Document Type : مقالات علمی -پژوهشی
Authors
1
Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
2
Associate Professor of Political Geography, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
3
PhD student in Political Geography, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran
4
PhD student in Political Geography, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
10.22067/pg.2026.99770.1457
Abstract
Since the 1990s, the dominant narrative in the literature of political geography and international political economy has emphasized the transition from geopolitics to geoeconomics and the predominance of economic logic over traditional power rivalries. This narrative views globalization as a predominantly economic process and reduces geopolitics to territorial rivalry among states. Criticizing this view, this article argues that globalization is not the decline of geopolitics, but its reorganization as "hidden geopolitics"; a logic where power is reproduced through the simultaneous interaction of territories, networks, strategic flows, and multi-level actors. The article demonstrates in six theoretical steps that, first, geopolitics remains the fundamental logic of global power organization, and geoeconomics operates within it, not as a substitute. Second, globalization is a political construct shaped by the geopolitical rearrangement of power and the expansion of global institutions and mechanisms. Third, neoliberalism and the changing role of the state, through new governance mechanisms, have provided the ground for the reproduction of hidden geopolitics in the global political economy. Fourth, globalization is not a negation of geopolitics, but an arena for its continuation and redefinition in the interaction between geographical territories and global networks. Fifth, the geopolitics of development and the governance of flows show that power competition has expanded from mere territorial control to organizing economic, financial, technological, communicational, and logistical flows, controlling strategic infrastructures, and managing geopolitical nodes. Finally, the article shows that statehood and sovereignty have been transformed in the age of globalization; the state remains the central actor of the international system, but its exercise of power increasingly takes place in interaction with transnational networks, regulatory bodies, multinational corporations, and other non-state actors.
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