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| Question | Answer |
| Political Geography | A sub- division of human geography focused on the nature and implications of the evolving spatial organization of political governance and formal political practice on the Earth’s surface. It is concerned with why political spaces emerge in the places that they do and with how the character of those spaces affects social, political, economic, and environmental understandings and practices. |
| State | A politically organized entity that is administered by a sovereign government and is recognized by a significant portion of the international community. A state has a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, and is recognized by other states |
| Territoriality | In political geography, a country’s or more local community’s sense of property and attachment toward its territory, as expressed by its determination to keep it inviolable and strongly defended. |
| Sovereignty | A principle of international relations that holds that final authority over social, economic, and political matters should rest with the legitimate rulers of independent states. |
| Territorial Integrity | The right of a state to defend sovereign territory against incursion from other states. |
| Boundary | Vertical plane between states that cuts through the rocks below (called the subsoil), and the airspace above the surface, dividing one state territory from another. |
| Geometric Boundary | Political boundary defined and delimited (and occasionally demarcated) as a straight line or an arc. |
| Physical Political (Natural- Political) Boundary | Political boundary defined and delimited (and occasionally demarcated) by a prominent physical feature in the natural landscape—such as a river or the crest ridges of a mountain range. |
| Nation | A tightly knit group of people possessing bonds of language, ethnicity, religion, and other shared cultural attributes. Such homogeneity actually prevails within very few states. |
| Mercantilism | Mercantilism In a general sense, associated with the promotion of commercialism and trade. More specifically, a protectionist policy of European states during the 16th to the 18th centuries that promoted a state’s economic position in the contest with other countries. The acquisition of gold and silver and the maintenance of a favourable trade balance (more exports than imports) were central to the policy. |
| Peace of Westphalia | Peace negotiated in 1648 to end the Thirty Years’ War, Europe’s most destructive internal struggle over religion. The treaties contained new language recognizing statehood and nationhood, clearly defined borders, and guarantees of security |
| Nation-State | Theoretically, a recognized member of the modern state system possessing formal sovereignty and occupied by a people who see themselves as a single, united nation. Most nations and states aspire to this form, but it is realized almost no- where. Nonetheless, in common parlance, nation-state is used as a synonym for country or states. |
| Nationalism | Both an ideology and a political practice that all nations need their own sovereign government and territory. |
| Multinational State | A state with more than one nation within its borders. |
| Multistate Nation | A nation that stretches across borders and across states. |
| Stateless Nation | A nation that does not have a state. |
| Colonialism | Rule by an autonomous power over a sub- ordinate and alien people and place. Although often established and maintained through political structures, colonialism also creates unequal cultural and economic relations. Because of the magnitude and impact of the European colonial project of the last few centuries, the term is generally understood to refer to that particular colonial endeavour. |
| Scale | Representation of a real-world phenomenon at a certain level of reduction or generalization. In cartography, the ratio of map distance to ground distance; indicated on a map as a bar graph, representative fraction, and/or verbal statement. |
| Unitary (state) | A state that has a centralized government and administration that exercises power equally over all parts of the state. |
| Federal (state) | A political- territorial system wherein a central government represents the various entities within a nation-state where they have common interests—defence, foreign affairs, and the like—yet allows these various entities to retain their own identities and to have their own laws, policies, and customs in certain spheres. |
| Centripetal | Forces that tend to unify a state, such as widespread commitment to national culture. shared ideological objectives and a common faith. |
| Centrifugal | Forces that tend to divide a country - such as an internal religious, linguistic, ethic or ideological differences. |
| Unitary (state) | A nation-state that has a centralized government and administration that exercises power equally over all parts of the state. |
| Federal (state) | A political- territorial system wherein a central government represents the various entities within a nation-state where they have common interests—defence, foreign affairs, and the like—yet allows these various entities to retain their own identities and to have their own laws, policies, and customs in certain spheres. |
| Devolution | The process whereby regions within a state demand and gain political strength and growing autonomy at the expense of the central government. |
| Heartland Theory | A geopolitical hypothesis, proposed by British geographer Halford Mackinder during the first two decades of the twentieth century, that any political power based in the heart of Eurasia could gain sufficient strength to eventually dominate the world. Mackinder further proposed that since Eastern Europe controlled access to the Eurasian interior, its ruler would command the vast “heartland” to the east |
| Critical Geopolitics | Process by which geopoliticians deconstruct and focus on explaining the underlying spatial assumptions and territorial perspectives of politic |
| Unilateralism | World order in which one state is in a position of dominance with allies following rather than joining the political decision-making process. |
| Supranational Organization | A venture involving three or more nation-states involving formal political, economic, and/or cultural co-operation to promote shared objectives. The European Union is one such organization. |
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