Political Organization of Space

Notes: Jessica Medina

Political Organization of Space
-What is a territory, exactly? It seems to me that it's a pattern of boundaries imposed on something by individual decision or group agreement. That means an individual or group can decide or agree to change the pattern.

-Political boundaries exist at a variety of scales, and these boundaries influence how goods and services are distributed, who gets represented and who does not, and how issues are confronted.

-Because the boundaries that receive the most attention are boundaries between independent countries, one might begin this discussion by considering the historical and contemporary role of these boundaries and how they reflect the distribution of other phenomena.

- A federal state is one in which there is a constitutional right for local governments to act in specified areas, such as legislation. A unitary state is one in which local governments (if there are any) have been set up under statute law, and are in effect delegated to run certain services on behalf of a central government. - A spatial relation specifies how some object is located in space in relation to some reference object. Since the reference object is usually much bigger than the object to locate, the latter is often represented by a point. Concept of states - The concept of nation and states is that everyone must be strictly be separated into lands where everyone's language, culture, heritage and other related factors are the same. it is this concept which had obstructed the progress of world peace and unity through the development of nationalism and cultural difference, and must be dissolved in order to achieve world unity. - A quasi-anything is something that isn't quite what it says it is. It can refer to a person, or a country. So if South Ossetia fulfills some of the conditions for a state, but not enough to fully qualify, it is a quasi-state. Georgia may or may not agree wtih South Ossetia's self-definition of statehood, but South Ossetia speaks a distinctly separate language and that separates it from Georgia.

Problems of Multinational states and statesless nations - Almost all the countries of the world are "multi- nationality" states. The reasons are millenia old. In most of the countries of the world originally some weaker races of neolithic age or bronze age lived .But later stronger people bringing iron age culture invaded these lands and conqured and crushed the previous people In many cases people were killed in large numbers or enslaved. The conquered races lived miserable lives and could not raise their voices till the dawning of modern age of liberty,equality,fraternity,democracy,so… etc. Because in every modern state the previously enslaved people are asserting their rights,demanding Independence or autonomy etc there is incessant friction. - Unless economic condition of all the oppressed people is improved and unless they are guaranteed cultural and social equality and good opportunities to get good education,housing,health facilities etc there will be incessant trouble in all the multinational states.

