| A | B |
|---|
| Annexation | The legal incorporation of some territory into another geo-political entity (either adjacent or non-contiguous). |
| Antarctica | Area govern by a system known as the Antarctic Treaty System which is administered through annual meetings |
| Apartheid | Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas |
| Balkanization | A small geographic area that could not successfully be organized into one or more stable states because it is inhabited by many ethnicities with complex, long-standing antagonisms toward each other |
| Border landscape | The complex representation of the environment around state boundaries |
| Border disputes | When two or more states disagree about the demarcation of a political boundary |
| Boundary origin | also known as Genetic Political Boundaries because it has to do with the evolution of boundaries |
| Buffer state | An independent but small and weak country that is lying between two powerful countries |
| Capital | Associated with its government, it physically encompasses the offices and meeting places of the seat of government and fixed by law |
| Centrifugal | Forces that tend to divide a country-such as internal religious, linguistic, ethnic or ideological differences |
| Centripetal | Forces that tend to unify a country-such as widespread commitment to a national culture, shared ideological objectives and a common faith |
| City-State | A sovereign state comprising a city and its immediate hinterland |
| Colonialism | An attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political economic and cultural principles in another territory |
| Confederation | A uniting or being united in a league or alliance |
| Core-Periphery | Spatial structure of an economic system in which underdeveloped or declining peripheral areas are defined with respect to their dependence on a dominating developed core region. |
| Decolonization | The action of changing from colonial to independent status. |
| Devolution | The transfer of certain powers from the state central government to separate political subdivisions within the state's territory |
| Domino Theory | The political theory that if one nation comes under communist control then neighboring nations will also come under communist control. |
| Exclusive Economic Zone | As established in the United Nations Convention on the law of the Sea, a zone of exploration extending 200 nautical miles seaward from a coastal state that has exclusive mineral and fishing rights over it |
| Electoral regions | The different voting districts that make up local, state and national regions |
| Enclave | A small bit of foreign territory within a state but not under it's jurisdiction |
| Exclave | A portion of a state that is separated from the main territory and surrounded by another country |
| European Union | An international organization of European countries formed after WWII to reduce trade barriers and increase cooperation among its members |
| Federal | A political territorial system where in a central government represents the various entities with in a nation-state where they have common interests; defense, foreign affairs, and yet allows these various entities to retain their own identities and laws |
| Forward Capital | Is the area of a country, province, region or state regarded as enjoying primary status, although there are exceptions |
| Frontier | A zone separating two states in which neither state exercises political control |
| Geopolitics | The influence of the habitat on political entities |
| Gerrymander | The drawing of electoral district boundaries in an awkward pattern to enhance the voting impact of one constiuency at the expense of another |
| Global Commons | Is that which no one person or state may own or control and which is central to life |
| Heartland | The interior of a sizable landmass, removed from maritime connections in particular the interior of the Eurasian continent |
| International Organization | An international alliance involving many different countries |
| Iron Curtain | Ideological and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of WWII in 1945 until the end of the Cold War |
| Irredentism | The policy of a state wishing to incorporate within its territory inhabited by people who have ethnic or linguistic links with the country but lies within a neighboring state |
| Landlocked | A state that does not have a direct outlet to the sea |
| Law of the Sea | Agreement signed by 158 nations that has standardized the territorial limits for most countries at 12 nautical miles |
| Manifest Destiny | Was the 19th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean |
| Median-line Principle | An approach to dividing and creating boundaries at the mid-point between two places |
| Microstate/Ministate | A state that encompasses a very small land area |
| Nation | A culturally distinctive group of people occupying a specific territory and bound together by a sense of unity arising from shared ethnicity, belief and customs |
| National iconography | Branch of knowledge dealing with representations of people or objects in art and design, hence the symbolism in a design |
| Nation-state | Member of the modern state system possessing formal sovereignty and with people possessing bonds of shared cultural attributes |
| Nunavut | Newest federal territory of Canada, it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories |
| Raison d'etre | The claimed reason for the existence of something or someone; the sole or ultimate purpose of something or someone |
| Reapportionment | Process by which representative districts are switched according to population shifts, so that each district encompasses approximately the same number of people |
| Regionalism | Political geographical group, frequently an ethnic group identification with a particular region of a state rather then with the state as a whole |
| Reunification | The act of coming together again |
| Satellite State | A small weak country dominated by one powerful neighbor to the extent that some or much of its independence is lost |
| State | A centralized authority that enforces a single political, economical and legal system within its territorial boundaries |
| Stateless ethnic groups | Ethnic groups that share certain cultural, political and/or historic qualities, such as religion, location or art, but do not share enough qualities to be recognized as a nationality or nation |
| Stateless nation | A group that does not have a state. |
| Suffrage | The civil right to vote |
| Supranationalism | A method of decision-making in multi-national political communities, wherein power is transferred or delegated to an authority by governments of member states |
| Territorial Disputes | A disagreement over the possession or control of land between two or more states |
| Territorial Morphology | An impact on the ability of ruling governments to impose law and policy on state territory |
| Territoriality | A behavior pattern in animals consisting of the occupation and defense of a territory |
| Theocracy | A form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the state's supreme civil ruler |
| Treaty Ports | Name given to the port cities that were opened to foreign trade by the Unequal Treaties. |
| Unitary | A sovereign state governed as one single unit in which the central government is supreme and any administrative divisions exercise only powers that the central government chooses to delegate |
| Rimland | The maritime fringe of a country or continent in particular the western, southern and eastern edges of the Eurasian continents |
