This book offers a new geographical political economy approach to our understanding of regional and local economic development in Western Europe over the last twenty years. It suggests that governance failure is occurring at a variety of spatial scales and an ‘impedimenta state’ is emerging. This is derived from the state responding to state intervention and economic development that has become irrational, ambivalent and disoriented. The book blends theoretical approaches to crisis and contradiction theory with empirical examples from cities and regions.

This monograph presents a novel typology of relational and territorial perspectives on legitimacy and identity. This typology is then applied to two different political and historical contexts, namely the trajectories of the metropolitan region Amsterdam in the Netherlands and the metropolitan region Ruhr in Germany. The historical discussion spans 500 years, providing valuable depth to the study. Taken as a whole, the book provides a new perspective within the territorial-relational dichotomy and the geographies of discontent debate. Its key insights are that identity and political legitimacy are embedded in history and that both relational and territorial perspectives on these issues are time and place dependent. This book will be stimulating reading for advanced students, researchers, and policymakers working in political geography, human geography, regional studies, and broader social and political sciences.

This is a book about redistribution and inequality in political unions, a form of democracy that involves several levels of government and that encompasses about one third of the population living under democracy around the world. The analysis concerns how different unions solve the tension between the protection of autonomy for specific territories and the redistribution of wealth among them and among their citizens.

"Ugo Rossi and Alberto Vanolo take us on a journey around the ascent and crisis of urban liberalism, providing a clear and highly readable analysis of key issues and debates in the field of urban political geography." - Ola Söderström, Université de Neuchâtel "It is in the city trenches that the crises, contradictions, and counterpolitics of neoliberalization are finding some of their most vivid and consequential expressions, where new worlds are being imagined, made, and unmade. This has yet to be mapped. But in Urban Political Geographies, we have a timely and astute field guide to this unfolding process." - Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia How can we think about the urban within a political and geographical framework? This compelling textbook scrutinizes urban politics through a theoretical and empirical lens to provide readers with a clear understanding of the relationship between political, spatial and economic issues relating to the urban environment. Taking a truly global analysis, the book uses international comparative case studies from cities across the world including, London, Beijing, Austin and Vancouver. It draws on ideas and theories from human geography, politics, sociology, economics and development. Engaging in style and thorough in its coverage of the key issues, the book is essential reading for students and scholars looking for a book that deals with contemporary urban debates from a political, economic and geographical perspective.

This authoritative Handbook presents a comprehensive analysis of the spatial transformation of the state; a pivotal process of globalization. It explores the state as an ongoing project that is always changing, illuminating the new spaces of geopolitics that arise from these political, social, cultural, and environmental negotiations.

We live in a rapidly changing world in which politics is becoming both more and less predictable at the same time: this makes political geography a particularly exciting topic to study. To make sense of the continuities and disruptions within this political world requires a strongly focused yet flexible text. This new (sixth) edition of Peter Taylor’s Political Geography proves itself fit for the task of coping with a frequently and rapidly changing geo-political landscape. Co-authored again with Colin Flint, it retains the intellectual clarity, rigour and vision of previous editions, based upon its world-systems approach. Reflecting the backdrop of the current global climate, this is the Empire, globalization and climate change edition in which global political change is being driven by three related processes: the role of cities in economic and political networks; the problems facing territorially based notions of democratic politics and citizenship, and the ongoing spectre of war. This sixth edition remains a core text for students of political geography, geopolitics, international relations and political science, as well as more broadly across human geography and the social sciences.