John Agnew

John Agnew formulated the 'territorial trap' to criticize the assumption that states are naturally fixed, sovereign, and territorially bounded entities. He argued that this assumption blinds scholars to the reality that political power operates across spaces that do not always align with national borders.

John Agnew is a British-American political geographer best known for his research on geopolitics, territory, sovereignty, and the geographical organization of political power. He is a longtime faculty member at UCLA, where he has supervised extensive graduate work in political geography.

Agnew is the author of several influential books, including 'Place and Politics' (1987), 'Geopolitics: Re-visioning World Politics' (first published in 1998), and 'Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power' (2005). These works are widely cited in political geography and international relations.

Agnew challenged the dominant Weberian assumption that the modern state has a natural monopoly on sovereignty within a fixed territory. He drew on a range of theoretical traditions to argue that political authority is spatially complex and historically contingent, influencing debates well beyond geography.