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When speaking about political geography, there are many things that come to mind, nations, states, countries, continents, here is a basic states of the world map shown above

When talking about political geography and shapes of states, there are five main terms that should be considered. the five different shapes of a state are, compact, fragmented, perforated, elongated, and protruded.

COMPACT STATE: the most stable shape of a state is a round compact state. it is easy to manage due to the compactness without harder to manage fragments and easier governing throughout the state. a great example is Belgium such shown below FRAGMENTED: one of the hardest shapes of a state to manage. due to the separation of certain sections from the rest of the country it is hard to keep track of all the fragments. a great example is Indonesia which is composed of more than 13000 fragments as shown below.

PERFORATED: a perforated state is a nation that completely surrounds another nation. with no hostility between the two nations this can be not to hard to manage. but with hostility or other issues sometimes this can complicate the governing of the perforated nation. a great example is South Africa, completely surround Lesotho, as shown below. ENCLAVE: An enclave is a landlocked state that is completely surrounded by a perforated nation on all sides. An example of an enclave is Vatican city as shown below. Vatican City is a sovereign state that is completely surrounded by Italy. [|http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.planetware.com/i/map/SCV/vatican-city-map.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.planetware.com/map/vatican-city-map-scv-vat]

PENE ENCLAVE: A pene enclave is an enclave that is not completely landlocked. It has access to the ocean. An example of a pene enclave is Gambia. Gambia can be seen in the map below almost completely surrounded by Senegal, except for the part of the country that has access to the coast. []

EXCLAVE: An exclave is a part of a state that is separated from the main body of the state. An example of an exclave is the part of Russia between Poland and Lithuania. It is separated from the mainland of Russia, but is still counted as part of the state. On the map shown below, Russia's exclave can be seen highlighted in the map below. []

ELONGATED; an elongated state can be described as a long skinny state. These states can be one of the hardest to manage. Due to the large distance needed to cover from a central place it can be hard to govern and often small chunks of the elongated states will branch off and start a new country. Chile is one of the more stable. examples of an elongated state as shown below. but other examples such as Korea were not so lucky and were split right down the middle due to conflict. PROTRUDED: a protruded state is a state that has a normal compact area and then a leg or another section that sticks out or "protrudes" from the state. These can be hard to manage due to the ease of these such "legs" to just break off and the difficulty for a government to govern these such sticking out areas. Often these states are broken off and one side becomes compact and the other one elongated. a great example is Myanmar in Asia with the compact upper region and the protruding leg that branches down the side of Thailand. Another thing to consider when talking about political geography is perceptual regions, this is how someone in a certain culture, or place, views other places away from home, some examples consist of how people in America view other countries or areas around the world, others consist about how other places view america. this can have to do with disagreements, or stereotypes, or even how people view the government of other countries.
 * [[image:http://data.un.org/_Images/Maps/Myanmar.gif caption="Myanmar"]] ||
 * Myanmar ||

This is a humorous depiction of how america views the rest of the world.

Many people also use a 3 tier structure to separate the different levels of economic development in the world. the three tiers consist of core, semi periphery, and periphery. In this system, core is the most developed, semi periphery is second most developed economically, and periphery is the least developed economically. This map shows the different levels of economic development according to the three tier system, blue being core (most developed), purple being semi periphery (second most developed), and red being core (least developed)



Through much of the 19th century and early 20th century, British colonialism was a big part of the political boundaries of the world. Yhis map demonstrates the boundaries that europeans superimposed on the continent of Africa with little respect to cultural differences, these boundaries led to many disputes, and disagreements due to cultural differences

When speaking about a capitalistic world economy, there are many colonial influences as shown above.

When talking about geopolitics, supranational organizations come to mind, here is a map showing the current members of the UN (United Nations) a supranational organization

The pivot area/heartland theory created by Halford Mackinder, and it pretty much states that whoever rules the heartland (Eastern Europe) rules the world.

Gerrymandering as shown in the map above, is when districts are redrawn in order to benefit a specific political party or candidate.

GLOBAL COMMONS: the global commons are the areas that are lie outside of a political boundary of any nation state that nobody owns or clams to own that everyone uses and at the same time no one will take care of and they soon fall to the "tragedy of the commons." Tragedy of the commons means the the resources of that common area has been over exploited because one no will keep it from falling apart. There are four internationally recognized global commons: the High Seas, the Atmosphere, Antarctica, an Outer Space.

sources: [] (states of the world)

[] (shapes info)

[] (myanamar map)

[] (chile map)

[|http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/images/map-south-africa.png&imgrefurl=http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/south-africa.htm&usg=__qAW3Hu_PrxdV5C3GgpaXAaegepM=&h=270&w=270&sz=41&hl=en&start=4&zoom=1&tbnid=VWhiYKvMcCLt5M:&tbnh=113&tbnw=113&ei=xW3vToaONsj00gHW3bzhCQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsouth%2Bafrica%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:*%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1] (soth africa map)

[] (indonesia map)

[] (belgium map)

[] (how america views the world map)

[] (african independance map)

__http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1290&bih=901&tbm=isch&tbnid=bh1b6eNg7vI5ZM:&imgrefurl=http://www2.johnabbott.qc.ca/~geoscience/ME/Lectures/Geopolitics/sld013.html&docid=T5_iEiALKnSm8M&imgurl=http://www2.johnabbott.qc.ca/~geoscience/ME/Lectures/Geopolitics/Images/sld013.gif&w=800&h=534&ei=V0HrUNu-BtCM0QGCpICQBQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=502&vpy=415&dur=2456&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=166&ty=116&sig=116090387867640211572&page=2&tbnh=137&tbnw=206&start=28&ndsp=37&ved=1t:429,r:43,s:0,i:227//__(Heartland theory map)

__http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1040&bih=768&tbm=isch&tbnid=7OYj-V-ICHeZ4M:&imgrefurl=http:__//__en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica&docid=Ci-ojR9Pn6gjRM&imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Antarctica.svg/300px-Antarctica.svg.png&w=300&h=300&ei=HvfqUJjXN4q20QHcmoDACg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=469&sig=117446160822645254200&page=3&tbnh=157&tbnw=157&start=54&ndsp=29&ved=1t:429,r:62,s:0,i:280&tx=78&ty=65__ (map of Antarctica)

__http://www.unep.org/delc/GlobalCommons/tabid/54404/Default.aspx__ __http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_commons__ (Definition of Global Commons)