Political geography II: Institutions

Abstract

Modern power is bureaucratized power, institutionalized formally through governmental and non-governmental structures and informally through unwritten social conventions. This report reviews recent political geographic work on the institutional arrangements that enable and constrain all political practice. Institutions here refer to organizations as well as looser semi-institutionalized patterns in public and private life. The report will first examine the scholarship on formal organizations and it will then review the research on professional fields and popular culture. The conclusion highlights the transnationalization and neoliberalization of institutions as a theme that runs through much of contemporary political geography.