While I have singled out the state as the ‘pivot’
of political geography – to borrow a term from
Halford Mackinder – I do so in the sense of a locus
of engagement, not in the sense of the state as the
exclusive locus of politics and power. Moreover,
my view of the state is not restricted to the modern
or territorial state that is premised on the nationstate
ideal, but includes other spatially constituted
structures of government and political authority,
such as the early states of antiquity, the networks
of medieval power or the increasingly state-like
European Union. The term ‘state’ simply offers the
most succinct way to express the institutionalized
political authority and mode of social organization
that is behind ‘strategies of inclusion and exclusion,
of territory and territoriality’, and thus at the
heart of political geography (Cox, forthcoming).