| A | B |
|---|
| Antecedent Boundary | Boundary line established before an area populated. |
| Subsequent Boundary | Boundary line established after an area has been settled that considers social and cultural characteristics of the area. |
| Centrifugal Forces | Forces that tend to divide a country. |
| Centripetal Forces | Forces that tend to unite or bind a country together. |
| Compact State | State that possesses roughly circular, oval, or rectangular territory in which the distance from geometric center is relatively equal in all directions. |
| Domino theory | Idea that political destabilization in one country can lead to collapse of political stability in neighboring countries, starting chain reaction of collapse. |
| Elongated state | State whose territory is long and narrow in shape. |
| European Union | International organization comprised of Western European countries to promote free trade among members. Its a regional multinational organization and also a supranationalist organization with a common currency. |
| Exclave | Bounded territory that is part of a particular state but separated form it by the territory of a different state. |
| Fragmented State | State that is not contiguous whole but rather separated parts. Made of islands, perhaps. |
| Geometric Boundary | Political boundaries that are defined and delimited by straight lines, often defined by latitude/longitude lines. |
| Gerrymandering | Designation of voting districts so as to favor a particular party or candidate. A type of reapportionment. |
| Heartland Theory | Proposed by Halford Mackinder that held that any political power based in the heartland of Eurasia could gain enough strength to eventually dominate the world. |
| Nation-state | Country whose population possesses a substantial degree of cultural homogeneity and unity. |
| Organic Theory | View that states resemble biological organisms with life cycles that include stages of youth, maturity, and old age. |
| Perforated state | State whose territory completely surrounds that of another state. |
| Prorupted state | State that exhibits a narrow, elongated land extension leading away form main territory. |
| Rimland Theory | Nicholas Spykman's theory that the domination of the coastal fringes of Eurasia would provide the base for world conquest. The world's shores are most important. |
| Super-imposed Boundary | Boundary line drawn in an area ignoring the existing cultural pattern. |
| Supranational Organizations | Organization of three or more states to promote shared objectives. These could be global or regional. |
| Buffer State | Independent coutnry that exists between two larger coutnries that are conflicting |
| Core of a state | Region in a state wherein political and economic power is concentrated, like the nucleus of a cell |
| Devolution | Process of transferring some power from the central governments to regional governments |
| Primate City | City that is not only the political nucleus but also is many times more economically powerful than any other city in the state |
| Territoriality | Control over a space and the assumption of ownership to that space |
