Political territoriality in the European Union : the changing boundaries of security and healthcare

Abstract

Is territory still used in the European Union and the Netherlands to organize security, solidarity and democracy? Is the EU evolving towards a state, an empire or another type of political organization? And how can the changing significance of territory be indicated and explained? – Those are the leading questions of this dissertation. It avoids taking the territorial state and the principle of territoriality for granted in examining the significance of territory. Following Robert Sack, territoriality is defined as the strategy to control people and phenomena by demarcating a geographical area. The more territory impacts on people’s behaviour and ideas, the more certain (unintended) consequences mark the policies, polities, and politics involved. These consequences (geographical fixity, impersonality, geographical inclusion and exclusivity, and centrality) are called the logic of political territoriality. The state is the political organization marked most by the logic of territoriality in contrast to networks or empires. The work by Stein Rokkan and Stefano Bartolini on the evolution of national states and the European Union respectively offers the explanatory framework for explaining changing political territoriality. The organisation of security and healthcare in the Netherlands show how gradually territory obtained greater significance particularly in the 19th and 20th century. European integration has challenged the significance of national territories among other things by the free movement of persons, goods, capital and services, and has weakened the logic of territoriality at state level. Partial exits from national territories by dissatisfied mobile citizens-consumers and border regions have been indicated. Meanwhile, the continuous uncertainty of the EU’s boundaries largely due to enlargement keeps the logic of territoriality at bay at European level. The expansive, value-based and multi-level organisation of the EU reflects its imperial nature.