Notes (Laura)
*evolution of the contemporary political pattern
-the nation state concept: A useful starting point is the sixteenth-to-seventeenth century’s political pattern in western/central European. The continent was dominated two distinct types of countries. One the incipient national states such as England, France, Spain, and Portugal and the other the empires in central and Eastern Europe. The Peace of Westphalia (1648), held that the Prince of any realm could determine the religion of that realm, as part of an arrangement that governed how territorial units in the Holy Roman Empire would relate to one another.
The sovereignty principle is significant because it provided a theoretical foundation for carving territory into largely autonomous governmental units. This meant that the exercise of power was no longer seen in human hierarchical terms, but instead was to be exercised at a single scale-that of the state.
-colonialism and imperialism: theory holds that periods of colonial activity are determined by conditions in the core region of the world (Europe, Japan and the United States). There were two phases of large-scale colonialization. The first lasted from 1415-1800 and was dominated by trading companies except in Latin America. In that region the Spanish imposed the rule of the monarch directly using techniques from the Reconquista policy, which they developed to retake the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors. During this period colonialists focused on the Americas and South Asia. The Russians directed their energy eastward into Siberia. The second phase was the late 19th century to post WWII. During it the colonialists focused on occupation and government lands in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The first wave was characterized by conquest, plunder, slavery, and annihilation of indigenous people. For example the Aztecs declined from 13 to 2 million by 1600. The second phase was less destructive of societies and economic exploitation is preferred to military conquest and rule.
-democratization: This section reviews the actual economic record of African states following democratization at the beginning of the 1990s. As stated above, African economies enjoyed a substantial improvement in growth rates in the 1990s. Studies of transition from authoritarianism to democracy in Latin America and Southern Europe suggest that "a rapid decomposition of state power, especially when aggravated by serious economic decline, is hardly conducive for the establishment of viable democratic regimes." This claim seems to be borne out by the current situation in Eastern and Central Europe, where "the rapid disintegration of party-states [has] produced a power vacuum which has been hastily permeated by highly fragmented political forces... prone to radicalization not only around political and economic issues, but also around ethnic and religious cleavages." Hence, some argue that "the tasks facing new democratically elected governments are so drastic that some form of coercive policies may be necessary in order to accomplish a fundamental restructuring of political and economic systems".
*changes and challenges to political territorial arrangements
-changing nature of sovereignty: The purpose of this project is to examine the assertions of those who reject innovative proposals for the resolution of the Northern Ireland conflict at least partly on the grounds that they depart from established norms of international practice. In that opponents of the Agreement can draw not only on specifically local objections but also a strong perspective with international relations literature which conceptualizes sovereignty as being absolute in its nature.
-fragmentation, unification, alliance: Challenges to the inherited political-territorial order do not simply come in spatially ambiguous economic forms, however. There are concrete examples of fragmentation, unification, and alliance that are altering the political geographic order. The EU has facilitated the development of cross-border cooperation regions that are reshaping the spatial parameters of Europe’s political and social order.
-supranationalism and devolution: Devolution has 'suddenly' elevated to public consciousness long-standing features of UK territorial public finance which were previously not transparent and were intelligible only to a few specialists. These features include the limited fiscal discretion allowed to devolved bodies, the operation of the Barnett formula as a mechanism for territorial allocation, and the highly centralized fiscal psychology of the Treasury and other departments at the UK center. As public knowledge grows in an intensely politicized environment, territorial public finance as a form of 'private' government has opened up. Institutions at the UK center now have to disentangle their UK and English roles.
-electoral geography: is a constituent component of political geography, a science which studies development of all political processes inside geographical space. However, election results are only natural result of numerous social, economic and political processes. Studying the geography of elections is senseless without knowing what is behind these results and what political processes preceded them and what these results mean. It is also senseless to study electoral geography without thorough knowledge of the socio-economic characteristics of the territory where the election is taking place.
-terrorism: The ability to map the contemporary terrorism research domain involves mining, analyzing, charting, and visualizing a research area according to experts, institutions, topics, publications, and social networks. As the increasing flood of new, diverse, and disorganized digital terrorism studies continues, the application of domain visualization techniques are increasingly critical for understanding the growth of scientific research, tracking the dynamics of the field, discovering potential new areas of research, and creating a big picture of the field’s intellectual structure as well as challenges.
*concepts of imperialism and colonialism
Coming to the origin of the two, Imperialism has a longer history than Colonialism. While the history of colonialism dates back to 15th century, Imperialism has its origins dating back to the Romans. Colonialism and imperialism are often used interchangeably, but they are two different words having different meaning. As both colonialism and Imperialism means political and economic domination of the other, scholars often find it hard to differentiate the two.
Though both the words underline suppression of the other, Colonialism is where one nation assumes control over the other and Imperialism refers to political or economic control, either formally or informally. In simple words, colonialism can be thought to be a practice and imperialism as the idea driving the practice. In Colonialism, one can see great movement of people to the new territory and living as permanent settlers. Though they lead the life as permanent settlers, they still maintain allegiance to their mother country. Imperialism is just exercising power over the conquered regions either through sovereignty or indirect mechanisms of control. Colonialism has its origins when Europeans started to look outside their country, pursuing trade with other nations. Though colonialism can be attributed to the trade pursuits of a country, Imperialism is just not like that and it involves individual pursuits only.
In Colonialism, one can see great movement of people to the new territory and living as permanent settlers. Though they lead the life as permanent settlers, they still maintain allegiance to their mother country. Imperialism is just exercising power over the conquered regions either through sovereignty or indirect mechanisms of control.
The Enlightenment began to shift West societies towards values such as democracy, independent judiciary, free press and escape from religious tyranny. These, when well-developed offer checks and balances against excessive concentration of power and corruption, and some safeguards against environmental predation. After the colonies gained independence, the newly independent citizens uncritically embraced most of the negative values and have vigorously continued the practices of the negative values and have vigorously continued the practices of their early colonial masters.