The security-identity nexus in euro-atlantic integration: Rethinking multi-scalar governance

摘要

This dissertation presents a multi-faceted and nuanced study of the multi-level governance of the Euro-Atlantic arena, or the area covered by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union. Using various methods of qualitative data collection and analysis, including documentary analysis and extensive fieldwork, the research is presented in three empirical essays and offered as a contribution to understandings of the state and governance in political geography and its cognate disciplines of international relations and anthropology. The first essay examines the practices of governance in the European Union's process of security and defense integration. The second essay investigates how the security-identity nexus is central to the Euro-Atlantic accession process in an analysis of the multi-scalar geopolitical discourses mobilized by Croatian political elites. The third and final empirical essay analyzes the linkages between multiple 'levels' of European governance in an investigation of the process of EUropean subject formation. The three pieces of research together document how the reproduction of the state and processes of governance rely profoundly on spatially-informed articulations of power, scale, and subjectivity. Moreover, the 'levels' of multi-level governance are much more fluid and ephemeral than political-economy and legal frameworks of analysis have indicated. The dissertation concludes with discussion of future avenues for research that would build on the findings presented herein.