AP Human Geo Chapter 8 Notes

KEY ISSUE 1: Where are States Distributed?

  • Political geographers: Study how people have organized earth’s land surface, reasons for he arrangements, and conflicts that result from the organization

  • State (country): an area organized into a political unit, ruled by a government that has control over its internal and foreign affairs.

  • A state has sovereignty or independence from control of its internal affairs by other states

  • Nation-state: A state whose territory corresponds to a particular ethnicity that has been transformed (ex. Iceland, Japan, Denmark, Slovenia – high % same ethnicity and high % live there)

  • Nation: A tightly knit group of individuals sharing a common language, ethnicity, religion, and other cultural attributes (ex. Kurds, Palestinians, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Yoruba in Nigeria, Sindhi along Pakistan/Indian border)

  • 50 United States states are subdivisions with a single state

  • 193 states are recognized states by the United Nations

  • Antarctica is the only large world land mass that is not a state

  • Development of the state concept:

  • Ancient city-states from Mesopotamia

  • Early empires

  • Medieval states

  • Age of exploration/colonization/imperialism

  • Nation-states

  • Sovereignty: Independence from control of its internal affairs by other states

  • City-state: A sovereign state that comprises a town and the surrounding countryside

  • Self-determination: Concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves

  • United Nations:

  • From 1955, the UN has 193 countries joined, with many contributed to the importance of global organization

  • There are many challenged defining states

  • Many disagreements occur:

  • Korea

  • China and Taiwan

  • Western Sahara

  • Polar Regions

  • The UN often lacks enough of troops to keep peace effectively

  • The UN tries to maintain strict neutrality in separating warring factions, but this has proved difficult in many places

KEY ISSUE 2: Why are Nation-states Difficult to Create?

  • Nation-states and Multinational States:

  • Multi-ethnic state: A state that contains more than one ethnicity

  • Multinational state: A country that contains more than one ethnicity with traditions of self-determination

  • The Former Soviet Union includes 15 republics that became Independent states

  • 3 Baltic

  • 3 European

  • 5 Central Asian

  • 3 Caucuses

  • Russia

  • Ethnicities in Central Asia:

  • Long simmering conflicts have erupted in this region after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

  • Region is home to many ethnicities

  • Not necessarily organized into nation-states

  • Multi-ethnic and Multinational states are more prone to conflict

  • European states held colonies in much of the world, especially in Africa and Asia

  • Most of the countries in the Western Hemisphere were at one time colonized by Europeans but gained their independence in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries

  • Colonial possessions in the present:

  • Most remaining colonies are tiny specks in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, too small to appear on the map

  • Separatism within and across national boundaries:

  • There are many reasons to want to separate:

  • An area idepreseed economically compared to a wealthier one that doesn't’ want to support the rest

  • A minority language or culture with a different history

  • A minority religious grouping

  • The sepereception that exploitation of local resources national government produces little economic gain for the region

  • Collapse of the state

  • Strengthening of supranational bodies

  • Colonialism: An effort by one country to establish settlements in a territory and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles on that territory

KEY ISSUE 3: Why Do Boundaries Cause Problems?

  • Types of boundaries:

  • Boundary: An invisible line that marks the extent of a state’s territory

  • Frontier: A zone where no state exercises complete political control

  • Physical boundaries: coincide with significant features of the natural landscape

  • Mountains

  • Desert

  • Water

  • Cultural boundaries: Follow the distribution of cultural characteristics

  • Geometric

  • Religious

  • Language

  • Desert boundaries can effectively divide two states because deserts are hard to cross and sparsely inhabited

  • Mountain boundaries can be effective boundaries if they are difficult to cross

  • Water boundaries are the physical features most commonly used as boundaries

  • Geometric boundaries are simply straight lines on the map

  • Religious boundaries draw boundaries between religions

  • There are five basic shapes of states

  • Compact state: The distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly

  • Elongated State: Have a long and narrow shape

  • Prorupted state: An otherwise compact state with a large projecting extension

  • Perforated state: A state that completely surrounds another one

  • Fragmented state: Several discontinuous pieces of territory

  • Landlocked state: lacks a direct outlet to a sea because it is completely surrounded by several other countries

  • Unitary state: Places most power in the hands of central government officials

  • Federal state: Allocates strong power to units of local government within the country

  • Gerrymandering: The process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party in power

  • Democracies and autocracies differ in three essential elements:

  • Selection of leaders

  • Democracies: Institutions and procedures through which citizens can express effective preferences about alternatives policies and leaders

  • Autocracies: Leaders who are selected according to clearly defined rules of succession from within the political elite

  • Citizen participation

  • Checks and balances

  • Wasted vote: spreads opposition supporters across many districts but in the minority

  • Excess vote: Concentrates opposition supporters into a few districts

  • Stacked vote: links distant areas of like-minded voters through oddly shaped boundaries

KEY ISSUE 4: Why Do States Cooperate and Compete with Each Other?

  • Division of the world into military alliances resulted from the emergence of two superpowers- U.S. and Soviet Union.

  • Military Cooperation in Europe

  • NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)

  • 16 democratic states, including the U.S., Canada, and 14 other European states.

  • Warsaw Pact

  • Military agreement among Communist Eastern European countries to defend each other in case of attack.

  • European Union:

  • Formed in 1958, many countries in Europe have joined and it was to heal the wounds from world war two

  • Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON)

  • Formed in 1949, Eastern european countries joined for trade and natural resources

  • The EU in the 21st Century: 

  • Expanded to 12 countries during the 1980s; expanded to 27 in the 2000s.

  • Main task of the EU is to promote development within member states through economic and political cooperation.

  • Eurozone

  • Most dramatic step toward integrating Europe’s nation-states into a regional organization.

  • The European Central Bank is given responsibility for setting interest rates and minimizing inflation throughout the Eurozone.

  • Common currency established- euro

  • Terrorism: The systematic use of violence by a group in order to intimidate a population or coerce a goveernment into granting its demands

  • Anocracy: A country that is not fully democratic or fully autocratic, but rather displays a mix of the two types

  • Autocracy: A country that is run according to the interests of the ruler rather than the people