The Place of the Region in IR

Abstract This article focuses on the problem of regarding regions as secondary features of the international/global dimension, and on the prevailing geopolitical imagery for thinking about and arguing with regions in IR. However, in contrast with the supposedly value-free vocabulary utilised for discussing regions in IR, the act of defining them in cartographic terms, or as a middle ground between national and international politics, is always a political one. In this article, I explore the politics of scaling in respect of regions and regional politics, and suggest that, if regions are unders...