Reconstructing Citizenship, the Re-scaling of the State and the New Authoritarianism: Closing the Belgian Mines

Abstract

The paper explores the contested re-configuration of the position of the national state as a result of the reworking of the scales of governance. It is argued that the intricate relationship between recent changes in the 'scaling' of the national state and the formation of new and differently 'scaled' institutional forms takes place in and through processes of urban/regional restructuring as part of an effort to 'produce' globally competitive spaces. The rise of 'glocal' forms of governance is paralleled by the formation of new elite coalitions on the one hand and the systematic exclusion or further disempowerment of politically and/or economically already weaker social groups on the other. Such exclusive homogenisation of regional spaces erodes diversity and difference in highly oppressive ways. The glocal 'entrepreneurial' or 'Schumpeterian workfare' state becomes an 'authoritarian' state. This new 'post-Fordist (?)' form of governance is unstable and re-enforces fragmentation and tension in civil society. This, in turn, not only jeopardises the potential success of the restructuring drive, but undermines social cohesion in an already fractured and fragmented regional social fabric. This thesis will be explored and documented through the analysis of the political economy of urban-regional socio-economic restructuring that paralleled the recent closure of Belgium's five remaining coal pits in the north-eastern Province of Limburg.