Political Geography

By: Sierra and Nya

Political Geography

Political Geography

Organizing Space

• Political Geography- the spatial analysis of political phenomena and processes.

• State- has a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, and is recognized by other states.

• Territoriality- a country’s or more local community’s sense of property and attachment towards its territory.

• Sovereignty- a principle of international relations that holds that final authority over social, economic, and political matters should rest with the legitimate rulers of independent states

Organizing Space- Nations and More

• Nation- a term encompassing all the citizens of a state; a tightly knit group of people possessing bonds of language, ethnicity, religion, etc.

• Nation-State- a recognized member of the modern state system possessing formal sovereignty and occupied by a people who see themselves as a single, united nation.

• Multistate Nation- a nation that stretches across borders and across states . Example: Romania and Hungary, and the Transylvania region.

• Stateless Nation- a nation that does not have a state. Example: The Palestians.

Multinational State- a state with more than one nation within its borders. Nearly every state in the world is a multinational state. Example: the former Yugoslavia

Organizing Space…Continued

• Colonialism- rule by an autonomous power over a subordinate and alien people and place.

• The imperial powers exercised ruthless control over their domains and organized them for maximum economic exploitation

• Example: Africa

Organizing Space…Continued

• World System Theory- theory originated by Immanuel Wallerstein and illuminated by his three-tier structure– Capitalism- economic model wherein people, corporations,

and states produce goods and exchange them on the world market, with the goal of achieving profit

– World Economy– Core- processes that incorporate higher levels of education,

higher salaries, and more technology– Periphery- processes that incorporate lower levels of

education, lower salaries, and less technology– Semi-Periphery- Places where core and periphery

processes are both occurring

Organizing Governments

• Centripetal Forces- forces that tend to unify a country.

• Centrifugal Forces- forces that tend to divide a country.

• Example for both: war

• Forms of Government:– Unitary- a centralized government and administration that

exercises power equally over all parts of the state– Federal- a central government represents the various

entities within a nation-state where they have common interests yet allow these various entities to retain their own identities and to have their own laws, policies, and customs in certain spheres

Devolution

• Devolution- the process whereby regions within a state demand and gain political strength and growing autonomy at the expense of the central government; the movement of power from the central government to regional governments within the state– Economic– Ethnocultural

Example: most of Europe’s devolutionary movements came from nations within a state that defines themselves as distinct ethnically, linguistically, or religiously.

– Spatial

Electoral Geography

• Electoral college- a certain number of electors from each state proportional to and seemingly representative of that state’s population.

• Reapportionment- process by which representative districts are switched according to population shifts, so that each district encompasses approximately the same number of people.

Electoral College Continued

• Gerrymandering- used to describe redistricting for advantage.

Types of States

• Compact State- a state that possesses a roughly circular, oval, or rectangular territory in which the distance from the geometric center is relatively equal in all directions.

• Elongated State- a state whose territory is long and narrow in shape.

• Fragmented State- a state that is not a contiguous whole but rather separated parts.

Types of States Continued

compact fragmented elongated

Boundaries- Types

• Geometric- when boundaries are drawn using grid systems such as latitude and longitude or township and range. Example: the boundary between Canada and the U.S. delineated by the line of latitude west of the Great Lakes.

• Physical-Political (natural-political)- political boundary defined and delimited by a prominent physical feature in the natural landscape. Example: the Rio Grande river between the U.S. and Mexico.

Boundary Disputes

• Definitional- focus on the legal language of the boundary agreement.

• Locational- center on the delimitation and demarcation of the boundary.

• Operational- involve neighbors who differ over the way their border should function.

• Allocational- involve international boundaries at sea and other water bodies.

Geopolitics

• Geopolitics- the study of the interplay between political relations and the territorial context in which they occur.

• Critical Geopolitics- the concept that intellectuals of statecraft construct ideas about places, these ideas influence and reinforce their political behaviors and policy choices, and these ideas affect how we, the people, process our own notions of places and politics.

Geopolitics Continued

• Friedrich Ratzel- postulated that the state resembles a biological organism whose life cycle extends from birth through maturity and, ultimately, decline and death.

• Halford Mackinder (Heartland theory)- a hypothesis that held that any political power based in the heart of Eurasia could gain enough strength to eventually dominate the world.

Heartland Theory

Supranational Organizations

Supranational Organizations- are ventures involving three or more nation-states involving formal political, economic, and/or cultural cooperation to promote shared objectives.

• League of Nations• United Nations- a global supranational organization

established at the end of WWII to foster international security and cooperation.

• European Union- an international organization comprised of Western European countries to promote free trade among members.

• Benelux- the union of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg for economic purposes.

Supranational Organizations

• WHO- World Health Organization• WTO- World Trade Organization• NATO- North Atlantic Treaty Organization,

an international organization that has joined together for military purposes.

• NAFTA- the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed on January 1, 1994, that allows the opening of borders between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Supranational Organizations: Affecting the World Community

• Treaties reduce tariffs and import restrictions: ease the flow of commerce

• Foreign relations• Domestic policies• Military policies• Proliferation of nuclear weapons• Economic globalization• Increasing connectedness among people and cultures• Terrorism perpetrated in the name of religion• The state’s traditional position is being eroded by the

globalization of social and cultural relations