Territorial Tensions: The State, Legitimacy, and the Politics of Place

Territorial authority is the idea that states have authority over a more or less unified, relatively stable geographic area and the people, resources, and things within that territory. There are different ideas of exactly how the state, an amorphous thing, comes to have authority over the physical world. Some base territorial authority in property rights; some base territorial authority in justice; others look towards cultural, nationalist, or self-determination accounts. I argue that the territorial state, regardless of how we justify territory, is incoherent. There is a fundamental tension between stable territory and monopoly over force. First, I argue that the property-based, Lockean account is incoherent because territorial authority undermines legitimacy. Either we have a unified, relatively stable territory and certain people will be included that have not consented to the state, or we have authority only over those who have consented which undermines the functionality of the state. Second, I argue that the justice-based, Kantian account is incoherent. Like the Lockean account, there is a fundamental tension between unified, stable territory and a state that can equally dispense justice. While the first two chapters deal with inconsistencies within philosophical frameworks about territory and legitimacy, in chapter three, I argue that even if we set those issues aside, territorial authority as an exclusive domain is a shaky basis for the state’s moral right to territory. Finally, in chapter four, I argue that if the state, as the monopoly over force, and territorial authority are irreconcilable, we should give up the concept of the state, favoring non-monopolistic types of political arrangements.