The great implications of spatialisation: Grounds for closer engagement between political geography and political science?

Increasingly, the sociospatialities of political behaviour is a topic of growing debate across the social sciences. This paper contributes to this debate as it relates to the boundedness and fluidity of political behaviours, specifically by addressing calls from political scientists for closer engagement between political science and political geography over “the great implications of spatialization” for political behaviour research (Ethington and McDaniel, 2007, 130). Here, we critically evaluate one theoretical approach identified by these political scientists for spatialising research on this topic: new institutionalism. We begin by clarifying differing conceptions of spatialisation in the political geographic and political science literatures and their compatibility with new institutionalism. We then show how substantive new institutional research conducted on the European Union can be used to critically evaluate the prospects of Ethington and McDaniel's cross-disciplinary spatialisation agenda. Our analysis confirms the scope and potential for spatialising new institutionalist studies, by demonstrating how fluidities of political behaviours predicated by post-structural accounts of place and space come to be 'fixed' within certain 'sticky' institutional places. Consequently, we argue that a spatialised new institutionalism offers promising conceptual and methodological possibilities for developing research collaborations between political geography and political science on the placing and spacing of political behaviours.