Political Geography
To review from yesterday…
Ethnicities and Nationalities
• State: An independent, bounded, and
internationally recognized territory with full
sovereignty over the land and people within
it
• Nation: Cultural unit- group that shares
ancestry, regardless of whether the group
owns its own country
– A group becomes a nation when they start to
see themselves as separate and different from
foreigners
Ethnicities and Nationalities
• Nationality: Identity with a group of people who
share legal attachment and personal allegiance to a
particular country
• Nation-state: A state whose territory corresponds to
that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been
transformed into a nationality
– Denmark, Japan, Sweden, Portugal, Costa Rica
– Most countries are NOT nation-states
• Nationalism: Loyalty and devotion to a nationality
– It is a centripetal force!
Ethnicities and Nationalities
• Multiethnic State: A state that contains more than
one ethnicity
– United States- multiple ethnicities that claim the U.S.
as their nation – their nationality is American
• Multinational States: A state that has two ethnic
groups with traditional self-determination that
agree to coexist peacefully
–
–
–
–
–
Former Soviet Union (doesn’t exist. Former.)
Russia
UK
Canada
South Africa
• Stateless nation: A nation without a state
Ethnicities and Nationalities
• Ethnonationalism- feeling of belonging
to a minority nation that is in a state
dominated by a more powerful nation
– Can lead to separatism
– Irredentism- when a nation’s homeland spills
into another state, so then the people on the
“wrong side” want to join the other state
• Multi-state nation
Disagreements over Sovereignty
• Korea
– Divided after WWII
– The UN recognizes them as separate
• China and Taiwan
– Taiwan run by nationalists
– Taiwan says they’re sovereign, China disagrees
• The U.S. only agreed with Taiwan until 1971
• Western Sahara
– Morocco claims it
– Most African nations recognize its sovereignty
• Polar regions
– Different states “control” different portions
Three basic types of government
• Unitary
– Central government has most of the power
– France, Saudi Arabia, Japan
• Federal
– Regional governments share power with the
central government
– Often has a constitution
– United States of America, Mexico, Canada,
India
Colonialism and Imperialism
• City-state: a sovereign state that comprises a
town and the surrounding countryside
• Colony: A territory that is legally tied to a
sovereign state rather than being completely
independent
• Colonialism: The effort of one country to
establish colonies and to impose their political,
economic and cultural principles on that
territory
• Imperialism: Control of a territory already
occupied and organized by an indigenous
society
State Shapes
•
•
•
•
•
Compact
Elongated
Prorupted
Perforated
Fragmented
• Landlocked States
Boundaries
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Boundary: vertical plane between states that cuts through the rocks below, and the airspace
above (even outer space).
Evolution (of boundaries):
-Definition: legal document or treaty drawn up to specify actual points in the landscape
-Delimitation: cartographers put the boundary on the map
-Demarcation: boundary is actually marked on the ground w/ wall, fence, posts,… (too
expensive or impractical for most borders to be demarcated)
Types (of boundaries):
-Geometric: straight-line, unrelated to physical or cultural landscape, lat & long (US/Canada)
-Physical-political: (natural-political) – conform to physiologic features (Rio Grande:
US/Mexico; Pyrenees: Spain/France)
-Cultural-political: mark breaks in the human landscape (Armenia/Azerbaijan)
Genesis: origin-based classification of boundaries
-Antecedent: existed before the cultural landscape emerged (e.g., Malaysia/Indonesia)
-Subsequent: developed contemporaneously with the evolution of the cultural landscape (e.g.,
US/Mexico)
-Superimposed: placed by powerful outsiders on a developed landscape, usually ignores preexisting cultural-spatial patterns (e.g., Indonesia/Papua New Guinea; Haiti/Dominican
Republic)
-Relict: has ceased to function, but its imprint can still be detected on the cultural landscape
(e.g., North/South Vietnam, East/West Berlin)
Disputes (over boundaries):
-Definitional: focus on legal language (e.g. median line of a river: water levels may vary)
-Locational: definition is not in dispute, the interpretation is; allows mapmakers to delimit
boundaries in various ways
-Operational: neighbors differ over the way the boundary should function (migration,
smuggling) (e.g., US/Mexico)
-Allocational: disputes over rights to natural resources (gas, oil, water) (e.g., Saddam Hussein
invaded Kuwait, in part, due to a dispute over oil rights regarding the Ramallah oil field
(mostly in Iraq but straddling into Kuwait)
Centripetal and Centrifugal
• Bind states, unify
them and help them
succeed
• Nationalism
– Iconography is using
symbols
• Unifying institutions
– Schools
– Military
– religion
• Destabilizing,
challenging, creates
discord
• Organized religion
• Nationalism in a state
with many
nationalities
– Subnationalism
• Devolution
• Ethnic cleansing
Supranationalism
• An association of three
or more states created
for the mutual benefit
and to achieve shared
objectives
–  loss of national
independence
–  someone has your
back!
–  easier to achieve
goals
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
UN
EU
NATO
NAFTA
Arab League
OPEC
British Commonwealth
Some words…
• Enclave- a district surrounded by a
country but not ruled by it
– Lesotho
• Exclave- part of a national territory
separated from the main body of the
country
– Alaska
• Ethnic Enclave: examples include
Chinatown, Little Italy
Devolution
• Regions in the state demand more
autonomy and receive it
• By doing this, the central government
loses authority
• Basque and Catalonia in Spain
• Chechnya in Russia
Balkanization
• The break up of a large country into
smaller, independent regions or
countries
• First used when Yugoslavia broke into six
countries during the late 80s- early 90s
Electoral Geography
• Redrawing legislative boundaries with
the purpose of benefitting the party in
power
– Wasted vote- spreads out the opposition
– Excess vote- concentrates opposition into a
few districts
– Stacked vote- Links distant areas of likeminded voters into oddly shaped
boundaries
• Often used to elect ethnic minorities