Editor’s Note: The following article is based on excerpts from the paper published by the author, examining how elite brokers reshape sovereignty and territorial governance in the Indian Ocean region through mega-infrastructure development.
Sri Lanka’s declaration of sovereign default in April 2022, amounting to US$56 billion in foreign debt, represented a watershed moment in South Asia’s economic history. It precipitated widespread macroeconomic instability, including skyrocketing inflation that reached an estimated 46.4 percent, severe shortages of essential goods, and protracted power outages that crippled daily life. Families across the country struggled to meet basic needs, with many surviving on a single meal per day. This economic collapse unfolded alongside intense political turmoil, culminating in the fall of the Rajapaksa political dynasty, which had maintained near-absolute control over Sri Lanka’s governance since 2005. Despite this unprecedented crisis, one of the nation’s most ambitious infrastructural projects—the Colombo Port City—continued construction unabated along the southern coastline. This paradoxical continuation of a mega-infrastructure initiative amid national economic collapse underscores the transformative power of elite brokers who operate at the intersection of state authority and global capital, redefining territorial governance in ways that challenge conventional understandings of sovereignty.
The Colombo Port City, a US$14 billion development financed through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), involved reclaiming 269 hectares of ocean to create a multi-currency, service-export Special Economic Zone designed to position Sri Lanka as a financial hub in the Indian Ocean region. First launched in 2014 under the administration of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in collaboration with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the project has remarkably persisted across six successive administrations. Its scale, ambition, and continuity have made it not only a symbol of Sri Lanka’s development aspirations but also a focal point of broader geopolitical dynamics, where China’s expanding maritime presence intersects with traditional regional powers seeking to preserve influence in the Indian Ocean.
At the heart of this transformative project is the Colombo Port City Economic Commission (CPCEC), a specialised body of presidentially appointed Commissioners endowed with unprecedented authority over governance, infrastructure development, and economic regulation. These Commissioners epitomize what the author identifies as “infrastructure brokers”—elite actors who operate far beyond the mediating role traditionally associated with development intermediaries. Unlike conventional brokers who negotiate and navigate within existing institutional frameworks, these elite figures actively architect new arrangements of governance that simultaneously extend and transcend state authority. In doing so, they reshape sovereignty itself, producing hybrid territories where legal, economic, and political power converge in novel configurations.
The authority of these infrastructure brokers is exercised through three mutually reinforcing mechanisms: legal-institutional innovation, physical transformation of maritime space, and economic regulation. Legal-institutional innovation allows the CPCEC to create exceptional jurisdictions operating partially outside the traditional constraints of state law, granting Commissioners powers unmatched by conventional bureaucratic actors. This exceptional authority enables them to set legal and regulatory frameworks tailored to the demands of large-scale investment and global capital flows, creating what is in effect a parallel governance system within Sri Lanka’s territorial boundaries. Simultaneously, the Commission’s physical interventions reclaim ocean space and transform it into governable territory, a process scholars term “blue territorialisation.” By converting previously unclaimed or contested maritime areas into zones of infrastructural and economic activity, the Commission produces new physical manifestations of sovereignty, reshaping the geography of state authority itself. Complementing these strategies, economic regulation establishes specialised zones of capital accumulation where foreign and domestic investment can operate under favourable, highly regulated conditions. These zones are selectively integrated into the national economy, combining incentives for global investors with mechanisms that maintain formal state oversight, creating hybrid spaces that are neither fully sovereign nor fully international, yet functionally operative as engines of economic growth.
The Colombo Port City illustrates how mega-infrastructure projects have become instruments not only of economic development but also of political and territorial transformation. Infrastructure brokers do not merely negotiate between competing stakeholders; they produce space and authority itself. They convert abstract state power into tangible forms through the reclamation of land, the construction of financial districts, luxury villas, integrated resorts, and multi-use facilities. The project’s envisioned amenities—including a Marina, convention centres, international schools, hospitals, and a dedicated financial centre—signal the intention to generate both economic and social prestige, embedding global capital into the very architecture of sovereignty. This process reveals the emergence of a new form of authority in which infrastructure itself becomes a medium for asserting and reorganising territorial power.
The continuity of the Colombo Port City across six presidential administrations underscores how infrastructure generates political momentum independent of individual leaders. Each administration, despite differences in ideology and political priorities, has preserved the project, reflecting the entrenchment of infrastructure brokerage as a mode of governance. This continuity demonstrates that mega-infrastructure projects can acquire their own institutional logic, compelling successive administrations to navigate pre-existing spatial, legal, and economic frameworks created by elite brokers. It also highlights the resilience of brokerage networks: Commissioners appointed under one regime may depart, but the structures and norms they establish persist, shaping how authority is exercised for years to come.
