The French school of géoéconomie and its relation to géopolitique and géographie politique

Abstract

Exploring the possibilities of critical geoeconomics from a geographical perspective is an attempt to reclaim geoeconomics from the now established a-geographical and frequently uncritical uses of the term in International Relations. Something similar has been achieved before, from the 1990s onwards, when political geographers reclaimed – at least partially – geopolitics. The task is much harder however, because the geographical roots of this neologism have been forgotten and because the geo in geoeconomics remains underspecified. To explore alternatives, this essay reviews the French literature on geoeconomics and its relation to geopolitics and geography.

Exploring the possibilities of critical geoeconomics from a geographical perspective is an attempt to reclaim geoeconomics from a-geographical uses of the term in International Relations (IR) scholarship, media and think tanks. This has been done before. From 1990 onwards, political geographers tried to reclaim geopolitics (more specifically through the groundbreaking work of Ó Tuathail (1996), Dalby (1991), Sharp (1993), and others (for an earlier assessment, see Mamadouh, 1998, 1999)). While critical geopolitics became a thriving subfield of political geography and associated approaches built upon its reappropriation of geopolitics (e.g. feminist, popular and subaltern geopolitics), the term geopolitics is still widely used in political and public debates as a synonym for interstate politics, mostly between Great Powers, for Realpolitik and/or for physical geographical determinants shaping international relations. These are exactly the kinds of geopolitical arguments geographers have tried to deconstruct, replacing them by more subtle, geographically and historically informed questioning of power relations across spaces and scales.

Arguably the task is even more difficult with geoeconomics because the origins of the neologism Geoökonomie, coined simultaneously by Wilhelm Röpke and Arthur Dix in 1920s Germany (see Mallin and Sidaway, 2024), have long been forgotten and the coining continues to be mistakenly attributed to Luttwak (1990, 1993). Luttwak highlighted an apparent shift from political to economic competition that occurred at the end of the Cold War, especially among western countries. Yet the geo- is largely an empty signifier. Geography, I contend, is key to more critical approaches to geoeconomics (Glassman, 2024; Mallin and Sidaway, 2024; Sparke, 2024).

Considering the material dimension of the geo brings us back to the invention of the neologism geopolitik by Rudolf Kjellén in the late 19th century. Advancing a conceptualization of the state that differed from legal approaches dominant at the time, he distinguished key characteristics influencing the power of a state, and coined neologisms for each of them. Most did not strike root, but geopolitik, pertaining to the physical geographical features of its territory, did (Holdar, 1992; Kjellén, 1917).

Much to my amazement, I found the neologism geoeconomics attributed to Kjellén on the French Wikipedia page ¹ devoted to him and his work, in place of ekopolitik (also spelled oecopolitik or ekonomipolitik). This confusion illustrates the absence of geography in mainstream uses of geoeconomics, making it indeed more akin to Kjellén’s ekopolitik (the characteristics of the economy of a state, most specifically industrialization and (in)dependence from other states) than to Dix’s Geoökonomie as earthbound economics (a geographical economics meant to replace an abstract political economy; Dix, 1925). ² Interestingly however, the French Wikipedia page on geoeconomics does not mention Kjellén at all. Instead, it foregrounds the thriving French school of géoéconomie. It is worth noting that géoéconomie in French and in several other European languages is both the object and the perspective (like geopolitics, geography, history, international relations) while in English geo-economics pertains mostly to the perspective, in parallel with economics studying the economy, sociology studying society, political science studying politics, etc. Although this French géoéconomie was inspired by Edward Luttwak (as he proudly reminds us in a recent commentary; Luttwak, 2024: 2), it has relatively strong ties with geopolitics and geography.

Pascal Lorot is the leading author and the founder of the only contemporary scholarly journal devoted to geoeconomics Revue française de géoéconomie, later renamed Géoéconomie (Lorot, 1999) that published 82 issues between 1997 and 2016. ³ Lorot is a French economist and political scientist, inspired by the French school of geopolitics created by the French geographer Yves Lacoste and well established via the journal Hérodote (since 1976, since 1982 as a journal of geography and geopolitics) and the Institut français de géopolitique. Lorot worked in French administration, diplomacy and international firms. He was also advisor to Jacques Attali, the first President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (1990–1993). He was the Director Economic Studies for the French multinational oil company Total (now TotalEnergies) between 1995 and 2003 and the Director of the French bank BNP (now BNP-Paribas) in Moscow in the 1980s. Since 2019 he has served as the Special Representative of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for economic diplomacy in Central Asia. He also worked as a researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).

