Ch 8: Poltical geography

What is political geography?

the study of the political organization of the world.

What is a state?

a politically organized territory with a permanent population, a defined territory, and a government.

Where is the concept of territory from?

from Geographer Stuart Elden

• came from early modern Europe as a system of political units that then had distinct and fixed boundaries.

• at least had a quasi-independent government

• the process is territoriality

What is sovereignty?

having a recognized right to control a territory both politically and militarily.

• states are sovereign under international law

• can defend territorial integrity against other states

• connected to territoriality

What is nation?

a culturally defined tern and few people agree on what it means

• originally meant to include a group of people who think of themselves as one based on a sense of shared culture and history.

• They seek political-territorial autonomy.

• all nations have different people

• identified by its own membership, so cannot define a nation as the people in a territory.

What is a nation state?

a politically organized area in which nation and state occupy the same space. It dates back to the french revolution and democracy.

• assumes the presence of reasonably well-defined, stable nations living contiguously in discrete territories

How is a nation-state related to nationalism?

• a state seeks to promote nationhood that is related to its borders

• to help people within the borders relate to the dominant national ideal, states provide security, goods, services, and infrastructure for their citizens

• When people have a strong sense of nationalism, they have a loyalty to and a belief in the nation itself

What is a multinational state?

nearly every state in the world is a multinational state, a state with more than one nation in its borders

Why does almost everything take place in the context of the world economy?

colonialism played a role in established this system by exporting the european state idea and facilitating the construction of an interdependant gloobal economy.

What are the basic tenets of world-systems theory?

• world economy has one market and a global division of labor

• capitalism

• commodification

What is capitalism and commodification?

• capitalism is that individuals, states, corporations, produce goods and services that are exchanged for profit in the world economy

• commodification is placing a price on a good, ideas or service and buying, trading, and selling that item.

What is the structure of the world economy?

a three-tier structure

• core: high levels of salaries, more technology, education

• periphery: processes associated to smaller parts of the global economy

• semiperiphery: where core and periphery process both occur

What the forces in a state as described by Richard Hartshorne?

centripetal (unify people)

centrifugal (divide)

a balance is necessary for a state to exist

What is a unitary government?

centralized states whose administration is deigned to ensure the central government’s control over the state.

What is a federal system?

regions have more control over government policies and funds

• a weak federal system means that the central government retains lesser measure of power.

What is federalism?

federalism accommodates regional interests by giving power to provinces or regional units over all matter except those only given to the central government (strict constructionism)

What is devolution?

• movement of power from the central government to regional governments within the state.

• can be achieved sometimes by reworking a constitution to establish a federal system that recognizes the permanency of regional governments.

• can also do it without altering a constitution.

What is electoral geography?

• partitioning of state territory into electoral districts.

• electoral geographers examine how the spatial configuration of electoral districts and the voting patterns that merge in elections reflect and influence social and political affairs.

• can help understand how geography influence voter choices.

What is reapportionment?

process by which districts are moved according to population shifts, os that each district has the same amount of people.

What is a boundary?

between state and is a vertical plane that cuts through the rocks below or the subsoil and the airspace above to divide one state from another.

What are geometric boundaries?

drawn using grid systems like latitude and longitude or township and range.

What are physical-political boundaries?

follow and agreed upon figure in the natural landscape like a the center point of a river or the crest of a mountain range.

What is a supranational organization?

an association with three or more states that creates an administrative structure for mutual benefit and in pursuit of shared goals.

• OEEC in 1992 for economic cooperation in EU

• not all EU members are a part