Geopolitical Model of the State

• Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, is often considered the first political geographer because his model of the state is based upon factors like climate, terrain, and the relationship between population and territory

• Other political geographers have promoted theories of the state that incorporated elements of the landscape and the physical environment as well as population characteristics of regions. Later scholars theorized that the state operated cyclically and organically

• Twentieth century theorists such as Foucault, Althusser, and Deleuze have shifted focus away from viewing the state as a set of institutions, they were more concerned with how state power is assembled and deployed

Contemporary Theorists

• The state is a set of institutions for the protection and maintenance of society. A state is not only a place or bounded territory it is an entire entity that operated through the rules and regulations of its various institutions

• State theorist Louis Althusser views the state as both ideological and repressive. Michel Foucault has explored ways that power, knowledge and discourse operate to produce particular kinds of state subjects Giles Deleuze sees the state as a force that is greater than the formal institutions that constitute it

The New World Order

• Geopolitics may involve the extension of power by one group over another. There are many different manifestations of this phenomenon

• Imperialism and colonialism involve occupation by one state over another Heartland theory recognizes that a central location is pivotal to, political and geographical control whereas domino theory reflects that the significance of proximity in the extension of power and control

• During the Cold War blocks of the global political system-capital versus communist- were on direct and indirect conflict. The current new world order is a manifestation of the decline of those old conflicts and the emergence of new ones

Global Forms of Governance

• Just as states are key players in political geography so too has international and super national organizations become important participants in the world system in the last century

• These organizations have become increasingly important ways of achieving goals such as the freer flow of goods and information and more cooperative management of shared resources like water