International relations theory and the production of global space

This dissertation offers a critical reading of international relations theories from the perspective of their representations of space. The critique is directed at the prevalent assumption among mainstream theories that space is a fixed, neutral, and passive framework--or container--of social relations, and offers an analysis of the importance of this particular conceptualization of space to their characterization of international politics. The theoretical approach is based on Henri Lefebvre's analysis of the social production of space. It provides the framework for a critique of realism, neorealism and neoliberalism as theories that have kept concerns about the nature of international political space at the margins of the discipline of international relations. It is argued that as a consequence of their disregard for the problematic of space, mainstream theories find increasing difficulties interpreting contemporary changes in world politics that are characterized by the upsetting of the boundaries that define modern political space. International theories not only treat space as a given, but their claims about the nature of world politics depend on the possibility of establishing a qualitative differentiation between domestic and international political spaces. In this sense, because they are engaged in the definition of boundaries that situate and qualify modern political life, international theories can be interpreted as spatial theories. The silence surrounding their spatial assumptions conceals the powerful role of modern spatialities, in particular of sovereign territoriality, in both the administration of state power and the reproduction of capitalist social relations of production.; This work analyzes the spatial representations of three important currents of thought in international relations, and discusses their normative implications. They are: classical geopolitics; realism and neorealism; and theories of transnationalism and interdependence, or, neoliberalism. Each school of thought is examined in the light of the tension between the principle of sovereign territoriality and the dynamics of world capitalism in different historical processes and, in the context of the production of global space. Finally, it is suggested that the changes in the contemporary spatial configuration of social relations should be the principal focus of a critical theory of world politics.