Transcending Geography

The United Kingdom's Accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership

Bibliographic Data

ID3948143
AuthorsMaría García (0000-0001-6019-639X, Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath (UK), Bath, UK, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume31
Issue1
Pages1-24
Publication date2024-10-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2024.2411339
OpenAlexW4403488650
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited35

Immediately after Brexit, the UK started negotiations to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The decision is puzzling. First, Brexiteers lauded regaining sovereignty as a key benefit of Brexit, yet the UK Government sought accession to another trade grouping (albeit one far more restrained in regulation and supranationalism). Secondly, CPTPP is a Trans-Pacific project, the UK is not located in that geographic region. UK accession to CPTPP symbolises an operationalisation of the spatial imaginaries of a ‘free-trading’ ‘Global Britain’ that emerged during Brexit. It represents an illustrative example of a state reshaping its boundaries within a ‘space of flows’ where economic interactions and the rules that order these transcend national territories and geographic proximity. This paper draws on UK government and CPTPP documents related to the accession process to establish how the parties understood the process and the reconfiguration of spatial dynamics and redefinition of the TP part of CPTPP to include the UK. It pays particular attention to the development in the discourses of imaginaries of communities of rules and norms as being more significant than geographic considerations in determining the geographic reach of a regional integration initiative like CPTPP. The paper argues that it was this imaginary of a community of standards and free-trade values that justified the recasting the UK as ‘belonging’ in this regional grouping and enabled this new spatial projection for the UK and CPTPP

Accession · Economic geography · Economic history · Economics · Economy · European union · General partnership · Geography · International trade · Kingdom · Political science · Regional science · Canadian Policy and Governance · Global trade and economics · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law · Geology