place, we find ourselves in several layers of political space at the same time. Some of them interact, while others can exist independently.The political and territorial division is illustrative of the key functions of space in socio-political processes. On the one hand, it combines different political layers into a cohesive multi-level process (integrative function). On the other hand, it splits the mentioned process into levels, which gives rise to the development of dichotomies (native – alien, internal – external, etc.), which is a fragmenting function. DOI: 10.17072/2218-1067-2019-3-5-16