Why do Boundaries cause Problems?

boundary: an invisible line that marks the extent of a state’s territory

• boundaries separate states, but they are also debated on

frontier: a zone where no state exercises complete political control

• frontiers are a tangible geographic area

• used to separate states instead of boundaries

• were uninhabited or sparsely settled

Types of Boundaries

• boundaries can be

  • physical

    • coincide with significant features of the natural landscape

  • cultural

    • follow the distribution of cultural characteristics

• boundaries are the only place where the two states have physical contact, which is why they can create conflict

Physical Boundaries

• physical features are good boundaries because they can be easily seen on land and on a map

• can be a

  • desert

  • mountain

  • water

Desert Boundaries

• can effectively divide states because they’re hard to cross and are sparsely inhabited

• common in Africa and Asia

Mountain Boundaries

• can be effective if they’re difficult to cross

• contact between opposite sides will be limited/impossible

• however, Chile and Argentina fought over what the “crest” of the Andes Mountains is

Water Boundaries

• rivers, lakes, oceans

• can be seen on maps and aerial imagery

• offered good protection against attack

• common in East Africa

  • boundary between the Dem. Rep. of Congo and Uganda

    • Lake Albert

  • boundary between Burundi, the Dem. Rep. of Congo, Tanzania, and Zambia

    • Lake Tanganyika

  • boundary between Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda

    • Lake Victoria

  • boundary between the Dem. Rep. of Congo and Zambia

    • Lake Mwera

  • boundary between Malawai and Mozambique

    • Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi)

• however, the precise position of water changes over time

• rivers can change their course

  • ex. the movement of the Rio Grande between the US and Mexico

Cultural Boundaries

• can be geometric or ethnic, or coincide with differences in ethnicity (esp. language and religion)

Geometric Boundaries

• part of the US and Canada boundary is along the 49° north latitude line

• Alaska and the Yukon Territory share a boundary along 141° west longitude

• the boundary between Chad and Libya is a straight line across the desert

Ethnic Boundaries

• placed where possible to separate speakers of different languages or followers of different religions

  • in only a few cases has religion been used to select the actual boundary line

• the British separated Muslim Pakistan from Hindu India

• religion was also somewhat used to draw the boundary between the UK/Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

  • 95% are Roman Catholics in the Republic of Ireland

  • Protestants are the majority in Northern Ireland

• England, France, Portugal, and Spain came from differences in language

Cyprus’s “Green Line” Boundary

• contains two nationalities

  • Greek

    • 78% of population

  • Turkish

    • 18% of population

• Greek military officers who wanted unification with Greece took control of the government

• Turkey invaded to protect the Turkish minority

• the Turkish army remained on Cyprus, and the northern part of the island declared itself the independent Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

  • only Turkey recognizes it

• a wall between the areas was made by the UN

• the nationalities were now geographically isolated

• 1/3 of Greeks had to move, and 1/4 of Turks

• a UN Peace Plan for unification was accepted by the Turkish side by rejected by the Greek side

Shapes of States

• shape affects the potential for communication and conflict with neighbors

• can influence the ease or difficulty of internal administration and social unity

• can be

  • compact

  • prorupted

  • elongated

  • fragmented

  • perforated

• examples of each can be seen in southern Africa

Compact States: Efficient

compact state: a state where the distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly

• ideal compact state would be circular

• benefits

  • better for smaller states

  • good communications can be more easily established, especially if the capital is near the center

• negatives

  • compactness doesn’t mean peacefulness

  • just as likely to experience civil wars and ethnic rivalries

Elongated States: Potential Isolation

elongated states: states that have a long and narrow shape

• examples

  • Malawi (sub-Saharan Africa)

  • Gambia (sub-Saharan Africa)

  • Chile (South America)

• negatives

  • poor internal communications

  • a region at an extreme end might be isolated from the capital, which is usually near the center

Prorupted States: Access or Disruption

prorupted state: an otherwise compact state with a large projecting extension

• created to

  • provide a state with access to a resource, such as water

    • Dem. Rep. of Congo has a proruption along the Zaire/Congo River

  • separate two states that otherwise would share a boundary

    • Namibia has a proruption, disrupting communications with the British colonies while it was still a German colony

    • Afghanistan has a proruption to prevent Russia and Pakistan sharing a border

Perforated States: South Africa

perforated state: a state that completely surrounds another one

• the state that is surrounded faces problems of dependence and interference by the surrounding sate

