Political Geography

Introduction to Political Geography

Political geography emphasizes humans' territorial natures. We claim and hold territory—as individuals and as societies—for reasons of security, need for natural resources, and fundamentally, as space in which to reside. We administer those territories according to rules that are written and enforced in different ways depending on what types of governments we have.

Fig. 1 - A common type of boundary marker

Geographers say that people organize space. This means we establish boundaries between different types of territories, define the rules of each territory (domestic politics and government), and define how we interact with people who aren’t members of our territories (geopolitics, international relations).

Political geography takes a critical approach to how we organize space and how this relates to the state and to the individual. It considers different types of territories that are fashioned by people of all ethnicities, races, genders, and cultures, and how these territories are governed and defended.

Scope of Political Geography

Political geography's scope is extremely broad. At the local scale, it might focus on the political concerns of a single community or neighborhood. At the global scale, it can analyze the geopolitics of large world regions or other global phenomena. It can also integrate scales, relating the broadest of global issues to the political geography of a single neighborhood.

Like all subfields of geography, political geography is related not just to its own concerns of territory, boundaries, state formation, electoral politics, and so forth, but also to questions of culture, economics, and the environment.

Development of Political Geography

Political geography as it has existed in Europe and North America has developed in two phases. The first phase extended from the height of imperialism in the late 1800s all the way until the 1970s. The second phase began in the 1970s and continues today.

Political Geography in the Service of Imperialism

Geographers have long been necessary to states for their essential work of gathering geographic data and making maps. Geography has been particularly useful in foreign relations and defense ministries of major governments, and one can find numerous descriptive geographical works that have helped countries conquer and administer other countries.

Four major figures—from the US, Germany, Russia, and the UK—exemplify the type of political geography that went beyond this dry fact-finding to weave elaborate theories about geopolitics and the relationships between the great powers in the waning years of imperialism.

1) Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), a German geographer who introduced the concept of lebensraum ("living space") in his Politische Geographie (1897).¹ Though he was an important figure in the origins of modern human geography, cultural geography, and political geography, his geopolitical theory also influenced Nazism.

2) Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), a historian and Navy admiral who wrote The Influence of Sea-Power on History, 1660-1783,² in which he argued for the preeminence of naval forces in the rise to power of empires. The US Navy and US geopolitical theory and practice were heavily influenced by this book.

3) Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921), a Russian prince who, as a geographer and an anarchist, completely disavowed the state and centralized government, calling it unnecessary. He argued instead for mutual aid³ like what he saw practiced in the small peasant communities across Russia that he visited.

4) Halford Mackinder (1861-1947), a British geographer who came up with the "Heartland Theory" in 1904.⁴ Playing off the long-time struggle between the Russian and British Empires known as the Great Game, Mackinder argued that the key to world dominance lay in control of the "Heartland," an area stretching from eastern Europe into what is now Ukraine and Russia, part of "Eurasia."

These voices provided different ways to think about the big picture, and their influence is still felt in the field of international relations and in the positions taken by governments.

Critical Political Geography

After the 1960s, political geographers turned to Marxism, feminism, and other approaches that were critical of imperialism. Nowadays, a political geographer might be as likely to look at the territoriality of environmental groups as they would the ways that transgender youth control "safe spaces" in a US community. Now that there is no expectation that political geographers work in the "service of the state," one can find that just about any topic of interest in politics is being studied and debated by geographers as well.

Political Geography Map

A good place to begin your political geographical explorations is a world political map that shows country names, boundaries, and locations. It is a snapshot of the world as it exists right now—though, as you probably already figured out, that is negotiable, contested, and ever-changing. From the global level, you can "drill down" to a certain region, depending on what your interest is.

Fig. 2 - 2020 world map showing all UN member states

Political Geography in AP Human Geography

Like all the AP Human Geography topics, political geography does not just involve learning dry facts about countries. However, it is very useful to know those facts, starting with basic map knowledge.

You can browse through and study our extensive catalog of explanations on political geography to learn about all facets of the subdiscipline.

Political Geography Examples

The following are some political geography examples:

US-Mexico Border

There are few issues as fraught as the 1,954-mile border that separates the United States from Mexico. One fascinating aspect of this is both political and cultural and looks at how the border serves to unite communities on both sides in a broader border zone. Political geographers look at the tensions between cultural and even environmental concerns that bring together both sides and political issues that keep them divided. This connects to that important political geography subject, electoral geography, because issues related to how the US deals with its southern land border affect the outcome of elections all the way to the national level. We can also see how a border issue is related to population geography, which is concerned in part with different types of migrant flows.

Fig. 3 - A small part of the border between Mexico and the US

South China Sea

This body of water bordered by seven countries in Southeast Asia is a geopolitical flashpoint where conflicts over fishing rights and access to drilling are part of a geopolitical saga pitting China against the West. The South China Sea covers access to an estimated 11 billion barrels of petroleum and almost 200 trillion cubic ft. of natural gas, reason enough for dispute when several of these countries' claims overlap each other.⁵ The reason, and an important focus in political geography, is the lack of clarity in definitions of water territory--where access ends and what type of access is allowed.

Fig. 4 - A 1947 map released by the Republic of China stakes China's claim to most of the South China Sea, enclosed by an 11-dash line

China's claim dates to a dashed line drawn on a 1947 map and includes most of the sea. China has been busy constructing artificial islands, each of which can have an Exclusive Economic Zone around it. This has put it in direct military conflict with the Philippines, for example, though no war has yet broken out in the region. This is because the US, Australia, the UK, and other Western allies treat the South China Sea as international waters and deploy substantial military forces there to safeguard it, creating major geopolitical tensions with China. They claim they are protecting one of the world's busiest trade routes, connecting Asia and Europe.

Ukraine

Political geographers going back to the days of Mackinder and before have been concerned about the resource-rich and geostrategic lands between Europe and Russia. Ukraine, the disputed Crimean Peninsula, and the Black Sea, have long been caught in a high-stakes tug-of-war between Russia and the West since the days of the "Great Game" when the British Empire and the Russian Empire disputed territory along a shatterbelt stretching across most of Asia and the fringes of Europe. Russia has always needed a warm-water port, so it has made it a political priority to control the Black Sea access via the chokepoint at Turkey's Bosporus and Dardanelles straits.

To understand Ukraine, its internal conflicts, and its relationships with Russia and the West in the present day, it is necessary to understand the importance it has long had for Russia's geostrategic interests, some of which are mentioned above, as well as the irredentist nature of its ethnically Russian eastern part, the Donbas. It is also necessary to comprehend the US-led push for a Western-led "world order" that seeks to block the rise of potential competitors such as a strong and expansionist Russia. Mackinder-influenced texts like Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives argue for this approach.