The relationship between the political and socially constructed nature of territory (or, territories’ ‘constitutive properties’) and international politics has recently attracted substantial attention from scholars hailing from political science as well as political geography and critical international relations. The conversations across these scholarly traditions, however, leave a lot to be desired. The question then becomes, how can we, if at all, facilitate further interaction and cross-fertilization across seemingly disparate literatures? This study proposes a strategy of ‘pragmatic interaction’, which entails three steps: (i) establishing a simple conceptual framework that would be both recognizable and agreeable to scholars hailing from different perspectives; (ii) emphasizing a number of research topics that are of relevance to these scholars; and (iii) examining some of the recent entries from the relative literatures in the light of the identified research topics. The analysis suggests that there is much potential for interdisciplinary cross-fertilization over two broad research areas – ‘territorial heterogeneity’ of the past and present global territorial orders and the relationship between territory and power – also driving attention to potential research venues such as territorial interpretations of the anarchy/hierarchy problematique and the interaction between identity and territoriality.

Why are some states more willing to adopt military innovations than others? Why, for example, were the great powers of Europe able to successfully reform their military practices to better adapt to and participate in the so-called military revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries while their most important extra-European competitor, the Ottoman Empire, failed to do so? This puzzle is best explained by two factors: civil-military relations and historical timing. In the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of an institutionally strong and internally cohesive army during the early stages of state formation—in the late fourteenth century—equipped the military with substantial bargaining powers. In contrast, the great powers of Europe drew heavily on private providers of military power during the military revolution and developed similar armies only by the second half of the seventeenth century, limiting the bargaining leverage of European militaries over their rulers. In essence, the Ottoman standing army was able to block reform efforts that it believed challenged its parochial interests. Absent a similar institutional challenge, European rulers initiated military reforms and motivated officers and military entrepreneurs to participate in the ongoing military revolution.

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Territorial designs and international politics: the diverging constitution of space and boundaries. Territory, Politics, Governance. The debate about the role and direction of territory and territorialityespecially with respect to the politically and socially constructed nature of territoryhas been evident within political geography and political science, as well as in other disciplines, for some time. Interdisciplinary interaction over the study of territory, however, has so far been less than impressive. Aiming to enhance our understanding of the place of territory in international relations, broadly defined, and to bridge disciplinary divides, this paper introduces the concept of 'territorial designs'. Territorial designs pertain to the delineation of the external boundaries, to the constitution of the society within these boundaries, and to the interaction between delineation and constitution. It is a process by which elites, in interaction with their own society and their external environment, intentionally and systematically constitute and institutionalize territoriality, and hence also territory. Territorial designs framework, as the papers in this volume collectively highlight, sheds a light on four key areas: the strategic logic and interaction behind different territorial systems; the unintended consequences of such designs; the tensions between regional/ local territorial arrangements and global ones; and the roles that technology and knowledge play in the emergence of different forms of territoriality.

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