Political geography Flint & Taylor 7th edition
Glossary
Absolutsm: A form of rule in which the rulers claim complete power. It is usually applied to the
politics of the ‘absolute states’l that developed in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
Administraton: The implementation of government policy by ministers and civil servants.
Anarchy of producton: The sum of the investment and disinvestment decisions of many
entrepreneurs in a free market or capitalist system. The essence of the process is that there is no
overall planning.
Annales school of history: Named afer a journal, the Annales, this French school of historians
emphasizes the day-to-day social and economic processes in opposition to the traditional political
history of major events. Its leading recent exponent was Braudel, one of the originators of world-
system analysis.
Aristocracy: The traditional upper class, whose power is based upon land ownership.
Autarky: A policy of economic self-sufciency based upon protectionism and the creation of large
economic blocs.
Authoritarian: A form of rule where the rulers impose their policies without any efective constraints.
Military dictatorship in the ‘third world’l are usually described thus.
Autonomy: The situation when a territory has self government but not full sovereignty.
Balance of power: A theory of political stability based upon an even distribution of power between
the leading states.
Boundary: The limits of a territory; the boundary of a states defnes the scope of its sovereignty.
Bourgeoisie: The urban middle class, the original political foes of the aristocracy. In Marxist analysis,
members of the capitalist class, which owns the means of production.
Capitalism: A system of economic organization based upon the primacy of the market, where all the
key decisions are to maximize proft. In Marxist analysis, it is defned as a mode of production by the
existence of wage labour, the proletariat, exploited by owners of the means of production, the
bourgeoisie.
Capitalist world-economy: The modern world-system based upon ceaseless capital accumulation.
Centrifugal forces: Political processes that contribute to the disintegration of the state.
Centripetal forces: Political processes that contribute to the integration of the state.
,Christan democracy: A common political label and ideology of right-wing parties in Europe and Latin
America. Originally derived from Catholic political movements, today it is associated with a more
collectivist approach among conservative parties.
Citzenship: A political status enabling individuals the right to access benefts from a state, and in
turn bear responsibilities towards the state. Formal citizenship refers to legal rights and
responsibilities. Substantive citizenship refer to that actual ability of individuals to access these rights
and act upon their responsibilities.
Civil libertes: The fundamental rights of citizens, typically violated by authoritarian regimes but
respected by liberal democracies.
Civil society: The sum of all the voluntary associations through which a social system operates, it was
devised as a concept to represent society outside the activities of the state. Sometimes, it appears as
a dual, and sometimes as part of a trilogy including economy.
Classes: In world-systems analysis, on of the four key social institutions. These are the economic
strata of the world defned as in Marxism in relation to the mode of production.
Collectve consumpton: The consumption of public services and goods, especially as associated with
urban areas.
Colonialism: The occupation of foreign territory by a state for the purposes of setlement and
economic exploitation. It is another term for formal imperialism.
Communism: A social system based upon the communal ownership of all property; it is usually used
to mean the state-controlled social systems that were set up in former Soviet bloc countries.
Congruent politcs: When the politics of support broadly matches the political power. It is the basis
of liberal democracies.
Conservatve: Originally a political ideology against social change, now a general term for right-wing
politics.
Containment: The name given to the family of geopolitical codes devised by US governments against
the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Core: One of three major zones of the world-economy the others are periphery and semi-periphery,
in the world-system analysis. It is characterized by core processes involving relatively high-wage,
high-tech production.
Core area of states: An area where a state originates and around which it has gradually built up its
territory.
Coup d’état: A change of government by unconstitutional means, usually involving a rebellion by the
armed forces
Democracy: A form of government where policy is made by or on behalf of the people. As indirect
democracy, it usually takes the form of competition between political parties at elections.
Dependency: An economic or political relationship between countries or groups of countries in which
one side is not able to control its destiny because of oppressive links with the other side.
,Derivatonists: Theorists of the state who atempt to derive the nature of the state from Marx’ls
writing ons capitalism.
Development of underdevelopment: The economic processes tht occur in the periphery of the
world-economy that are the opposite of the development which occurs in the core. The phrase was
coined by Frank of the Dependency School of Development to show why poor countries were failing
to catch up economically.
Diplomacy: The art of negotiating between countries. Diplomats conduct the foreign policies of
states short of war.
Disconnected politcs: When there is no relation between the politics of support and the politics of
war.
Economism: The Marxist theory that all non-economic processes can be traced back to the economic
base of society.
Elite: A small group in a society that has a disproportionate innuence on events.
Empire: A political organization comprising several parts, one of which is the centre of power to
which the rest are subordinate.
‘Empire’: Hardt and Negri’ls concept of a new form of sovereign power based not on territorial
sovereign states but on a number of power relations and institutions, such as racism and
multinational companies.
Error of developmentalism: The idea that all countries follow the same path of development.
European Union: A group of states comprising most of Western Europe that is carrying out a variety
of policies ultimately leading to economic and political integration. Formerly known as the European
Community.
Fascism: An ideology developed by the Italian dictator Mussolini. It is associated with the glorifcation
of the state and its leader, militant anti-communism and military expansion.
Federaton: A state where power is shared between two levels of government; a central or federal
government and a tier of provincial or state governments.
Feudalism: A form of society based upon landlords collecting dues from the agricultural producers or
serfs in return for military protection. This hierarchical society of mutual obligations precedes
capitalism in Europe.
Formal imperialism: The political control of territory beyond a state’ls boundary.
Franchise: The voting rights in a country, for instance the universal adult franchise used in elections
in most modern states.
Free trade: The policy of allowing commodities into a country from all other states without
prohibitive tarifs, in order to maximize trade.
Fronter: The zone at the edge of a historical system where its meets other systems.
, Functonalism: An argument that you can understand an institution through analysis of what it does,
as in functional theories of the state.
Fundamentalism: Tradition defending itself within the difcult circumstances of renexive modernity.
Geopolitcal code: The operating code of a government’ls foreign policy that evaluates places beyond
its boundaries.
Geopolitcal construct: Semi-permanent geopolitical entities that are products of geopolitical agency
and also setngs for further agency.
Geopolitcal transiton: The short period of rapid change between one geopolitical world order and
the next.
Geopolitcal world order: A stable patern of world politics dominated by an agenda set by the major
powers.
Geopolitcs: The study of the geographical distribution of power among states across the world,
especially the rivalry between the major powers.
Globalizaton: A contentious term that is used to describe contemporary society. It has two main
dimensions: 1) it denotes an up-scaling of human activity to the global scale; 2) it refers to the
expansion of transnational relations in a global space of nows. As such, globalization challenges the
primacy of the state in political, economic and social processes.
Government: The primary political institution in a state, responsible for making and implementing
laws and policies.
Heartland-rimland theory: A development of the heartland theory that allows the sea power to
balance the land power’ls strategic position by controlling the area between them.
Heartland theory: A geostrategic theory devised by Mackinder that gives the land power in control of
central Asia ultimate strategic advantage over sea power in competition for control of the world.
Hegemony: A position held by a state or a class when it so dominates its sphere of operation that
other states or classes are forced to comply with its wishes voluntarily. States are defned as
hegemonic at the scale of the world-system, classes at the scale of the state.
Households: One of the four key social institutions in world-systems analysis. These are the atoms of
the systems, where small groups of people share a budget.
Idealism: In international relations, an approach to world politics that emphasizes cooperation and
believes that the inter-state system can be organized peacefully.
Ideology: A world view about how societies both do and should work. It is ofen used as a means of
obscuring reality.
Imperialism: The process whereby one country dominates another country, either politically or
economically.