After launching the journal, in 1999 he also established the think-tank Institut européen de géoéconomie that was renamed Institut Choiseul pour la politique internationale et la géoéconomie in 2003 and has chaired it ever since. Alongside Géoéconomie (and Geoconomía published between 2010 and 2016 by Choiseul España) the think-tank published influential area studies journals, existing ones Problèmes d’Amérique latine (since 1965) and Maghreb-Machrek (since 1960; both at the request of the cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the first under the Socialist Hubert Védrine, the second under the Gaullist Dominique de Villepin, see Lorot, 2009: 27) and new ones: Nordiques (created in 2003), Monde Chinois (2004), Politique Américaine (2005) and Sécurité globale (2007). Géoéconomie ceased publication in 2016; the other journals are now published elsewhere, except Nordique. Choiseul is now more focused on networking events, leadership trainings, ad hoc studies and annual rankings of future leaders. ⁴

Lorot published many introductory texts on geopolitics and on geoeconomics (such as Lorot, 1999), and books over specific states or macro regions (Lorot, 2023). He acknowledges two main sources of inspiration for his approach to géoéconomie: Luttwak’s take on geoeconomics and Lacoste’s take on geopolitics (Lorot, 2001, 1997). Lorot sees geoeconomics as an approach that focuses on the economic strategies of states to protect their national economies and to project their economic power abroad (see in this issue Gonzalez-Vicente and Cheng, 2024; Hsu, 2024; Poon, 2024 for illustrations). It is about space, power and economy, but the conceptualization of another type of space, more focused on networks and flows, than the territorial space of geopolitics (Lorot, 2009: 22). Commonalities and differences between French géopolitique and géoconomie are also asserted in a book length conversation with Lacoste, in which they agree on the complementarity of two approaches while Lacoste welcomes the input of economists in his géopolitique (Lacoste, 2010: 183–194).

Contributors to Géoéconomie include academics but also civil servants, diplomats and others, including the chef Paul Bocuse (on gastronomy and diplomacy). Articles generally focus on a specific case: a state, sector or resource. Many articles foreground geopolitics, in the title even, and demonstrate some affinity with the French approach to geopolitics to sketch the spatial contexts in which geoeconomic policies are developed and deployed. Although not policy briefs, most articles remain highly descriptive and aim at explicating an empirical situation, and would not be deemed publishable in most academic geography journals for lack of theoretical elaboration.

Despite a more spatial orientation than its Anglophone counterpart, French geoeconomics is quite estranged from academic geography. Geoeconomics and geopolitics are more present in French business schools than in French geography departments. An illustration of the resulting tension came to the fore in the 2010s, when critical geographers at the geography department of Université Grenoble Alpes attempted to advance alternative research agendas. In les rencontres de géopolitique critique they organized in the shadow of the annual Festival de géopolitique de Grenoble organized by Grenoble École de Management, where Lorot often served on the scientific committee.

Most of the time, the geographical perspective of the French school of geoeconomics remains limited to contextualization; and sociospatial relations are weakly conceptualized. A more critical approach to geoeconomics would benefit from attempts to conceptualize the geographical in (critical) geopolitics. In 2001 L’Information géographique published a forum on geopolitics and geoeconomics with one article on geoeconomics (Lorot, 2001) and one on geopolitics (Rosière, 2001). The latter ⁵ proposes three different dimensions of the geo- in political geography, geopolitics and geostrategy: cadre (space as frame of conflicts, with territories and borders), enjeu (space as stake in conflicts between groups/actors) and théatre (space as theatre of operations and more specifically of military confrontation). Surprisingly Rosière does not engage explicitly with geoeconomics for the occasion and the three dimensions could be applied to it: space as frame of trade regulation, space as stake for the control of markets, space as theatre of economic operations. This still needs to be done, but arguably the label under which it develops is less important than the combined attention to the political, the economic and the geographical.