Unit 4 Ap Human Geo

Autocracy

A country that is run according to the interests of the ruler rather than the people.

Boundary

An invisible line that marks the extent of a state’s territory.

City-state

A sovereign state comprising a city and its immediately surrounding countryside.

Colonialism

An attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles in another territory.

Colony

A territory that is legally tied to a sovereign state rather than completely independent.

Democracy

A country in which citizens elect leaders and can run for office.

Devolution

The breakdown of central authority in a country.

Federal state

An internal organization of a state that allocates most powers to units of local government.

Frontier

A zone separating two states in which neither state exercises political control.

Gerrymandering

The process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party in power.

Irredentism

The destabilizing situation that arises when an ethic group supports and seeks to unite with its ethnic population in another country.

Landlocked state

A state that does not have a direct outlet to the sea.

Microstate

A state that encompasses a very small land area.

Multinational state

A state that contains two or more ethnic groups with traditions of self-determination that agree to coexist peacefully by recognizing each other as distinct nationalities.

Nation-state

A state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality.

Self-determination

The concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves.

Semi-Autonomous region

A subdivision that has a degree of autonomy or self-governance, but not completely sovereignty, such as Hong Kong within China, or the Kurdistan region in Iraq.

Shatterbelt region

a region caught between stronger colliding external cultural-political forces, under persistence stress, and often fragmented by aggressive rivals.

Sovereignty

Ability of a state to govern its territory free from control of its internal affairs by other states.

State

An area organized into a political unit and ruled by an established government that has control over its internal and foreign affairs.

Terrorism

The systematic use of violence by a group in order to intimidate a population or coerce a government into granting its demands.

Unitary state

An internal organization of a state that places most power in the hands of central government officials.

Neocolonialism

Control by a powerful country of its former colonies( or other less developed countries) by economic pressures.

Autonomous region

An area of a country that has degree of autonomy, or has freedom from an external authority.

Balkanization

Process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities.