From Geopolitical to Geoeconomic? The Changing Political Rationalities of State Space

This article underlines the significance of context-sensitive research in understanding the historical transformations of state space that have occurred as part of wider geopolitical conditions. We trace such transformations by theorising the role of political rationalities in governance, and then by looking at how certain rationalities have surfaced in the spatial-political practices in Finland. We will scrutinise how the connection between space and population manifests in these rationalities. The paper traces at first the rise of the political rationality upon which the Finnish ‘welfare state’ was predicated, using the process as a touchstone to examine the recent political rationality which displays a will to transform the state and its spatiality. Our analysis reveals that an increasingly economistic and transnationally oriented geopolitical calculation of space is taking place in the ongoing governmental interventions aimed at modifying both the spatial structures and the qualities of populations in the name of national competitiveness.