Geopolitics and Expertise: Knowledge and Authority in European Diplomacy

Geopolitics and Expertise is an in–depth exploration of how expert knowledge is created and exercised in European Union institutions. It traces how geopolitical arguments are deployed by foreign policy professionals there and how these practices fit into and transform the social milieu of the European Quarter. Rigorous, empirical, and engaging, the book offers a nuanced analysis of diplomatic practice, a sphere that is opaque and inaccessible by design. It incorporates over 100 interviews with EU foreign policy professionals over the course of seven years.   This study is unique in its focus on qualitative and contextual evidence gathered from interpersonal interviews rather than quantitative and questionnaire–based data. A rare full–length analysis of transnational decision–making, the book elucidates the complexity and creativity of European diplomatic practice. Blending human geography with international relations, anthropology, and sociology, this account illuminates the inner workings of knowledge and power in transnational regulatory institutions.

Merje Kuus is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her research focuses on political geography and transnational policy processes. She is the author of Geopolitics Reframed: Security and Identity in Europe’s Eastern Enlargement (2007) and co–editor of the Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics (2013). She has also written on security narratives, intellectuals of statecraft, the idea of Europe, and transnational diplomatic practice.