Kaupunkiregionalismi ja epäpolitisoinnin politiikka : talousmaantieteellinen imaginaari aluepoliittisesten käytäntöjen vastaansanomattomana viitekohteena

Authors

• Juho Luukkonen
• Heikki Sirviö

Abstract

In this article, we approach city-regionalism as a hegemonic spatial imaginary, which relies on economist reasoning and acts as a discoursive resource for politics of depoliticisation. Our aim is to demonstrate the influence of the ideas of city-regionalism in political discourse concerning states’ spatial policy practices. This is done by analyzing interviews and public statements by candidates in the mayoral election in the capital of Finland, Helsinki. Candidates’ utterances can be read as part of the day-to-day politics, which is directed primarily towards the local voters. In our reading, however, it is engaged to broader political discussions on the relations between the city-regions and the state as well as on the state’s spatiality. In our analysis, we bring out that candidates’ perceptions involve a particular kind of understanding of the state and a spatial-political agenda, which aims at re-organizing political power relations and, consequently, ends up in redefining the boundaries of state polity and even political subjectivity. Our focus is on the politics of depoliticisation informed by the taken for granted imaginary of city-regionalism. We analyze depoliticisation through Schmit­tian political vocabulary as an inherent tendency within liberalism, and the rhetoric of depoliticisa­tion through the notions of crisis/state of exception and general interest. The politics of depolitici­sation does not, however, constitute a post-political condition. Instead, it is best viewed as a powerful form of political action drawing on the supposedly neutral criterion of economic performance and directed against the contingency of democratic politics.