This project examines the history and current relevance of continentalist ideas and their influence in national and international policymaking. For centuries, the \u201cdefault\u201d political form of the nation-state has been challenged by the idea of a supra-national, large-scale political entity. Continentalism is one category of big space thinking, based on a geographical teleology of political unification within the borders of a \u201ccontinent\u201d. In some cases, this teleology underlies a comprehensive geopolitical ideology of continentalism, which historically has drawn on the “big space” theories of F.Ratzel, C.Schmitt and H.Mackinder. Continentalism is used by political elites in order to consolidate a geopolitical identity and policy, larger than the national one, to influence processes of state formation and international integration. Continentalism can be associated both with hegemonic-authoritarian tendencies as well as democratic projects, and can inspire imperial expansionism as well as anti-colonial liberation movements. The project involves four case studies, which compare ideological iterations of continentalism in Europe, Russia-Eurasia, South America, and Asia. It is designed as a study in the history of political ideas, and draws on critical geopolitics as a methodological framework. This approach helps us to understand discursive fluidity the diversity of expressions that can be found in different forms of constructing \u2018continentalist\u2019 geographical visions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-602","project","type-project","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n