  • ex. South Africa completely surrounds Lesotho

    • Lesotho must depend on South Africa to import and export

      • this is difficult when South Africa is controlled by whites who discriminate against the black majority

  • ex. Italy surrounds the Holy See (the Vatican) and San Marino

Fragmented States: Problematic

fragmented state: a state that includes several discontinuous pieces of territory

• all states that have islands are fragmented

• two main kinds of fragmented states, both facing problems with communication and maintaining national unity

1. Fragmented States Separated by Water

• Tanzania is a united island of Zanzibar and the mainland of Tanganyika

• Indonesia has over 13,000 islands, though more than 80% of the population live on Java or Sumatra

  • fragmentation hinders communications and makes integration of people living on remote islands nearly impossible

  • government has encouraged migration from the more populated islands to the more isolated ones

  • Indonesia invaded Timor-Leste to force it to join

  • West Papua wants to break away from Indonesia

2. Fragmented States Separated by an Intervening State

• Angola is separated into two fragments by Congo

• Russia has a fragment called Kaliningrad, separated by Lithuania and Belarus

  • Russia wants Kaliningrad because it has a large naval base

• Panama was divided by the canal built by the US, but became an elongated state once the US withdrew

Landlocked States

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

• landlocked states are most common in Africa

• to send goods to sea, a state must interact with states surrounding it

Governing States

• states have two types of government

  • national

    • can be more/less democratic

  • local

    • national determines how much power they get

National Scale: Regime Types

democracy: a country in which citizens elect leaders and can run for office

autocracy: a country that is run according to the interests of the ruler rather than the people

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

• democracies and autocracies differ in 3 essential elements:

1. selection of leaders

   1. democracy

      1. institutions and procedures where citizens can express preferences about alternative policies and leaders

   2. autocracy

      1. leaders selected according to clearly defined rules of succession (hereditary) from within the established political eltire

2. citizen participation

   1. democracy

      1. institutionalized constraints on the exercise of power by the executive

   2. autocracy

      1. citizens’ participation is sharply restricted or suppressed

3. checks and balances

   1. democracy

      1. guarantees of civil liberties to all citizens in their daily lives and in acts of political participation

   2. autocracy

      1. leaders exercise power with no meaningful checks from legislative, judicial, or civil society institutions

Trend Toward Democracy

• the world has become more democratic

• Center of Systemic Peace has 3 reasons for this

  • replacement of irrelevant and out-of-touch monarchies to elected governments that are able to regulate, tax, and mobilize citizens in exchange or broadening individual rights and liberties

  • widening of participation in policy, giving citizens universal rights to vote and to serve in government

  • diffusion of democratic governments from Europe and North America

Arab Spring

• consisted of protests in countries in Southwest Asia and North Africa

  • had demonstrations, rallies, strikes, and other civil disobedience

  • used a lot of social media and electronic devices to organize protests

• resulted in changing the autocratic rulers in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen

Local Scale: Unitary and Federal States

unitary state: a state that places most power into the hands of central government officials

federal state: a state that allocates strong power to the units of local government within the country

Unitary States

• works best in nation-states with few internal cultural differences and strong senses of national unity

  • France has a good system

• requires effective communication with all regions

  • smaller states are more likely to adopt

• common in Europe

• some multinational states have a unitary system to impose one nationality

  • ex. Kenya and Rwanda

Federal States

• common in multinational states because they can empower different nationalities, even if living in separate regions

• suitable for large states

  • ex. US, Russia, Brazil, India

• however, Belgium, a small state, is federal

  • to accommodate the two main cultural groups

• China is a unitary state

  • to promote Communist values

• the world is slowly moving toward a federal government

Electoral Geography

• in democracies, politicians must follow rules

• however, some find ways to bend them to their advantage

• boundaries in legislative districts in the US are redrawn so they have the sameish population every 10 years with the census

gerrymandering: the process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party in power

• Elbridge Gerry was first to gerrymander

• people said the new district looked like a salamander, and combined it with Gerry to create “gerrymandering”

• gerrymandering can be one of three forms

  • 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

• redrawing boundaries is entrusted to independent commissions in European countries

• commissions try to create compact homogeneous districts without regard for voting preferences

• most US states leave redrawing boundaries to state legislature, who try to redraw boundaries to improve the chances of its supporters to win seats

• stacked vote gerrymandering is attractive for districts inclined to elect ethnic minorities

• gerrymandering is illegal in the US, but oddly shaped districts aren’t