The emergence of infrastructure brokers as pivotal actors challenges conventional conceptions of development intermediaries, who traditionally mediate between state institutions, local communities, and external capital without fundamentally altering the structure of authority. In contrast, infrastructure brokers wield transformative power, creating differentiated zones of governance where multiple forms of authority intersect. They operate at the borderlands of territorial sovereignty, producing hybrid spaces that combine formal state oversight, specialised legal frameworks, and private investment regimes. In these zones, conventional hierarchies of governance are suspended or reconfigured, allowing the state to maintain nominal sovereignty while ceding operational authority to elite brokers who manage the integration of global capital and infrastructure development.
The methods through which the CPCEC exercises this authority were revealed through 18 months of ethnographic research conducted between June 2023 and December 2024. The study involved 47 in-depth interviews with Commissioners, government officials, civil society actors, and policy analysts, as well as extensive site visits to the Port City. Conducting fieldwork amid Sri Lanka’s economic collapse provided rare insights into how elite power adapts during periods of crisis. Commissioners spoke openly, knowing their statements could be weaponised in debates over China’s role in the country’s infrastructure and economic recovery. Civil society actors, meanwhile, risked being marginalised as obstructionists amid urgent demands for economic activity. Triangulating perspectives from multiple actors revealed not only what Commissioners claimed to be doing but also how their practices were interpreted, contested, and occasionally resisted by other stakeholders within and beyond the state apparatus.
This research underscores the centrality of infrastructure as both a political and spatial tool. Physical construction, legal innovation, and economic regulation are mutually reinforcing mechanisms through which elite brokers transform territorial governance. Reclaimed land becomes a site where new legal regimes are applied, and specialised economic zones generate concentrated flows of capital, creating enclaves of authority distinct from the surrounding national territory. These enclaves function as laboratories of sovereignty, demonstrating that control over territory is no longer solely exercised through formal state institutions but increasingly mediated by elite actors who integrate infrastructure, finance, and regulation into a single strategic vision.
The Colombo Port City is also emblematic of broader geopolitical dynamics in the Indian Ocean, where infrastructure serves as a medium for projecting influence. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, by financing the project, has embedded the Colombo Port City within transnational circuits of capital and geopolitical interest. At the same time, Sri Lanka’s state actors leverage this investment to assert regional influence, creating a delicate balance between domestic sovereignty and international partnership. The hybrid governance structures created by infrastructure brokers make this balance operational, facilitating global investment while maintaining the appearance of national control. The project exemplifies how mega-infrastructure initiatives can reconfigure political authority and spatial sovereignty simultaneously, producing new forms of territoriality that respond to both domestic imperatives and global pressures.
Infrastructure brokerage, as evidenced by the Colombo Port City, also raises pressing ethical and social questions. Initial phases of construction displaced low-income, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious coastal communities, and concerns about environmental degradation and land enclosures persist. Yet, despite these disruptions, the project continues to enjoy political protection and elite patronage. This tension highlights how infrastructure brokers navigate contested moral and political landscapes, balancing public narratives of economic progress against the realities of social displacement and environmental compromise. Their work demonstrates that authority in contemporary infrastructure-led development is as much about controlling perceptions, narratives, and regulatory frameworks as it is about physical construction.
The project’s persistence across multiple political regimes further demonstrates how infrastructure can create self-reinforcing political momentum. Commissioners appointed by successive presidents inherit the institutional and spatial frameworks established by their predecessors, including legal arrangements, zoning regulations, and economic incentives. This continuity ensures that the project remains insulated from the volatility of electoral politics, while also requiring each new cohort of brokers to engage with existing tensions between sovereignty, accountability, and development. Mega-infrastructure projects, therefore, operate as both instruments and embodiments of state power, extending sovereignty into spaces that are simultaneously under elite control and formally part of the nation-state.
Through this lens, the Colombo Port City reveals a fundamental transformation in how sovereignty is conceptualised and exercised in the Global South. Elite infrastructure brokers are redefining the terrain of governance by creating spaces where traditional hierarchies of authority are restructured around infrastructure, capital, and legal innovation. Sovereignty becomes spatially graduated, hybridised, and partially outsourced to actors who operate at the intersection of domestic governance and global finance. This transformation challenges conventional understandings of the state, illustrating that authority can be diffused across multiple sites, mediated through infrastructure, and selectively integrated into broader political and economic frameworks.
In conclusion, the Colombo Port City demonstrates that mega-infrastructure development is not simply a tool of economic growth but a mechanism for reconfiguring political authority, territorial control, and sovereignty itself. Infrastructure brokers, through their command of legal, physical, and economic levers, produce hybrid territories where global capital, state power, and elite agency intersect. Their work reveals a new architecture of governance in which infrastructure is both the medium and the mechanism of sovereign authority. As the Indian Ocean region—and the Global South more broadly—witnesses an intensification of mega-infrastructure competition, the lessons of Colombo Port City offer critical insights into the ways in which sovereignty can be engineered, contested, and transformed by elite actors who operate beyond the conventional limits of the state. In this emerging world, territory is not merely inherited or administered; it is actively produced, brokered, and negotiated at the nexus of infrastructure, capital, and power.
