UNIT 4: POLITICS

The State - Fundamental Building Block of a Map

• A state is used to describe a country

• A sub-national unit is a state in the US

  • Has to have control over what they do

  • Government with an economic system

  • Has a border (Geographic Territory) 

  • Stable Population

  • International Recognition

    • Many people do not

  • Sovereignty

Sovereignty

• The ability (for individual states) to make policies on an internal and external level without influence from other countries

• Create laws, determine economic policy, fund a military, and join agreements, fund a military, can join agreements with other states

Political, economic, cultural, and technological changes can also challenge state sovereignty

Sanction

• Great tool to stop conflicts

• “not going to do business with you”

Nation-State

• The majority of people belong to the same ethnicity

  • Ethnicity - a group of people share the same cultural traditions (language, religion, etc)

Stateless Nation (group of people that wish to have their own land but isn’t internationally recognized) - Palestine, Kurds

Multinational State (many ethnic groups that agree to exist peacefully) - USA, UK

Multistate (group of people who share a common ethnicity and live in multiple states)- Kurds, Russia, Korea

Autonomous Region (makes their own decisions but are still part of a country) - Catalonia, Hong Kong

Self Determination

• Ethnic group has a strong sense of connection to their group

• Territoriality - used to make claims of sovereignty and jurisdiction over a given area 

Ethnonationalism

• Idea that nations are defined by common heritage (faith, language, and ancestry)

• Can become extreme– at the expense of others

Political Forces

Centripetal

• Unifying actions, policy, or shared identity

Centrifugal

• Separates people

Colonialism

• European countries competing to conquer and control other peoples and their territories

• Imposing their customs onto native people

• Creating colonies

• Taking advantage of other countries resources 

Conference of Berlin

• European countries carved up and decided which african countries they wanted to occupy

Types and functions of boundaries

• Boundaries are defined, delimited (we put it on a map after people negotiated), demarcated (put up a wall, sign, or fence to indicate the boundary for the people), and administered to establish limits of limits of sovereignty, but they are often contested

• Delimited boundaries are drawn on a map

• Demarcated boundaries are identified by physical objects

Median Line Principle

• If two subnational units border another, and they have a water boundary, they just agree and draw a line 

Land and maritime boundaries and international agreements can influence national or regional identity, and either cause or prevent disputes

UNCLOS (united Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea)

• Established freedom of navigation rights within 12 miles of territorial miles for any given country

BOUNDARY TYPES (something can be more than one)

• Relic

  • Boundaries that are no longer official “boundaries”, but are still historically important or identifiable

  • Examples are great wall of china and berlin wall

• Superimposed

  • Boundaries placed on an area while existing boundaries are already there

  • Example modern day Africa

• Subsequent

  • Created after human settlement and interaction with the landscape– can also be cultural

  • Ireland, USA vs Canada

• Antecedent

  • Before human involvement

  • Natural environment

  • 49° north divides US and Canada

• Geometric

  • Drawn as straight line on map

  • Usually also superimposed boundaries

Boundaries

• The sykes-picot agreement

  • 1916 secret treaty between UK, France, Italy, and Russia defined their mutually agreed spheres of influence and eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire

Can working together make you lose some of your sovereignty?

Democratic states: Have elections to elect government officials, balances minority rule and protection of minority interests

• Tend to be more developed

Authoritarian states: vest power in the hands of one leader, one small group of people, or one political party (can have elections, but they’re not fair)

Sovereignty + globalization

• States become interconnected through media, migration, and trade

  • The new ideas and people challenge the sovereignty of the state

Terrorism

• Calculated use of violent acts against civilians and symbolic targets to publicize a cause

• Can be international, domestic, led by the state, or enacted at a subnational level

• Disruptive to sovereignty

• Can be bad or good depending on your point of view

Supranationalism organizations

• International organizations that countries establish with neighbors for mutual, political or economic gain

• To address transnational and environmental challenges

• Creates economies of scale, trade agreements, and military alliances

• The UN, European Union, African Union ETC

Brexit

• In 2016 the UK left the EU

4.5 notes:

Neocolonialism

• Ways in which wealthy and powerful countries (core countries, former colonizers) indirectly control less wealthy areas (possibly periphery countries, former colonies

  • Most goods from less wealthy countries are then sold in powerful countries

Choke points 

• Global trade can be strained by choke points

• Narrow spaces that follow a canal or strait, make trade more difficult

  • Example taiwan strait, strait of malacca

• If you control in, you control a lot of trade

Shatterbelts

• Something breaking apart

• Places with consistent fragmentation due to devolution

• Vast amount of resources in these areas, hard decisions of who should control them

• Can serve as buffers between independent states that are hostile towards eachother

  • Culture and political boundaries can shape things like culture and religions in places

Balkanization

• Breaking a country into smaller new countries

• Inspired by the balkans being split up

Irredentism

• Political claim to territory in another country based on ethnicity or historical borders

• Trying to take control of another place

  • russia/ukraine

Ethnic Cleansing

• Forced removal of ethnic group by another ethnic group with the goal of only having one (ethnically homogenous territory)

  • Example: buddhist majority trying to push muslims to bangladesh from myanmar 

• Leads to internally displaced people
  
  

Disintegration of State

• Sometimes, smaller more homogenous regions decide to break away

• Previously didn’t work with sudan/south sudan

  • failed/fragile states have weak political systems– leading to illegitimate governments

The fall of USSR

• The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) comprised 15 different countries with various ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences

• From 1947-1991 the USSR was the US foil in the cold war

  • Mikhail Gorbachev (the president of the USSR) led a campaign of economic and political reforms in the late 80s

  •  These reforms led to democratization that destabilized communist control and led to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991

(now russia has lots of different ethnic groups)