| A | B |
|---|
| state | area organized into a political unit and ruled by an established government that has control over its internal and foreign affairs |
| sovereignty | independence from control of its internal affairs by other states |
| microstates | states with very small land areas |
| city-state | sovereign state that comprises a town and the surrounding countryside |
| colony | territory that is legally tied to a sovereign state rather than being indpendent |
| colonialism | effort by one country to establish settlements in a territory and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles on that territory |
| imperialism | control of territory already occupied and organized by an indigenous society |
| boundary | invisible line marking the extent of a state's territory |
| compact state | distance from the center to any boundary does not very significantly |
| elongated state | narrow and long shape |
| prorupted state | otherwise compact state with a large projecting extension |
| perforated state | state that completely surrounds another |
| fragmented state | includes several discontinuous pieces of territory |
| landlocked state | lacks a direct outlet to the sea |
| physical boundaries | coincide with significant features of the natural landscape |
| cultural boundaries | follow the distribution of cultural characteristics |
| geometic boundaries | straight lines drawn on a map |
| frontier | a zone where no state exerises complete political control |
| unitary state | places most power in the hands of central government officials |
| federal state | allocates strong power to units of local government control |
| gerrymandering | redrawing district boundries for the purpose of benefiting the party in power |
| balance of power | condition of roughly equal strength between opposing alliances |
| terrorism | the systematic use of violence by a group in order to intimidate a population or coerce a government into granting its demands |
| jihad | holy war |
| fatwa | religious decree |
| mujahedeen | holy warriors |
