What is Political Geography? (College Board AP® Human Geography)

Summary

This unit focuses on political geography and explores how political processes interact with spatial organizations and cultural landscapes. It analyzes types of political actors, including nation-states, and how they interact, as well as the influence of centripetal and centrifugal forces on state authority and formation.

Independent States

• Political geography is the study of the organization of political units including:

  • nations

  • states

  • countries

• Though country, nation, and state are often used interchangeably, they have different, specific definitions

  • A country is used to describe an independent political entity

  • A state is a political unit

  • A nation is a group of people who are united by a shared sense of culture and history

Types of Political Entities

States

• A state is a political unit with a permanent population that:

  • occupies a specific territory

  • has a sovereign government

  •  is recognized as independent by other governments

  • has a permanent population

  • has defined borders

• The word “state” may also refer to levels of organization below the country level

  • For example, the United States and Germany both contain multiple states

• Examples of states include:

  • The United States

  • China

  • South Africa

  • Australia

Nations

• A nation is a group of people who think of themselves as united, based on a shared sense of culture and history and who desire political autonomy

• Examples include:

  • the Kurds

  • the Japanese

  • the Welsh

Nation-states

• Nation-states refer to a situation where a nation of people aligns with the borders of a state

• Examples include:

  • Japan

  • Iceland

  • Armenia

Stateless nations

• Stateless nations occur when a nation of people does not possess their own independent state 

• Examples include:

  • Kurds

  • Catalans

  • Palestinians

  • Hmong

Multinational states

• Multinational states occur when a state contains two or more nations of people. Examples include:

  • The United States

  • Mexico

  • China

  • Russia 

• Multinational states may result in ethnonationalism and political fragmentation, including:

  • separatism where there is a political movement that seeks to split from the state to form a separate, independent state

    • An example of this would be Basque separatism in Spain

  • devolution when there is a transfer of power from the central government to regional governments

    • Devolution in the UK has led to the transfer of some powers to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments

  • secession which occurs when a region or group leaves the state to form a new state

    • The former Soviet republics leaving the Russian Federation is an example of secession

Multistate nations

• Multistate nations occur when a nation of people occupies multiple states simultaneously

• Examples of multistate nations include:

  • Korea (divided between North and South Korea)

  • Ireland (divided between Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland) 

• Multistate nations may lead to irredentism – the political goal of unifying a nation across existing political boundaries

Autonomous regions

• An autonomous region is an area which governs itself domestically but is not an independent country

  • Greenland is an example of an autonomous region

Semi-autonomous regions

• Semi-autonomous regions are areas within a state which can govern themselves in certain aspects but do not have sovereign authority

  • Native American reservations in the United States and Nunavut in Canada are examples of semi-autonomous regions